Demonstrators deing dragged into custody by police, Birmingham,

May 7, 1963

Today mobile phones ensure that no demonstration goes undocumented, but in the 1960s civil rights organizers orchestrated media coverage to give visibility to resistance and build support for the cause. Referring to the photographs of 1963 broadcast worldwide, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote: “The brutality with which officials would have quelled the black individual became impotent when it could not be pursued with stealth and remain unobserved. It was caught . . . in gigantic circling spotlights. It was imprisoned in a luminous glare revealing the naked truth to the whole world.” Here, Moore captures both the violence of mass arrests and the emotional aftermath of protest. However, because white reporters infrequently interviewed black protesters, the subjects’ identities and personal perspectives did not circulate in the mainstream press.