Newly discovered vintage photos of 1965 Selma to Montgomery civil rights march (al.com)
By Bob Gathany | bgathany@al.com
Email the author | Follow on Twitter
on March 21, 2016 at 6:35 AM, updated March 21, 2016 at 7:50 AM
Sometimes historical images remain filed away in forgotten cabinets for years until someone discovers them and realizes the importance of what they have found.
In the years before the Internet, newspaper photographers would shoot lots of film at an event and only a very few images would find their way onto the pages of the printed paper. The remaining images would be secured in a file , often to never see the light of day again.
Such was the case with a recently discovered envelope from the archives of The Huntsville Times. The envelope contained photographic negatives from the historic Selma to Montgomery Civil Rights March that took place March 21, 1965 – 51 years ago this week.
The Huntsville Times sent photographer William "Skip" McCormick to cover the first day of the march and used one of his images on the front page of the paper the following day, March 22, 1965. They also used several Associated Press photos and images by another Times photographer Christopher Bell.
McCormick took more than 100 images of the marchers, many of which featured significant civil rights leaders. Martin Luther King, Ralph Abernathy, Andrew Young, Ralph Bunche, John Lewis and others are prominent in his photos.
All of these images remained stored away until the envelope of negatives was found in a search for AL.com vintage photos. The gallery above contains many of the newly discovered images from that historic event.
We have identified the major figures, but perhaps you can have a part in our story by helping identify other marchers – maybe your family members who participated in the first leg of the 54 mile trek in 1965.
***
more (incl. slideshow of 69 images): http://www.al.com/living/index.ssf/2016/03/newly_discovered_vintage_image.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
Love this one--kids might think MLK has a cell phone--but he's listening to his transistor radio!!!
