The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote about the capacity of photographs (and other visual media) to make the violent realities of racial segregation undeniable, as if “imprisoned in a luminous glare, revealing the naked truth to the whole world.”
Working as a photographer for The Birmingham News, James “Spider” Martin made some of the most important photographs of the movement, including this image titled "Two Minute Warning," which represents a pivotal moment during the struggle for African American voting rights in Alabama.
Of short stature, Martin developed a reputation for getting into difficult positions or going unnoticed to make powerful and intimate pictures during moments of high tension.
On March 7, 1965, approximately 600 activists gathered to march from Selma to Montgomery, in protest of the continued disenfranchisement of Black voters and the murder of activist Jimmie Lee Jackson by State Police at another demonstration a few weeks prior.
Organized by King’s Southern Christian Leadership Coalition, many of the marchers were students, represented in this image by John Lewis, who was then chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
To make this photograph, Martin positioned himself right in the gap between Lewis and other leaders of the march and Alabama State Police, capturing the moment before the troopers attacked the nonviolent demonstrators with horses, billy clubs and tear gas.
Martin’s photographs of the attack and its aftermath — now known as “Bloody Sunday” — spread around the world in newspapers, magazines and on television.
The numbers of people at subsequent marches grew, and Martin’s photojournalism helped to build national consensus for the necessity of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Photography (and photographers) played an important role in advancing the goals of the Civil Rights Movement by so clearly demonstrating the moral difference between peaceful demonstrators and the violent lengths to which the state will go to reinforce the status quo.