Danny Lyon: Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement

by John Lewis (Afterword), Danny Lyon (Photographer), Julian Bond (Foreword by)

Overview

“This young white New Yorker came South with a camera and a keen eye for history. And he used these simple, elegant gifts to capture the story of one of the most inspiring periods in America’s twentieth century.” –John Lewis, US Congressman

In the summer of 1962, photographer Danny Lyon packed a Nikon Reflex and an old Leica in an army bag and hitchhiked south. Within a week he was in jail in Albany, Georgia, looking through the bars at another prisoner: Martin Luther King Jr. Lyon soon became the first staff photographer for the Atlanta-based Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which already had a reputation as one of the most committed and confrontational groups fighting for civil rights. Lyon traveled with the SNCC from Mississippi to Georgia to Tennessee to Alabama, as well as to the 1963 March on Washington. More than just his photographs, Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement, updated by Twin Palms in 2010, contains Lyon’s archive of press releases, speeches, flyers, personal recollections and even facsimiles of the typed notes he took while working with the SNCC. Introduced by Julian Bond, former member of the Georgia State Senate, and with an essay by the late congressman John Lewis, this visual memoir relates the firsthand experience of a witness to one of the greatest activist movements in American history.
Danny Lyon (born 1942) was born in New York and studied history and philosophy at the University of Chicago. While a student there he met one of the “Big Six” civil rights leaders, John Lewis. He served as chief photographer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and documented nearly every major event of the Civil Rights Movement. In Lyon’s later career, he produced several acclaimed photographic series on motorcyclists and prisoners in the Texas Department of Corrections. He has received two Guggenheim fellowships and was inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum in 2022.
John Lewis (1940–2020) became involved in the Civil Rights movement when he was still a teenager. He was introduced to both Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr., and participated in the 1960 Nashville sit-ins as well as the 1961 Freedom Rides. As chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) from 1963 to 1966, he was one of the “Big Six” civil rights leaders who coordinated the March on Washington. He represented Georgia’s 5th District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1987 until his death in 2020.
Julian Bond (1940-2015) co-founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960. Bolstered by the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Bond ran for a seat in the Georgia House of Representatives. He served until 1975, when he was then elected to the Georgia State Senate. From 1998 to 2010 he was the Chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781931885881
Publisher:	Twin Palms Publishers
Publication date:	04/01/2010
Pages:	201
Product dimensions:	9.20(w) x 12.30(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Congressman John Lewis was a leader in the American Civil Rights Movement. He was chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and played a key role in the struggle to end segregation. Despite more than 40 arrests, physical attacks, and serious injuries, John Lewis remained a devoted advocate of the philosophy of nonviolence. He is the author of his autobiography, Walking With the Wind: A Memoir of a Movement and is the recipient of numerous awards from national and international institutions including the Lincoln Medal, the John F.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Remarkable. . . . Danny Lyon's self-described propaganda became journalism, then poster art and now history; the photographer himself . . . has become a historian with a camera.—New York Times Book Review



[A] fine book.—Times Literary Supplement



An honest, rich statement, transmitting the tumult, cross-purposes and devotion of the era.—Publishers Weekly



[A] powerful volume. . . . Here are some fresh takes on this all-too-recent and too easily neglected slice of our history.—Booklist



[This] masterful work . . . is a wonderful introduction for those who wish to learn more about the civil rights movement.—Library Journal



Danny Lyon's photographs provide wonderful windows for seeing the civil rights movement as it actually unfolded. They remind us of the ways involvement in a mass struggle untapped the latent energy and creativity of a generation of courageous young people, black and white. His photographs convey the beauty and spirit of a movement that changed American society.—Clayborne Carson, director and senior editor of The Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers Project



Danny Lyon will be remembered by civil rights workers as the intrepid and ingenious photographer of the movement in the deep South. I can still see him, in Neshoba County, Mississippi, in August of 1964, moving about with his camera, clicking away in a tense and dangerous situation. His Memories should prove useful and inspiring to everyone who cares about justice.—Howard Zinn, author of SNCC: The New Abolitionists



I have known Danny Lyon for many years. His photographs have inspired and lifted me. Danny's camera has captured some of the most powerful and moving moments of the civil rights movement. The work of Danny Lyon takes you back to those exciting yet difficult days of the movement. I urge you to study this fabulous history through the lens of Danny Lyon.—Congressman John Lewis

Editorial Reviews

Lyon, a young Jewish New Yorker, joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1962 as a photographer. The 212 black-and-white photographs shown here, taken from 1962 to 1965, document that short-lived, influential civil rights organization before it was undone by assassinations, the rise of the antiwar movement and the SNCC's espousal of black militancy. Lyon's images of cafeteria sit-ins and street demonstrations, showing sanguine, missionary-like protestors and furious, tight-lipped cops, are stark portraits of tension. The power of Lyon's photos is undiminished by his occasionally awkward text. Lyon debunks the myth that the 1963 march on Washington and Martin Luther King's 1965 march to Montgomery were the pivotal events of the movement; rather, they were mostly for the benefit of the media. Far more important, he writes, were the small-town skirmishes arising from the local Southern movement. Lyon ( The Bike riders ) also carefully describes the racial tensions within SNCC that were partially responsible for his leaving. The book is an honest, rich statement, transmitting the tumult, cross-purposes and devotion of the era. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Photojournalist Lyon recalls in words and photographs his experiences as the first staff photographer for the Atlanta-based Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the early 1960s demonstrations. His visual work powerfully conveys the spirit of the civil rights movement, and his anecdotes and chronology document the events. No index. 9.5x12". Paper edition (unseen), $19.95. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

Danny Lyon translated his belief in integration into action when he traveled from the University of Chicago to the Deep South to document the civil rights movement as part of his work for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the early 1960s. This powerful volume captures the commitment and courage of that seminal era in 212 photographs, many published for the first time, and in Lyon's detailed account of the people involved and the places they changed. Each black-and-white photograph holds us in the gaze of the people it portrays, be they young, frightened, but determined demonstrators, or their steady, restrained, but equally unwavering elders, or the mocking, grimly glaring police or angry white bystanders. Lyon photographed the famous and the unsung, the brave and the mean, the thinkers behind the sit-ins and marches, and the bold participants--as proud under arrest as walking free. The struggle for civil rights has crystallized in our minds around certain oft-repeated images. Here are some fresh takes on this all-too-recent and too easily neglected slice of our history, a point in the evolution of our country that should be valued and kept vital.

Donna Seaman