Road to Freedom: Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement, 1956-1968

The direct action social protest movement of the 1950s and 1960s resulted in sit-ins, marches, and other showdowns with armed police officers and National Guardsmen. Trained in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s methods of nonviolence, young black men and women took to the streets to fight for their civil rights and sparked a social revolution. Thousands of acts of courage were undertaken in the pursuit of freedom—acts that were often photographed, leaving behind a disquieting visual record of th...