Hello, my name is Jordan and I am a Security Guard at the museum. I will be reading the The Civil Rights Movement section text for Working Together: The Photographers of the Kamoinge Workshop.

Although most Kamoinge members would resist the label of civil rights photographer, the Workshop formed during the civil rights movement. The intersection of art, responsibility and social justice was part of the group’s dialogue, and many members were personally engaged in resistance against oppression.

Part of their response was to make images of African American life lacking from the national conversation in the 1960s and 70s. Some members also depicted historically significant moments in the civil rights struggle, whether by traveling to the South during the Freedom Summer in 1964 or photographing community actions and organizers in New York City—including figures like the Harlem street orator Edward “Pork Chop” Davis, who espoused a philosophy of Black pride and economic self-reliance. Many of their images, however, engaged the theme of civil rights on a symbolic level rather than providing a journalistic record of the time. For example, several of the photographs on view here complicate presumed meanings of institutions, words, and icons like the American flag.

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