Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement -- Images of a Peoples' Movement

They Say That Freedom Is A Constant Struggle

Durham, NC, 1960 and 1962

Rev. Douglas Moore, Dr. King, and Rev. Ralph Abernathy in Durham during the sit-ins of 1960. See Durham Sit-ins & Protests for background.

Picketing the Royal Ice Cream parlor
Durham, NC. 1962
(The woman at far left below is a counter-picket)
See Royal Ice Cream Sit-in for background.

Roy Wilkens of the NAACP and
Floyd McKissckk & James Farmer of CORE
leading protests at the Howard Johnson's
restaurant in Durham, NC. 1962.
See Freedom Highways Campaign in Durham and Greesboro for background.

Danville, VA. 1963

"I'm a demonstrating GI, from Fort Bragg.
And the way they treat my people,
Lord it makes me mad.
You know, that I couldn't sit still,
Because my home is in Danville."

In 1963, when a soldier on leave participates in the Danville protests while wearing his uniform, Secretary of Defense McNamara (architect of the Vietnam War) says: "You can go overseas and fight in a uniform, but you can't come back over here picketing and demonstrating in your uniform. That's un-American." — Sing for Freedom

Left, protesters singing on City Hall steps. Below, a wounded demonstrator at a make-shift, first-aid station in a local church after police attack with clubs and firehoses.

Freedom Day in Selma, October 1963

Bernard LaFayette, SNCC & SCLC. Photo taken June 1963, Selma Alabama, after a brutal Klan beating that almost killed him. That same night they gunned down Medgar Evers in his driveway in a multi-state KKK conspiracy to murder Movement leaders in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana.

"Freedom Day" in Selma, October, 1963. Blacks line up at the courthouse to apply to register to vote.

SNCC Field Secretaries Avery Williams and Chico Neblett arrested for trying to bring water to voter applicants waiting for hours in line at the courthouse.

SNCC members arrested for holding up signs urging voter registration.

Orangeburg, SC. 1963

Mass meeting, Orangeburg, SC. 1963.

Prayer protest, Orangeburg, SC. 1963.

Orangeburg, SC. Fall, 1963. So many students from Claflin College and South Carolina State are in jail for protesting that classrooms are almost empty.