--- title: Civil Rights Photos: How a Picture Changed a Family's Life description: These photos, on display in a new exhibition at Atlanta's High Museum, underscore the influence of photography in the civil-rights era. canonical: https://time.com/4957382/civil-rights-photography-high-museum/ author: Olivia B. Waxman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-11-03T13:00:56.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T04:58:27.799Z article:section: History og:title: Civil Rights Photos: How a Picture Changed a Family's Life og:description: These photos, on display in a new exhibition at Atlanta's High Museum, underscore the influence of photography in the civil-rights era og:url: https://time.com/4957382/civil-rights-photography-high-museum/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfb8c5c7359ca8324/6988df67bc6cfc295b3e33e2/civil-rights-gordon-parks-alabama.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2390 og:image:height: 1344 og:image:alt: Civil Rights High Museum of Art og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Civil Rights Photos: How a Picture Changed a Family's Life twitter:description: These photos, on display in a new exhibition at Atlanta's High Museum, underscore the influence of photography in the civil-rights era twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfb8c5c7359ca8324/6988df67bc6cfc295b3e33e2/civil-rights-gordon-parks-alabama.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Photography's Power in the Civil Rights Movement Had a Tragic Side > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription.  by [Olivia B. Waxman](https://time.com/author/olivia-b-waxman/)  ## Olivia B. Waxman Staff Writer Nov 3, 2017 1:00 PM UTC  Gordon Parks (American, 1912–2006), Outside Looking In, Mobile, Alabama, 1956, printed 2012, pigmented inkjet print. High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of The Gordon Parks Foundation, 2014.386.9. Gordon Parks (American, 1912–2006), Outside Looking In, Mobile, Alabama, 1956, printed 2012, pigmented inkjet print. High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of The Gordon Parks Foundation, 2014.386.9. Gordon Parks, courtesy of High Museum of Art  by [Olivia B. Waxman](https://time.com/author/olivia-b-waxman/)  ## Olivia B. Waxman Staff Writer Nov 3, 2017 1:00 PM UTC Martin Luther King Jr.’s [assassination](http://time.com/3749091/mlk-assassination-photograph/) was just one of the “apocalyptic events” of 1968, as TIME would later put it in a special report on the significance of the year, published for its 20th anniversary. The magazine [compared](http://time.com/vault/issue/1988-01-11/page/1/) the events of that year to a “knife blade,” that “severed past from future.” The photographs of that era have always held a [special place](http://time.com/4429096/black-lives-matter-civil-rights-photography/) in the history of civil rights in the United States, and as the 50th anniversary of King’s assassination approaches, the power of those images is as apparent as ever. Opening at [The High Museum](https://www.high.org/exhibition/a-fire-that-no-water-could-put-out-civil-rights-photography/) in Atlanta on Saturday, a new exhibition of civil rights photography features more than 40 prints of the leader’s disciples and the people he fought for. For example, the work of Doris Derby, a photographer and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) participant, sheds light on the “unsung and overlooked women,” as the museum phrases it, who followed in his footsteps even when it meant putting their lives in danger. The show features a mix of the museum’s permanent collection and new acquisitions, starting with the images that helped draw national attention to King — such as Charles Moore’s photo of King’s arrest outside the Montgomery, Ala., courthouse on Sept. 3, 1958 — to an image of Coretta Scott King leading the March in Memphis just four days after MLK’s death, taken by Burk Uzzle of the Magnum Photos cooperative. The show also features images of modern-day adaptations of his signature nonviolent demonstrations, showcasing photos of the 50th anniversary commemoration of the march in Selma, Ala., as well as Black Lives Matter protests in Atlanta, Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo. Photographs from the civil-rights movement [helped expose the cruelty of segregation](http://time.com/4200148/gordon-parks-photographs-black-humanity/) and discrimination to the wider world, but as made clear by the story behind one of the photos in the exhibition, the power of those images could hurt, too. Even as photography helped to make change on a national level, the people who appeared in those images could be harmed on an individual level as a result of opening up their lives to that exposure. Gordon Parks’ 1956 photograph “Outside Looking In, Mobile, Alabama” — the first slide in the gallery above — shows a group of black children peering through a fence guarding a whites-only playground. It was part of a LIFE magazine photo essay titled [“The Restraints: Open and Hidden,”](http://time.com/3664001/gordon-parks-fort-scott/) for which he shadowed sharecropper Albert Thornton’s family and showcased their experience with segregation. The children in the photograph, the story explained, “do not grasp the logic” of not being allowed to enter the “wonderful place from which they are being deliberately excluded,” just on the other side of the fence. “Although the Thorntons are thoughtful and, in private, articulate, they do not make many direct statements about segregation,” [the article said](https://books.google.com/books?id=70cEAAAAMBAJ&q=thornton#v=onepage&q=thorntons&f=false). “This is because they fear yet another restraint — the constant fear of publicly speaking their minds.” Unfortunately, their fear was proved to be founded. After the photos came out, Thornton’s daughter Allie Lee Causey and her family were forced to leave their jobs and home in Choctaw County after facing white intimidation. As LIFE [acknowledged](https://books.google.com/books?id=x0EEAAAAMBAJ&q=sequel#v=snippet&q=sequel&f=false) later that year, the editors had wanted to “explain one of the most controversial social problems before the United States today” but had not anticipated “subsequent developments.” (The magazine helped them relocate to an unnamed location of their choice.) Parks, who was black, later wrote that the mayor had noted that the townspeople would have “tarred and feathered \[Parks\] and set him to fire” if they had seen him there after the story was published. Causey’s nephew Michael Wilson [told AL.com](http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2015/01/life%5Fmagazines%5F1956%5Flook%5Fat%5Fse.html) in 2015 that that LIFE photo essay “totally changed their way of life and they lost everything, basically. But I think from that … people saw how people are being treated. So from that sense, it did what it was supposed to do.” _A Fire That No Water Could Put Out: Civil Rights Photography_ runs through May 27, 2018.  Gordon Parks (American, 1912–2006), Outside Looking In, Mobile, Alabama, 1956, printed 2012, pigmented inkjet print. High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of The Gordon Parks Foundation, 2014.386.9. Gordon Parks, courtesy of High Museum of Art  Unknown Photographer, Elizabeth Eckford Entering Central High School, Little Rock, Arkansas, 1957, gelatin silver print. High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from Sandra Anderson Baccus in loving memory of Lloyd Tevis Baccus, M.D., 2007.108. Courtesy of High Museum of Art  Bill Hudson (American, 1932–2010), Police Dog Attack, Birmingham, Alabama, 1963, gelatin silver print. High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from Sandra Anderson Baccus in loving memory of Lloyd Tevis Baccus, M.D., 2007.100. Bill Hudson, courtesy of High Museum of Art  Steve Schapiro (American, born 1936), Freedom Bus Riders, Summer of '64, Oxford, Ohio,1964, gelatin silver print. High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from the H. B. and Doris Massey Charitable Trust, 2007.217. Steve Schapiro, courtesy of High Museum of Art  Charles Moore (American, 1931–2010), Freedom Singing, Selma, Alabama, 1965, gelatin silver print. High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from Sherri and Jess Crawford in honor of John Lewis, 2007.252. Charles Moore, courtesy of High Museum of Art  Doris Derby (American, born 1939), Grass Roots Organizer, Mississippi, 1968, gelatin silver print. High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from Jeff and Valerie Levy, 2007.188. Doris Derby, courtesy of High Museum of Art  Burk Uzzle (American, born 1938), MLK Funeral street scene with National Guard, Atlanta,1968, gelatin silver print. High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase, 2016.116. Burk Uzzle, courtesy of High Museum of Art  Benedict J. Fernandez (American, born 1936), Memorial to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Central Park, New York City, 1968, gelatin silver print. High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of Gloria and Paul Sternberg, 1999.154.7. Benedict J. 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