Swampland:Pioneering Alabama Civil RIghts Photographer Charles Moore Dies

Pioneering Alabama Civil RIghts Photographer Charles Moore Dies

Posted: Mar 18, 2010

The year was 1963. I picked up a copy of the May Life Magazine and was appalled to see graphic images of fire hoses and police dogs being turned on helpless protesters in Birmingham, Alabama, under the orders of Police Commissioner Bull Conner. Not only was I was horrified---so was the nation. The eleven pages of shocking black and white photographs depicted more anger and violence than I could conceive of, and this inhumanity was taking place in my own back yard. A sea change was underway. These photographs would turn out to be the most influential pictures of photojournalist Charles Moore's career.

Five years earlier in 1958, a twenty-seven year old photographer for the Montgomery Advertiser had been the only photographer on the scene when a fight broke out between Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and two policemen. Charles Moore captured the altercation and the subsequent arrest of King. One of the photos was published in Life. Charles Moore had begun to make his mark.

For the next seven years Moore followed the Civil Rights Movement in the south and when, in 1965, he had had too much of blood and violence, he booked an around-the- world flight--not to return home for eight months.

Born in the small town of Hackleburg, Alabama, the son of a Baptist minister, Moore grew up in Tuscumbia in the Shoals area of North Alabama. My longtime friend Patsy Dunn Glenn wrote me that Moore worked in the darkroom her father-in-law's photography studio, Dan Glenn Studios. Recalling Moore's legacy, Patsy wrote: He was such a gentle man with an unbreakable resolve for what was just."

Moore did not set out to be a photographer, but fate had other plans. In 1957 after a stint in the Marines, he returned to Alabama and, after a time as a studio photographer, eventually took a position as a photographer for with the Montgomery Advertiser. Moore was freelancing by September of 1962 when he had a fortuitous meeting with Life's Miami Bureau Chief, Dick Billings, in Oxford, Mississippi.

In 1962, the young Charles Moore documented the desegregation of the University of Mississippi, along with his fellow reporter John Fallows. The images that emerged recorded a long night of rioting and death. For over seven years from 1958 to 1965, Moore followed the Civil Rights Movement in the south---including KKK activities in North Carolina, and the bloody march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. By 1962 he was working as a contract photographer for Life. (this photo of Moore was taken by John Fallows after the long night in MS in 1962.)

In 1989, Charles Moore received the first Kodak Crystal Eagle Award for Impact in Photojournalism. His moving black and white photographs have been exhibited all over the world and appear in the book Powerful Days, The Civil Rights Photography of Charles Moore originally published by New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1991. Moore's photographs are credited with helping to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In a 2005 interview with the Montgomery Advertiser, Moore said he was proud that his photographs had "helped to make a difference in our country and our society, and to show that we're all children of the same God."

Hank Klibanoff, a fellow journalist and friend of Moore, who won a Pulitzer Prize along with Gene Roberts for The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle and the Awakening of a Nation. (Knopf, 2006) commented on Moore's work for the Miami Herald saying that Moore's photos stand out because he used short lenses that required him to get close to the demonstrators. "There are images of Charles in the middle of the scrum while other photographers are on the sidewalks, missing the action," said Klibanoff.

I had the honor of meeting both Charles Moore and Hank Klibanoff, who also grew up in the Shoals area, at an event during the Alabama Adventure Weekend in 2007. Moore and Klibanoff appeared at the Florence Public Library to discuss and promote the book The Race Beat. At that time Klibanoff was a managing editor of the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

As I began writing this tribute to Moore, I opened my copy of The Race Beat, and turned with great pride and pleasure to the center photographs, which included one of Charles Moore in the midst of the walk from Selma to Montgomery. Next to the photo, in blue ink, there was his signature: Charles Moore.

In the front of the book is an inscription from Klibanoff---"To Penne, A fellow Alabamian who understands this story. Hank Klibanoff. " My only regret is that I did not have a copy of Powerful Days for Moore to sign instead of just a photo of him. Little did I know it would be the first and last time I would ever see him.

All of our lives were changed as a result of our contact with this phenomenal human being. Charles Moore died Thursday, March 11, in a nursing home in Palm Beach Gardens, FL. He was 79.

For more on the Civil RIghts Movement in Alabama, see UA Press Releases Alabama's Civil RIghts Trail: An Illustrated Guide.

-----Penne J. Laubenthal

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elvabastian says...

He's best Photographer .

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Pioneering Alabama Civil RIghts Photographer Charles Moore Dies

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