Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “America will never reject racism until America sees racism.” Was he wrong?

Did Martin Luther King use graphic pictures?  You bet he did.  He said

America will not reject racism until America sees racism.

He organized marches so that racial violence, which had been perpetrated mostly in the shadows, could now be exposed to the light of day.  When Americans saw racial violence for themselves, they rejected it.

Richard B. Speed’s review of Mark Kurlansky’s book, 1968:  The Year That Rocked The World, describes how Dr. King orchestrated this enormously successful strategy:

In discussing the impact of civil disobedience, Kurlansky relates a telling incident that took place during a 1965 march in Selma, Alabama.  Martin Luther King apparently noticed that Life Magazinephotographer, Flip Schulke had put down his camera in order to help a demonstrator injured by the police.  Afterward, according to Kurlansky, King rebuked Schulke, telling him that “Your job is to photograph what is happening to us.”

New report by Reuters says that graphic anti-smoking ads have resulted in 100,000 people kicking the habit.  Apparently, when people saw pictures of what smoking actually does to people, it motivated them to stop.

You reckon graphic images of abortion might work for the pro-life movement?

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The photo that told the story of slavery “to the eye”

I’ve shown this photo to thousands of people … in homes and churches and meeting rooms.  But I didn’t know the story behind the photo until I read it today.  The piece was written by Frank H. Goodyear, III, assistant curator of photographs at the National Portrait Gallery.  The man in the photo was identified as Gordon … only as Gordon … with no last name.  Excerpts:

[Photography] also played an influential role in broadening the national debate about slavery. As this famous photograph suggests, photography was capable of communicating powerful ideas about the so-called “peculiar institution”—ideas that ultimately undermined the prevailing notion that slavery was a benign tradition.  (emphasis added)

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Recognized as a searing indictment of slavery, Gordon’s portrait was presented as the latest evidence in the abolitionist campaign. An unidentified writer for the New York Independent wrote: “This Card Photograph should be multiplied by 100,000, and scattered over the States. It tells the story in a way that even Mrs. [Harriet Beecher] Stowe [author of the 1852 book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin] can not approach, because it tells the story to the eye.”  (emphasis added)

Link to entire story here.