Charles Moore Biography

American photographer (1931–2010)

Charles Lee Moore (March 9, 1931 – March 11, 2010) was an American photographer known for his photographs do*enting the Civil Rights Movement. Probably his most famous photo is of Martin Luther King Jr.'s arrest for loitering on September 3, 1958. It is this photo that sparked Moore's involvement in the Civil Rights Movement.

Early life and education

Moore was born in 1931 in Hackleburg, Alabama. His father was a baptist minister. His mother died young. He has a younger brother, Jim, b. March 1936. After attending local schools, he served three years in the U.S. Marines as a photographer.

Afterward he used the GI Bill to study at the Brooks Ins*ute of Photography in Santa Barbara, California. He returned to Alabama, finding work as a photographer with the jointly owned morning and afternoon newspapers, Montgomery Advertiser and Alabama Journal.

Career

In 1958, while working in Montgomery, Alabama, for the Montgomery Advertiser, he photographed an argument between the minister Martin Luther King Jr. and two policemen in Montgomery. His photographs were distributed nationally by the *ociated Press, and published in Life.

From this start, Moore traveled throughout the South do*enting the activities of the Civil Rights Movement. One of his most well-known photographs Birmingham, depicts demonstrators being attacked by firemen wielding high-pressure hoses., U.S. Senator Jacob Javits, said that Moore's pictures "helped to spur p*age of the Civil Rights Act of 1964."

In 1962, Moore left the newspapers to start a freelance career. He worked for the Black Star picture agency, which sold much of his work to Life magazine.

Moore covered the Vietnam War and conflicts in Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Haiti. He left warfare to work in nature, fashion and travel photography, in addition to corporate work.

In 1989, Moore was the first recipient of the Eastman Kodak Crystal Eagle Award for Impact in Photojournalism, which is awarded for a "body of photographic work which has influenced public perceptions on important issues of our time," in the NPPA–University of Missouri Pictures of the Year International Compe*ion.

In 2008, Moore's last photographs were of the removal of a tree at Barton Hall, a historic 1840s plantation home in northern Alabama.

Involvement in the Civil Rights Movement

Photo of Martin Luther King Jr. being arrested for loitering while present at a colleague's court case.

On the day of September 3, 1958, Charles Moore was photographing a court case involving Ralph Abernathy for the Montgomery Advertiser when Moore witnessed two policemen attempting to arrest Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for loitering at the crowded courthouse. Moore then followed as the two policemen took King to the police headquarters where he was charged and jailed for loitering. Moore had been the only photographer present, only because he was working to do*ent Abernathy's case, and so his photo of King's arrest is the only one available. Life Magazine then picked up this photo and published it along with a collection of Moore's work over the next few years.

Charles Moore in 1961, now working for Life, heard of James Meredith's attempts to enroll at the segregated University of Mississippi, and went with a few other photographers to do*ent the events. When he arrived two days before Meredith would be escorted to the campus, however, " pack of enraged white students shoved their way into Moore's hotel room, shouting and cursing. One began to choke him before the former Golden Gloves boxer pushed him away". The day of Meredith's arrival, Moore attempted to begin photographing the mob, but he was readily identified as a photographer and the mob threatened him again. Knowing he would need to get through the mob without being recognized, he bought a gas mask, and sneaked onto the campus with a student—his camera was hidden in the trunk of the car where the police did not check before they were allowed on campus. Due to the mob's attempts to keep the riot undo*ented, Moore's photos are the only photos of the riot.

A Moore photograph of the Children's Crusade in Birmingham, Alabama, on May 3, 1963

May 2, 1963, was Phase III—"D-Day"—of "Project C" when more than a thousand children stayed out of school to march in Birmingham. Moore arrived in Birmingham on the 3rd when he heard reports of attacks on the demonstrators, and he immediately began do*enting the events of the march. Some of the photos show the Birmingham Fire Department spraying the demonstrators with their pressure-hoses. Others show the policemen releasing their dogs on the demonstrators, tearing and ripping the clothes of the men, women, and children. These photos are shown in Life Magazine and "Birmingham stayed on the front pages of the Times and the Post for twelve days". One month later, when Alabama's Governor Wallace went to the University of Alabama campus to bar black students from registering, President Kennedy addressed Wallace's actions as well as the events in Birmingham, saying, "The events in Birmingham and elsewhere have so increased the cries for equality that no city or State or legislative body can prudently choose to ignore them". These photos even gained international attention with "hotographs appear in newspapers throughout the world and the...story...told in many languages."

After witnessing demonstrators being beaten in the Selma marches, Moore needed to take a break from do*enting the movement; "I had been involved in so much ugliness and I realized that I needed to do something else". When Moore was in California, "doing a sex education *ignment for the Saturday Evening Post", he heard news of the **ination of Martin Luther King Jr. This was the end of Moore's work in the movement, and he would not be recognized for his position in the movement until twenty years later. His work was entered in the first annual Kodak Crystal Eagle Award, and he won, sparking a renewed interest in his work.

Death

Moore died at age 79 of complications related to Alzheimer's disease on March 11, 2010, in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.

Publications

Powerful Days: The Civil Rights Photography of Charles Moore. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2001. ISBN:978-0-8173-1152-0.
The Motherlode. San Francisco: Chronicle, 2006.

Films

I Fight With My Camera (2005) – video

References

External links

Life magazine 17 May 1963, p. 26, at Google Books – Moore's Birmingham photographs
Collection of Moore photographs on Kodak.com
Charles Moore – post-mortem audio story and slideshow by NPR
Charles Moore's final photography 2008

Activist
groups

Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights
Atlanta Student Movement
Black Panther Party
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
Committee for Freedom Now
Committee on Appeal for Human Rights
- An Appeal for Human Rights
Council for United Civil Rights Leadership
Council of Federated Organizations
Dallas County Voters League
Deacons for Defense and Justice
Georgia Council on Human Relations
Highlander Folk School
Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
Lowndes County Freedom Organization
Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
Montgomery Improvement *ociation
NAACP
- Youth Council
Nashville Student Movement
Nation of Islam
Northern Student Movement
National Council of Negro Women
National Urban League
Operation Breadbasket
Regional Council of Negro Leadership
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
Southern Regional Council
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
The Freedom Singers
United Auto Workers (UAW)
Wednesdays in Mississippi
Women's Political Council

Activists

Ralph Abernathy
Victoria Gray Adams
Zev Aelony
Mathew Ahmann
Muhammad Ali
William G. Anderson
Gwendolyn Armstrong
Arnold Aronson
Ella Baker
James Baldwin
Marion Barry
Daisy Bates
Harry Belafonte
James Bevel
Claude Black
Gloria Blackwell
Randolph Blackwell
Unita Blackwell
Ezell Blair Jr.
Joanne Bland
Julian Bond
Joseph E. Boone
William Holmes Borders
Amelia Boynton
Bruce Boynton
Raylawni Branch
Stanley Branche
Ruby Bridges
Aurelia Browder
H. Rap Brown
Ralph Bunche
Guy Carawan
Stokely Carmichael
Johnnie Carr
James Chaney
J. L. Chestnut
Shirley Chisholm
Colia Lafayette Clark
Ramsey Clark
Septima Clark
Xernona Clayton
Eldridge Cleaver
Kathleen Cleaver
Charles E. Cobb Jr.
Annie Lee Cooper
Dorothy Cotton
Claudette Colvin
Vernon Dahmer
Jonathan Daniels
Abraham Lincoln Davis
Angela Davis
Joseph DeLaine
Dave Dennis
Annie Devine
Patricia Stephens Due
Joseph Ellwanger
Charles Evers
Medgar Evers
Myrlie Evers-Williams
Chuck *er
James Farmer
Walter Fauntroy
James Forman
Marie Foster
Golden Frinks
Andrew Goodman
Robert Graetz
Fred Gray
Jack Greenberg
Dick Gregory
Lawrence Guyot
Prathia Hall
Fannie Lou Hamer
Fred Hampton
William E. Harbour
Vincent Harding
Dorothy Height
Audrey Faye Hendricks
Lola Hendricks
Aaron Henry
Oliver Hill
Donald L. Hollowell
James Hood
Myles Horton
Zilphia Horton
T. R. M. Howard
Ruby Hurley
Cecil Ivory
Jesse Jackson
Jimmie Lee Jackson
Richie Jean Jackson
T. J. Jemison
Esau Jenkins
Barbara Rose Johns
Vernon Johns
Frank Minis Johnson
Clarence Jones
J. Charles Jones
Matthew Jones
Vernon Jordan
Tom Kahn
Clyde Kennard
A. D. King
C.B. King
Coretta Scott King
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Sr.
Bernard Lafayette
James Lawson
Bernard Lee
Sanford R. Leigh
Jim Letherer
Stanley Levison
John Lewis
Viola Liuzzo
Z. Alexander Looby
Joseph Lowery
Clara Luper
Danny Lyon
Malcolm X
Mae Mallory
Vivian Malone
Bob Mants
Thurgood Marshall
Benjamin Mays
Franklin McCain
Charles McDew
Ralph McGill
Floyd McKissick
Joseph McNeil
James Meredith
William Ming
Jack Minnis
Amzie Moore
Cecil B. Moore
Douglas E. Moore
Harriette Moore
Harry T. Moore
Queen Mother Moore
William Lewis Moore
Irene Morgan
Bob Moses
William Moyer
Elijah Muhammad
Diane Nash
Charles Neblett
Huey P. Newton
Edgar Nixon
Jack O'Dell
James Orange
Rosa Parks
James Peck
Charles Person
Homer Plessy
Adam Clayton Powell Jr.
Fay Bellamy Powell
Rodney N. Powell
Al Raby
Lincoln Ragsdale
A. Philip Randolph
George Raymond
George Raymond Jr.
Bernice Johnson Reagon
Cordell Reagon
James Reeb
Frederick D. Reese
Walter Reuther
Gloria Richardson
David Richmond
Bernice Robinson
Jo Ann Robinson
Angela Russell
Bayard Rustin
Bernie Sanders
Michael Schwerner
Bobby Seale
Cleveland Sellers
Charles Sherrod
Alexander D. Shimkin
Fred Shuttlesworth
Modjeska Monteith Simkins
Glenn E. Smiley
A. Maceo Smith
Kelly Miller Smith
Mary Louise Smith
Maxine Smith
Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson
Charles Kenzie Steele
Hank Thomas
Dorothy Tillman
A. P. Tureaud
Hartman Turnbow
Albert Turner
C. T. Vivian
Wyatt Tee Walker
Hollis Watkins
Walter Francis White
Roy Wilkins
Hosea Williams
Kale Williams
Robert F. Williams
Andrew Young
Whitney Young
Sammy Younge Jr.
Bob Zellner
James Zwerg

By region

Omaha, Nebraska
South Carolina

Movement
songs

"Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me 'Round"
"If You Miss Me at the Back of the Bus"
"*baya"
"Keep Your Eyes on the Prize"
"Oh, Freedom"
"This Little Light of Mine"
"We Shall Not Be Moved"
"We Shall Overcome"
"Woke Up This Morning (With My Mind Stayed On Freedom)"

Influences

Nonviolence
- Padayatra
Sermon on the Mount
Mahatma Gandhi
- Ahimsa
- Satyagraha
The Kingdom of God Is Within You
Frederick Dougl*
W. E. B. Du Bois
Mary McLeod Bethune

Jim Crow laws
Lynching in the United States
Plessy v. Ferguson
- Separate but equal
Buchanan v. Warley
Hocutt v. Wilson
Sweatt v. Painter
Hernandez v. Texas
Loving v. Virginia
African-American women in the movement
Jews in the civil rights movement
Fifth Circuit Four
16th Street Baptist Church
Kelly Ingram Park
A.G. Gaston Motel
Bethel Baptist Church
Brown Chapel
Dexter Avenue Baptist Church
Holt Street Baptist Church
Edmund Pettus Bridge
March on Washington Movement
African-American churches attacked
List of lynching victims in the United States
Freedom Schools
Freedom songs
Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam
- "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence"
Voter Education Project
1960s counterculture
African American founding fathers of the United States
Eyes on the Prize

Legacy

In popular culture
Birmingham Civil Rights Ins*ute
Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument
Civil Rights Memorial
Civil Rights Movement Archive
Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument
Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument
Freedom Rides Museum
Freedom Riders National Monument
King Center for Nonviolent Social Change
Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial
- other King memorials
Mississippi Civil Rights Museum
National Civil Rights Museum
National Voting Rights Museum
St. Augustine Foot Soldiers Monument

Noted
historians

Taylor Branch
Clayborne Carson
John Dittmer
Michael Eric Dyson
Chuck *er
Adam Fairclough
David Garrow
David Halberstam
Vincent Harding
Steven F. Lawson
Doug McAdam
Diane McWhorter
Charles M. Payne
Thomas E. Ricks
Timothy Tyson
Akinyele Umoja
Movement photographers

:Civil rights movement portal

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