Press Photo of an Injured Black Man Being Carried by Supporters in Mississippi During the 1966 March Against Fear.
Mississippi: July 6, 1966. Press photo measuring 8 x 10 inches. Text verso reading “SEGREGATION / MISS.: MEMPHIS TO JACKSON MARCH” and “JUL 6 1966”. Excellent contrast. Near Fine. Item #List3703
A press photo from the Mississippi end of the 1966 March Against Fear, showing a Black man, apparently injured, being carried by a group likely of fellow protestors, as white people look on from across the street. The March Against Fear started as a one-man protest against racism and for improving Black suffrage by James Meredith, who planned to walk from Memphis to Jackson. When Meredith was shot and hospitalized on the second day of his walk, a number of major Civil Rights organizations—the SNCC, led by Stokely Carmichael and Cleveland Sellers; the SCLC, led by Martin Luther King, Jr.; CORE, led by Floyd McKissick; and others—took up the banner. By the time the marchers reached Jackson there were 15,000 of them, and they had registered over 4,000 African Americans to vote along the way. Though the march was generally peaceful, occasional violence against the protesters broke out; it is not clear where in Mississippi this was taken, but there were several conflicts in the state.
The march also intensified the conflict between King and the SCLC, with its strategy of nonviolence, and more radical groups like the SNCC. In Greenwood, Mississippi, Stokely Carmichael and two others were arrested, prompting on his release the delivery of his “Black Power” speech. The SNCC and CORE disavowed non-violence and shifted towards separatism, and the Black Panther Party was founded four months later.[1]
[1] Samuel Momodu, “Stokely Carmichael’s Black Power Speech (1966),” BlackPast.org (January 16, 2024), https://blackpast.org/african-american-history/stokely-carmichaels-black-power-speech-1966/.
Price: $750.00