“It was very terrifying and we were often in constant fear. It was exhilarating because we often won little victories,” photographer Bob Adelman said about the Civil Rights Era after the opening of his exhibit, “The Movement: Bob Adelman and Civil Rights Era Photography” at the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale.
As I walked around the room, the combination of dimmed lights and hushed voices created a mood that can only be described as hopefully haunting. The 100 black-and-white and color photographs that Adelman captured, while marching alongside Martin Luther King Jr., showed the journey that individuals with a common goal took and the strife that went along with it.
The photographs depicted an era that was more than just activists attempting to make a difference. They were individuals forming life-long friendships, lovers fighting to stay together, and parents who wanted their children to grow up in a world where they weren’t judged and hated before even being known.
Adelman said, “The movement unmasked segregation and showed what it represented, which was oppression, terror, discrimination, unfairness. And once that was seen, most Americans thought that was pretty un-American.”
The photographs were more than textbook-level depictions of a well-known leader’s face. They were images of overwhelming emotions waiting to pour out into the eyes of the observer. One image was a shot of a couple’s hands laid upon one another, while they were sitting on a bus. Their faces are unknown, but the black and white photograph made the simplest image so beautiful and moving. Every wrinkle in the hand, every variation in color and every piece of blemished skin was just a reminder that these people weren’t just the faces of history, but they were the faces of neighbors and schoolmates; they were the average people we meet every day, doing above-average things.
The key to understanding the feeling of the time, rather than just knowing what happened, was evident through the photographs of the children maintaining their innocence with laughter, individuals being maliciously sprayed with fire hoses and a woman with tears flowing down her face at King’s funeral.
What really made me realize that the era was more than just a history lesson, however, was that Adelman kept referring to King as “Doc,” making the conversation feel more like one of my grandfather’s stories of his childhood than a chapter from my U.S. history textbook.
Adelman told me, “Doc talked about the beloved community and part of that was the shared experience of being with a group of people who are realizing their ideals.”
He explained to me that, as a white man, his opinion — that the mistreatment of blacks is a negative aspect of American culture — was a controversial and dangerous viewpoint at the time.
“I thought joining the [civil rights] movement was the patriotic thing to do,” he said.
According to Adelman, King believed the same and that understanding why it was the right thing to do was important. Adelman said that King wrote his dissertation on the possibility of transcendence and eminence, which focused on the possibility of a person’s ideals being realized.
King’s ideals have been recognized by the nation and have grown from a movement demonstrated by the minority to a way of life that is practiced by the majority.
“There’s a great sense of satisfaction in seeing segregation, in many of its ugliest forms, is dead,” Adelman said, “but that there are also many problems that are still unsolved.”
He said that the unemployment rate for black people is still twice as great as the rate for white people and that not enough African Americans have risen in the economic ladder.
Adelman hopes that students come to see the exhibit to learn about the era from a new perspective and to understand that there are still aspects of the community that are still in progress.
“Maybe it will give them ideas about stuff that needs to be done and how to do it,” said Adelman.
The exhibit is open until May 17. For more information, visit moafl.org/museum/current-art-exhibitions/bob-adelman.
