Lyon Photos Chronicle Civil Rights Protest

Author: Yvonne Chen

Now on display at the Middlebury College Museum of Art, Danny Lyon's photographs document the telling times as well as the human struggle that lie hidden beneath the politics of racial oppression. The exhibition consists of nine images from the photographer's Southern Civil Rights Portfolio.

From 1962 to 1964 the then 20-year-old Lyon served as the first staff photographer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a national group of students who joined together after four African American college students staged the first sit-in at a North Carolina lunch counter.

The SNCC was a group that sought political institutions through which they could relate to all of society. Otherwise, said leader Courtland Cox, communities would continue to exist in a constant state of insurrection.

The SNCC's busloads of college students, both black and white, rode into the South to promote the legality of the Supreme Court's decision on Brown v. Board of Education, which mandated desegregation.

Determined yet uncertain that their actions might bring about true change in a deeply segregated South, the protesters endured much pain and showed courage in difficult times. Today the end of segregation in the South and the enfranchisement of black Americans serve as testament to their efforts.

The photography collection consists of some of the most representative images of the movement. Lyon took shots of sit-ins, voter registrations, marches and jailings

Lyon captures the spirit of the nonviolent movement, for example, in a photo taken of the March on Washington: two black men are protesting as one man outstretches a potent fist to the air and the man beside him screams, with a contorted expression that suggests a battle cry. The photograph was later given the slogan "Now," thereby implying the need for immediate social change and nonviolent protest.

A photograph of movement leader John Lewis kneeling in prayer beside a young girl was used for a poster with text reading, "Come let us build a new world together." The photograph told of the need for unification and volunteerrism among all veins of black society.

Along with many of Lyon's photographs, these images were later made into thousands of publicity posters and fundraising brochures for SNCC.

A simple yet startling image of a high school student, Taylor Washington, screaming as an armed officer restrains him by the neck was dubbed "The Movement Documentary of a Struggle for Equality." It also served as the cover of SNCC's "The Movement" brochure and in the former USSR it was used as propaganda entitled "Police Brutality USA."

Other photographs depict the stark reality of segregation in the South.

Black and white are distilled in a frozen moment of contained tension as a group of black people stands patiently as one of them speaks to a group of white people who have converted a public swimming pool into a private segregated one. We see the inequality of Jim Crow laws in the large water fountain reading "White," with a smaller and more distant one labeled "Colored."

Troubling as these images may be, some of the more poignant images lie in the remaining photographs in Lyon's portfolio.

In one of Lyon's photographs riot cops equipped with gas masks and rubber pellet guns pull at one protester's shirt as he lies suspended in midair, pulled in multiple directions by the officers.

Another photograph depicts a group of police officers sneering into the camera with abasing gestures as ministers for the National County of Churches march to a local church.

From a man who was repeatedly arrested for documenting history, Lyon said of his work in a 1983 interview: "I regard both film and photography as great forms of realism. It is life that attracts me to them for both are forms that deal directly with life in a way that was not possible before their invention. In addition, there seems to be something fundamentally democratic about photography and realistic filmmaking."

The democratic quality of Lyon's photography is evident. The journalistic images allow viewers to attend to the utter simplicity of racism.

Lyon zooms into the area of primary action — into the faces and emotions of the people involved. He emphasizing their significance by using thoughtful negative space and strong verticals.

Lyon's art leaves us with the necessary legroom to examine a simple matter of human nature, hatred, and its remedy: non-violent protest.

In sum, the images stand not only as thoughtful pieces of art but also to a new generation as an important reflection of a poignant turning point in one of many episodes in the United States' turbulent — and sometimes hypocritical — history.