I was sad to learn of the death of Charles Moore, 79, a photographer who captured some of the most iconic and searing images of the civil rights movement — schoolchildren braving firehoses and snarling police dogs in downtown Birmingham, Ala., civil rights marchers braving tear gas in Selma, the funeral procession for NAACP activist Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King’s 1958 arrest in Montgomery, Ala.
I interviewed Moore in 1999, for an article about civil rights photographers for my old paper, the Birmingham Post-Herald. An Alabama native who later settled in Massachusetts, he was a kind, well-spoken man who talked at length about the threats and violence he endured documenting the civil rights movement of the late 1950s and 1960s. “I wanted to make sure I covered things which repulsed me,” Moore told me, in an interview. “I wanted to be there with the fire hoses, I wanted to be there with the dogs, showing events and violence that repulsed me. I wanted to photograph all of the action that I could.”
Moore was successful. His searing images helped rally public opinion against the Southern system of segregation. In 1963, Moore spent five days in downtown Birmingham, shooting the children’s marches and ensuing violence inflicted upon them by notorious Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor and his staff. Early on, a stone thrown by someone in the crowd shattered Moore’s ankle, but he continued to work. “We were warned,” he said. “They’d say, ‘We’re gonna get you Life magazine guys.’ Bull Connor didn’t like Life.” When James Meredith, the first black to enroll at the University of Mississippi, arrived on campus surrounded by more than 300 marshals, Moore arrived early with his own gas mask. “Sometimes you have to say, ‘I’m not going to cringe, I’m not going to run away, I’m not going to cry. I’m going to do what I have to do,” Moore said. (Click here to view more of Moore’s photos; click here to read his obituary in the New York Times.)
Moore wasn’t the only civil rights photographer I interviewed. My editor had asked me to find the person who took the famous picture of Martin Luther King in the Birmingham jail (click here), and interview him about the experience for an article that would run during Black History Month. He told me to call Black Star, a photo agency that represented Moore and another civil rights photographer, Flip Schulke. “One of those guys probably shot it,” he said. Black Star credits Schulke with the photo, but when I reached Schulke in Florida, he said he didn’t take it. Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker, one of Martin Luther King’s trusted lieutenants, actually did. “I’m the only one who tells people that Wyatt took that photo,” Schulke told me. (At the time, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute credited Schulke’s archives with the photo; I don’t know whether Walker’s role in obtaining the picture has since been acknowledged.)
I contacted Walker at his church in New York City and inquired about the photo. He was well aware that his role in obtaining and distributing the picture was largely unknown, and he said he’d even gone so far as to ask the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute to give him credit in their jail display.) “I felt my work was very famous and I should get credit for it,” he said. “I never got anything for it, except the satisfaction of producing one of the most famous photographs in the world.”
Walker told me that he snapped the photo with a miniature camera he smuggled into the cell he and King shared; though the photo is associated with King’s 1963 stint in the Birmingham jail, when he penned his famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” it was actually taken in 1967, when King, Walker and other associates were jailed after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld trespassing convictions they netted during the mass marches of 1963. “I put the camera in a cellophane bag in my rectal opening, and I took the picture,” Walker explained. United Press International had provided Walker with a Minox camera — called the spy camera — that was 1 inch wide and 3 1/2 inches long, he said. The camera was smuggled out of the jail through his lawyer, and then published throughout the country. “They couldn’t put my name on it,” he said. “I was in jail. I would be held in contempt.”
My article about Moore and Schulke ran in the Birmingham Post-Herald alongside an article about Walker and the Martin Luther King photo. Of all the articles I’ve written, they’re among my favorites.
ALEX CHILTON, R.I.P.
I was also sad to learn of the death of musician Alex Chilton, a guitarist, vocalist and subject of the best fan song ever written, the 1987 Replacements song, “Alex Chilton.” (“Children by the million sing for Alex Chilton when he comes ‘round/They sing “I’m in love. What’s that song?/I’m in love with that song. ... I never travel far, without a little Big Star.”) (Click here for an Alex Chilton appreciation on EW.com)
Chilton sang for the group the Box Tops as a teenager, and then formed the seminal and unjustly ignored 1970s band Big Star, which has a sparkly pop-rock sound influenced by British Invasion bands such as The Beatles and the Kinks, as well as the Beach Boys. The band’s cheerful sound often belied its dark and mournful temperament; many of Big Star’s songs make you wonder about his mental state. (The Big Star song “Holocaust,” in which Chilton sadly sings “You’re a wasted face/You’re a sad-eyed lie/You’re a holocaust” deserves a spot on a top-10 list cataloguing musical nihilism.)
A biography of Chilton on the Rolling Stone website calls him “the picture of dapper wastedness,” and calls his discography “a complete mess.” But Big Star could also be genuinely bouncy and upbeat; the song “In the Street” became famous as the theme song for “That ’70s Show.”
I own Big Star’s three early albums — “#1 Record,” “Radio City” and “Third/Sister Lovers” — and they’re all quite good, if a tad obscure. But even people who have never heard of Big Star have probably felt the group’s influence. R.E.M., Teenage Fanclub and the Posies all cite Big Star as an influence. My favorite Big Star song, “Thirteen,” has been covered by Wilco, Evan Dando and Garbage, among others, and the lyrics — “Won’t you tell me what you’re thinking of/Would you be an outlaw for my love/If it’s so, well, let me know/If it’s ‘no,’ well, I can go/I won’t make you” — are as close to perfect as lyrics get. In fact, I think I’m going to go home and listen to “Thirteen.”
Like Paul Westerberg, I never travel far without a little Big Star.
Got a comment? E-mail me at sfoss@dailygazette.net.
