Powerful Days
Charles Moore
Black Star
On a very hot day in May of 1963, in Birmingham, Alabama, a jail door ended the most important story of my career as a photojournalist. For those five days I had been covering the dramatic, and violent, events that have come to be known as the Birmingham riots. My LIFE magazine essay captured the important and violent images that helped change American thinking about the rights of black citizens of the South and our democratic country.
Images of fire hoses and police dogs turned on men, women, and children created a new sense of revulsion. It was on this fifth day that police commissioner, Bull Conner, had me and LIFE magazine reporter Michael Durham arrested for not obeying a police order … we were put in the same jail where Martin Luther King spent time and wrote his “Letter from a Birmingham jail”… a judge later dismissed the charge.
Preview
In 1958 I first met Dr. Martin Luther King at his Dexter Ave. church in the capital city of Montgomery, Alabama, where I was a staff photographer and later Chief Photographer. I was very impressed with the stature of this brave man and the power of his oratory. I soon knew this was a story with events I wanted to be a part of.
One day I witnessed and photographed a white man hitting a black woman on the head with a small baseball bat while another man was hitting a black woman on the head with his fist. My paper published this on the front page and Life magazine has published it. Early in my introduction to civil rights events, I had made the decision that I wanted to show, with my photography, the violence that was directed at people of color in my home state of Alabama, and other places, because of their color, and their courage to go out, follow Martin Luther King and demonstrate peacefully for their rights as American citizens, and law-abiding citizens of the American South. The violent night at the university of Mississippi, Bloody Sunday ... the first attempt at the Selma March that turned violent ... I continued the final march into Montgomery ... the police dogs and fire hoses turned on people in Birmingham ... the murder of three young, innocent civil-rights workers in Mississippi.
I detest violence, and yet I am proud that I focused my camera on that violence that has had shock value in making American citizens realize that hate and discrimination is wrong, as the great photographer James Nachtwey has shown the world with his important photographs ... and as my friend Michael 'Nick' Nichols has shown the world with his incredible images of violence done to our beautiful creatures of this world.
Martin Luther King made a reference in one of his speeches to "These Powerful Days" and that is why I decided that "Powerful Days" should be the title of my book. The University of Alabama Press is the new publisher of the book.
Charles Moore
