Haverford College to Hold Civil Rights Photography Exhibit
Haverford College will present an exhibit of documentary photography by Sue [Lorenzi] Sojourner, "The Some People of That Place: 1960s Holmes Co. Mississippi - The Local People and Their Civil Rights Movement," from February 1-28, 2006.
All photographs were taken in Holmes County, Mississippi in 1968-69 which was five years after the first local people began organizing and attending Freedom Meetings, and started making voter registration attempts. The exhibit, which also includes documents and explanatory texts, will be open to the public daily from noon-5 p.m. in rooms 102 & 106 in Stokes Hall on the Haverford campus. The show is sponsored by Haverford's John B. Hurford '60 Humanities Center and Office of Multicultural Affairs.
Sue [Lorenzi] Sojourner and her late husband Henry Lorenzi lived and worked for five years as civil rights workers in Holmes (1964- 69) — they were called "white outside agitators" by the local whites. While they mostly worked to help local leaders to build a grassroots organization for voter registration, political education, and running for public office, Sue [Lorenzi] Sojourner also realized the importance of documenting that historic time with camera, pen, and tape recorder. Thirty years later, she assembled "The Some People" exhibition for the Tweed Museum of Art at the University of Minnesota-Duluth. Since 1999, the show has grown and traveled to colleges, universities, community centers, and historical and philanthropic institutions in the South, Midwest, and East. She is working on a book about the experience as well.
The exhibit opens on Wednesday, February 1 with a reception, first floor, Stokes Hall, Haverford College, from 6:30-8:30 p.m. Guest speakers include photographer, curator, and activist, Sue [Lorenzi] Sojourner of Duluth, Minnesota, and Sala Udin, an activist and former project director in Holmes (1965-66), former City Councilman in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (1995-2005).
The public is also invited to two other events in conjunction with "The Some People of That Place" show:
Biographies of Presenters at THE SOME PEOPLE Exhibit Events
Sue [Lorenzi] Sojourner was Southern-born (in Nashville), but raised in Chicago, New England, and the West. After her graduation from the University of California-Berkeley, in political science and journalism, she and her late husband Henry Lorenzi lived and worked for five years as civil rights workers in Holmes County, Mississippi (1964-69).
The local whites labeled them "white outside agitators" for their work assisting the local grassroots Movement organizing for voter registration, political education/candidacy, and community development. [Lorenzi] Sojourner felt it also was important to document that historic time with her pen, camera, and tape recorder; she saved many documents and working papers.
In 1999, she created THE SOME PEOPLE exhibition for the Tweed Museum of Art at the U. of Minnesota-Duluth. She then wrote and added text, more prints and documents, and developed it into a touring exhibit to be taken to Holmes, where in 2001, the Holmes County Freedom Democratic Party exhibited it for nine months. Since then, it has been shown at colleges, universities, community centers, and historical and philanthropic institutions in the South, Midwest, and East.
Identifying as a writer since childhood, [Lorenzi] Sojourner believed that someday she and Henry were going to write a book about the Holmes Movement. Indeed, the exhibit photos were originally shot to illustrate that someday book. But, when Henry died in 1982, they had not yet opened their materials. In 1996, she cleared her life for writing, moved into an artists' housing cooperative in Duluth, and has been working on the book, when not "distracted" by photography.
Sala Udin, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
A native of Pittsburgh, Sala Udin's community activism began in Holmes County, Mississippi, during the Civil Rights Movement, where he did voters' registration, cotton allotment board campaigns, school desegregation, and public housing desegregation. He also helped organize a Head Start Program in Lexington and Mileston and worked to organize sharecroppers and farmers' cooperatives. Sala Udin returned to Pittsburgh in 1970 and started a drug treatment program, House of the Crossroads. He served as executive director until 1983. In 1983, he moved to San Francisco, CA to work as executive director of the Multicultural Training Resource Center, which he co-founded. From 1989- 1995, he was a freelance consultant with clients across the country. He returned to Pittsburgh in 1992 where he founded and ran an African American bookstore New World Books. He got into politics working as a legislative assistant in 1992, and from 1985-2005 served as a Pittsburgh City Councilman.
For February 9th Panel Presentation
Ralph F. Boyd, Jr. is executive vice president for Community relations at Freddie Mac and serves as chairman of the Freddie Mac Foundation and oversees one of the Washington, D.C. region's largest philanthropic programs. Previously, he was a senior partner with the national law firm of Alston & Bird LLP. Before that, he served as assistant attorney general of the United States for Civil Rights and head of the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division. From 1997 to 2001, Boyd was counsel and then a partner in the trial and Litigation Department of Goodwin Procter LLP in Boston. Previously, he served for six years as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Criminal Division of the Boston U.S. Attorney's office.
Boyd has a long history of involvement in community matters, and has a particular interest in working with children and young people. He has served on non-profit boards and foundations, and community and youth outreach organizations and has received numerous awards for his community service. He currently serves as the U.S. representative to the Geneva-based Committee for the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), a United Nations human rights treaty body.
Zelma Williams Croom, Cleveland, Ohio
Zelma Williams Croom is a Holmes County, Mississippi native and Civil Rights Movement veteran and is represented in the "Some People" exhibit. Born on a plantation in Tchula, her growing up years were framed by poverty, abuse, and Jim Crow laws all of which she credit with making her "angry and compassionate." She was one of the first local young adults who became staff at the Community Center where photographer and exhibit curator Sue Sojourner and her activist husband spent their first year. Zelma Croom battled for Headstart, voting rights, and school integration then and has remained an activist ever since.
She moved to Cleveland in the late 1960s, where she and her husband, James, raised five children, two of who are adopted. She serves on the Anti-Racism and Pro-reconciliation Commission for the Ohio Christian Church, Disciples of Christ. Faith is the keystone of her life and she was confirmed as one of the first female deacons in her church. The hallmarks of her ministry include consolation of the bereaved, outreach to the impoverished, and lending her passionate, inspiring voice to liturgy. She believes that by joining her friend, Sue Sojourner, in presenting "The Some People of That Place," she continues to strengthen American communities by reminding people that historical struggles have faces and stories that need to be heard.
Juan Williams, Washington, DC, Haverford College, Class of 1976
Juan Williams, one of America's leading journalists, is a senior correspondent for NPR and a political analyst for Fox News. From 2000- 2001, Williams hosted NPR's national call-in show Talk of the Nation. He is author of the critically acclaimed biography Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary and nonfiction bestseller Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965, companion volume to the critically acclaimed television series. His book This Far by Faith: Stories from the African American Religious Experience (2003) was the basis for a PBS-TV (June 2003). In 2004, Williams became involved with AARP's Voices of Civil Rights project, leading a veteran team of reporters and editors in the production of My Soul Looks Back in Wonder: Voices of the Civil Rights Experience. He has won an Emmy award and widespread critical acclaim for his TV documentaries including Politics — "The New Black Power." Previously, Juan Williams spent 21 years at The Washington Post, where he served as an editorial writer, op-ed columnist, and White House reporter.
For February 23rd Screening: In Celebration of Dr. DuBois' 138th Birthday
Louis Massiah is an independent documentary filmmaker. His award winning works have been seen widely on public television and at international film festival and include W.E.B. Du Bois - A Biography in Four Voices and Louise Thompson Patterson: In Her Own Words, a biography of the cultural worker and organizer. He used the documentary to exploring community histories in The Bombing of Osage Avenue, on the 1985 Philadelphia police bombing on the MOVE organization, Cecil B. Moore, an examination of the political leader and the Civil Rights struggle in Philadelphia, and the recently completed A is for Anarchist, B is for Brown, on young political activists that emerged from a Hewlett video workshop at Haverford College. Other works for public television include Power! and A Nation of Law? for the award winning series Eyes on the Prize II; Trash!, an encyclopedic look at trash as aspect of American culture; My Own Boss, exploring worker-owned and self-managed industries; and Digging Dinosaurs, profile of paleontologist, Jack Horner. In 2000, he served as senior production consultant for Robert Pinksy's Favorite Poem Project on the PBS' News Hour with Jim Lehrer. His current project, Haytian Stories, examines the complex relationship between the United States and Haiti over the last 200 years.
As a journalist, Mr. Massiah produced the Emmy award winning live MOVE Commission Hearings for public television station WHYY in Philadelphia, 14 days/144 hours of live testimony and analysis into major news event.
Massiah is the founder and executive director of the Scribe Video Center in Philadelphia, a media arts organization that provides low-cost workshops and equipment access to emerging video/filmmakers and community organizations. He earned a B.A. (College Scholar) from Cornell University and an M.S. in documentary filmmaking at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has taught at City College of New York, Princeton University, Haverford College and the University of Pennsylvania.
Copyright © 2006
Last Modified: January 18, 2006.
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