She possessed no fortune; lived her life far from the formal seats of power. Hundreds of stunning images from black history, drawn from old negatives, have long been buried in the musty envelopes and crowded bins of the New York Times archives.
Were the photos — or the people in them — not deemed newsworthy enough? Did the images not arrive in time for publication? Were they pushed aside by words here at an institution long known as the Gray Lady?
To the Lincoln Memorial, where thousands of African-American protesters gathered, six years before the March on Washington. To a city sidewalk where schoolgirls jumped rope, while the writer Zora Neale Hurston cheered them on, behind the scenes. Photographers for The Times captured all of these scenes, but then the pictures and negatives were filed in our archives, where they sat for decades.
Every day during Black History Month, we will publish at least one of these photographs online, illuminating stories that were never told in our pages and others that have been mostly forgotten. Among them are images of confrontations between the police and demonstrators, including a rally that erupted in violence after the assassination of Medgar Evers, the civil rights leader. There are pioneers in Hollywood and hip-hop and in the ballpark, as well as ordinary people savoring daily life.
And there are prominent figures, such as James Baldwin and the Rev. Consider the close-up of Dr. King above.
It is the only photo in this project that has been previously published; it has appeared many times over the past 50 years, as the backside of the print clearly shows, and it looks as if it might have been taken during a formal sitting.
But it was shot during the summer of on a day when black protesters hurled eggs at Dr. King as he arrived at a church in Harlem. Our photographer snapped Dr. The photo below, unpublished until now, captured that discussion. Click on the image for a larger view, and to scroll through the other photos.
Sometime later, an editor cropped one of those images from the NBC appearance to create the head shot of Dr. King that is now so familiar and so disconnected from the tumultuous events of that day. Many of these photographs, and their stories, are equally intriguing. But the collection is far from comprehensive. There are gaps, for many reasons.
We had a small staff of photographers — the first was hired sometime after — and nearly all of them were based in New York City. As a result, most staff photographs depicted events in New York and places nearby, though The Times also bought pictures from freelancers and studios in other parts of the country and overseas. More than now, we also put a premium back then on words, not pictures, which meant that many photographs that were taken were never published. But other holes in coverage probably reflect the biases of some earlier editors at our news organization, long known as the newspaper of record.
They and they alone determined who was newsworthy and who was not, at a time when black people were marginalized in society and in the media. In our archive of roughly five million prints, after weeks of searching, we could not find a single staff photograph of W.
Our archive is vast — and the filing was sometimes idiosyncratic — so some of these images may still be unearthed. But as we unveil this trove of rediscovered photographs, keep in mind how much we are missing.
She was one of the most famous performers in the country, a recording star, a Hollywood actress and a nightclub sensation. But in the late s, Lena Horne still struggled to find property owners in Manhattan who were willing to sell co-ops or condominiums to African-Americans, even very wealthy ones. With the help of a good friend, Harry Belafonte. Back in , Mr. Belafonte, who was the first recording artist to sell more than a million LPs, was turned away from one Manhattan apartment after another.
And he was furious. So he sent his publicist, who was white, to rent a four-bedroom apartment in the building at West End Avenue. His publicist passed on the paperwork, and Mr. Belafonte signed the one-year lease in his own name. Within hours of moving in, Mr.
Belafonte refused. Instead, he bought the building, using dummy real estate companies to cloak his identity. Some tenants who had been renting there bought their apartments and some of Mr. By Dec. Horne and her husband, Lennie Hayton, a white composer and conductor, were comfortably settled in. In the article that ran 10 days later, accompanied by a different photograph, a close-up, she mentioned her difficulties in finding an apartment, but not the back story to where she had landed.
Horne, who was 47 then. They wanted more, and faster, action on civil rights issues and to look back and forward on the third anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. In a speech to the crowd that day, the Rev. But even then, it was clear that segregation in schools would outlast its historic defeat in the courts, in part because efforts to put the ruling in effect were weak or nonexistent.
The photograph above seemed to capture perfectly the mood of the time: No one in the picture looks satisfied or triumphant. But our article that day relied only on words. No photographs were included. Malcolm X was sleeping when firebombs crashed through his living room windows shortly before 3 in the morning. Jolted awake by the explosions, he rushed his wife and four young daughters out into the cold before fire engulfed their modest brick house in East Elmhurst, Queens.
We published an article about the attack on Feb. What our readers did not know was that one of our own photographers, Don Hogan Charles, had walked through the house, shooting powerful pictures of the damage. This stark image of the shattered windows, singed walls and sooty debris, shown here for the first time, offers a glimpse of the private life of a man who spent much of his time in the public eye.
Malcolm X gave speeches in Manhattan, Detroit and other cities around the country and overseas. But he came home to Queens. Malcolm X, who told our reporter that he had been receiving daily threats, escaped that firebombing unscathed. He was assassinated one week later. The shorts and kneepads scream But who is that lanky seven-foot-tall, year-old high school athlete standing with teammates from Power Memorial Academy at the Catholic High School Athletic Association Championship game?
College recruiters were pursuing the center with intensity, harassing him in the street and searching for his unlisted phone number. The athlete, Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Jr. But he eschewed the spotlight. He referred each scout to his coach. I want an education. Eventually he settled on U. He led the Bucks to a championship in , and the day after that victory, he changed his name to one we are a bit more familiar with: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
Chester Higgins Jr. We never published photographs from the show or wrote about the performance. The music was slamming. The wordplay structure was mesmerizing, delivered as a diatribe that delineated the injustices experienced by this generation of young black people living in a society that held them in contempt.
It resonated as a cry for justice giving voice to frustrations. Growing up in the South, I felt the sting of this derogatory word; to embrace it in a song smacked of self-hate.
But at the same time, it was clear these entertainers connected with the youth of their generation. The audience loved them, and I realized how powerful and totally off the radar the new music called rap had become.
Do you know them or how to find them? Let us know. Terms and conditions Something went wrong. The House had voted to keep him out while he was being investigated by the Judiciary Committee for a number of scandals, but among some of his constituents, there was a sense that he was being unfairly singled out.
He took his fight to the Supreme Court, and in he prevailed in Powell v. McCormack, in which the justices ruled that Representative Powell, being duly elected by the people, could not be voted out of his seat by members of the House. Wingate of the United Federation of Black Community Organizations, which formed that year to address various concerns. Borough President Percy E.
This quieter but compelling image did not make the cut. Do you recognize anyone in the photo? If you do, or if you recall that day, or any other moment captured in these images, please let us know by commenting here in our feedback form or in the post below. It was , the year Jackie Robinson would bat. But on Feb. This photograph, unpublished until now, documents the moment, with the students leaning forward to hear him speak. But what was he discussing? The photo caption offers only a hint, saying that Mr.
We know that Mr. So we turned to you for help. The article said that Mr. Robinson had spent five months, during his off-season, working with underprivileged children at the YMCA in Harlem. Robinson was preceded by a small number of African-Americans who played professionally, mostly in the minor leagues. That was in the s, until team owners prohibited the signing of any new African-American athletes in , segregating baseball, and creating the color barrier that Mr.
Robinson overcame. Were you there that day, listening to his speech? Do you recognize a face in the crowd of students? Or were you one of the young people coached by Mr. Robinson back then? Comments on this post are now closed. For a more complete answer to the questions posed here, come meet the man who made the Robinson visit happen.
Thurgood Marshall was a lawyer of heroic imagination , who led the team that brought school desegregation to the Supreme Court, winning an end to separate but equal.
But five years before that, on the Sunday after Thanksgiving in , he made his way to St. Moran Weston. To outsiders perhaps, it was a minor accolade for Mr. Marshall, then a federal appeals court judge. But the quiet humility he displays here in a photograph never published until now reveals just how much his faith, and church, provided him with spiritual strength. Our article the next day only hinted at that.
But we must feel the responsibility first ourselves. It was a strong message. By a strong man. Now, though, the photograph conjures up another message , delivered by President Obama last year after the church shootings in Charleston, S.
The Rev. Jesse L. Jackson was only 27 on Sept. Throughout this whole situation Rosa Parks remained fearless and brave.
Rosa Parks displayed courage during a time when other blacks did as said and never fought for their rights. Rosa Parks refusal to give up her seat is what caused the Civil Rights movement. Obama said, "with that victory, the entire edifice of segregation, like the ancient walls of Jericho, began to slowly come tumbling down. She cared for the better. Also, she didn't care if others agreed with her or not she just wanted to prove herself. Rosa Parks wasn't afraid to stand opposed to the law, and tried to make the laws change for the better, Her courage was praised by many including Martin luther king and recently Obama.
But Rosa Parks didn't stop her fight by just refusing to give up her seat. Rosa Parks had the courage to go against a system that didn't support her or people of her ethnicity. Even though she knew lots of people wouldn't agree with her she did it anyways. Even though she wasn't the first black to stand up for her rights she was the one who started the civil rights movements. Parks showed courage by knowing that many people may not agree with her against the discrimination but still decided to make a difference.
She wanted to make her dream come true at not being discriminated for her color she was. Martin Luther King Jr. Ralph D. In the U. Supreme Court enshrined her name in history when it ruled that the Montgomery discrimination statute was unconstitutional.
Parks' arrest on December 1, launched the Montgomery Bus Boycott by 17, black citizens. A Supreme Court ruling and declining revenues forced the city to desegregate its buses thirteen months later. Parks became an instant icon, but her resistance was a natural extension of a lifelong commitment to activism.
0コメント