A Picture Speaks a Thousand Words

The Civil Rights Movement was one of the most powerful movements in American history.

Many witnessed the movement through vivid and sometimes graphic photographs.Photography played a keyrole in the Civil Rights Movement.

Many of the photographs are on display at the Menil Collection. The Whole World Was Watching is curated
by Michelle White, associate curator at the Menil Collection.

This exhibition contains photographs from Civil Rights photographers Dan Budnik, Bruce L. Davidson, Elliot Erwitt,Leonard Freed, and Danny Lyon .

Some of the photos were given to the Menil Collection by Edmund Carpenter and Adelaide de Menil daughter of founders John and Dominique de Menil.

"I had to choose between 200 photographs to display in this exhibition" White said.

The title of the exhibition "The Whole World Was Watching" was a phrase adopted as a rallying cry for social change by political groups in the 1960's.


The Exhibition contains photos of black protesters being crushed with water hoses, civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, and police brutality of African Americans during that time.

The photographers in this exhibition were committed in showing the world what was happening in the south.

One photographer in particular stood out. That photographer was Danny Lyon a twenty year old student from the University of Chicago who wanted to come to the south and show the world the injustice that African Americans were suffering.

"He described his experience as grabbing his camera getting on a bus and heading down south" White said.

"He was the staff photographer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee" White said.

The images displayed were being circulated in magazines and newspapers throughout the North. The most dramatic images came from those taken in Birmingham.

"Birmingham was known as Bombingham because of all the bombing taking place there" White said.

Images of policemen spraying the protesters with water hoses circulated like wild fire.

"When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. saw the images of the protesters being sprayed with the water hoses he said it's amazing how something so beautiful can come out of something so horrible referring to the power of the image" White said.

The civil rights movement is similar to what is happening today in other countries.

"It's just like the oppressed people now standing up for what is right" White said.

One of the photographs in the exhibition is that of one taken by Dan Budnik. It is a photograph of a protester carrying an American Flag on the way to Selma while passing by a National Guardsman who salutes the flag.

"The reason the guardsman saluted the protester's flag was because he whipped it out as he was passing by so the guardsman had to salute it, usually if a protester had a flag the National Guardsmen would turn their backs to it" White said.

The Whole World Was Watching exhibition is on display from March 5-September 25,2011. A selection from the collection is also on display at the African American Library at the Gregory School, in Freedman's Town in the Fourth Ward.