Photographers shot millions of pictures of the black civil rights struggle between the close of World War II and the early 1970s, yet most Americans today can recall only a handful of searing images. The famous photographs of activists confronting police dogs, fire hoses, tear gas, and angry white mobs have for many years illustrated the popular story told about the civil rights struggle—that dignified black protestors passively resisted unwarranted attacks by whites in the South. The best-known images do not show blacks fighting back, delivering impassioned speeches, organizing voter registration drives, educating younger generations, or engaged in lobbying—though photographs of all these activities exist. In this groundbreaking book, Martin A. Berger demonstrates that we have inherited a photographic canon—and, hence, a picture of history—shaped by the desire of whites for “safe” images of unthreatening blacks. Berger offers alternative photographs of the era that challenge the stories told in many of the famous scenes.

In a larger sense, Freedom Now! is a vivid account of the power of photographs to both explain and create our history. It illustrates how and why particular people, events, and issues have been edited out of the photographic story we tell about our past. By considering the different values promoted in the forgotten photographs, readers will gain an understanding of African Americans’ role in rewriting U.S. history and the high stakes involved in selecting images with which to narrate our collective past.

Martin A. Berger is Professor of History of Art and Visual Culture at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is the author of Seeing through Race: A Reinterpretation of Civil Rights Photography, Sight Unseen: Whiteness and American Visual Culture, and Man Made: Thomas Eakins and the Construction of Gilded Age Manhood, all from UC Press.