See the Civil Rights Movement in Photographs

  • Desegregation of Central High School Little Rock, Arkansas, 1957.
    Ernest C. Withers—Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, © Ernest C. Withers Trust
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  • Young woman receives her voter registration card, Fayette County, TN 1960.
    Ernest C. Withers—Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, © Ernest C. Withers Trust
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  • William Edwin Jones pushes daughter Renee Andrewnetta Jones (8 months old) during protest march on Main St. in Memphis Tennessee. August 1961
    Ernest C. Withers—Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, © Ernest C. Withers Trust
    3 of 10
  • Atlanta, Georgia. A Toddle House during a Sit-In. 1963.
    Danny Lyon—Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, © Danny Lyon/ Magnum Photos
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  • Mrs. Medgar Evers and family - she comforts her eldest son at Medgar Evers' funeral, Jackson MS June 15, 1963.
    Ernest C. Withers—Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, © Ernest C. Withers Trust
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  • Alabama Fire Department aims high-pressure water hoses at civil rights demonstrators, May 1963.
    Charles Moore—Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, © Charles Moore
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  • Dr, Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King coming into Montgomery, 1965.
    Spider Martin—Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, © 1965 Spider Martin
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  • Photograph depicting the rioting in Newark, NJ by residents, following the arrest of a black cabdriver, John W. Smith, by two Newark policemen, John DeSimone and Vito Pontrelli in the summer of 1967.
    Don Hogan Charles—Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, © Don Hogan Charles/The New York Times/ Redux
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  • Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Rev Ralph Abernathy embracing Rosa Parks, Benjamin Hooks on left, SCLC Convention, Memphis, TN. July 1968.
    Ernest C. Withers—Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, © Ernest C. Withers Trust
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  • Black Panther demonstration, Alameda Co. Court House, Oakland, California, during Huey Newton's trial, #71, July 30, 1968.
    Pirkle Jones—Collection of the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture, © 2011 Pirkle Jones Foundation
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By Lily Rothman

As the National Museum of African American History and Culture prepares to open, its staff is preparing a vast collection of artifacts and documents for display—but, though the museum won’t officially open until next year, a new series of books offers a sneak peek at its photography collection. The second book in the Double Exposure series, Civil Rights and the Promise of Equality, will be available July 7. (The first came out earlier this year.)

Some of the images of the civil rights movement—the fire hoses, the marches—are likely to be familiar to readers. But as other photos in the collection make clear, those weren’t the whole story. The movement was also captured in photographs of a new voter’s happiness and a new father’s insistence on a better future for his child.

“Civil rights, certainly, is something where people expect a story to be told but we want people to look at it in a different way—not just the photos of Martin Luther King,” says Michèle Gates Moresi, the museum’s supervisory curator of collections. “Those are in there, of course, but I think when people actually look at the book they can be introduced to new stories.”

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Write to Lily Rothman at lily.rothman@time.com.

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