Atlanta and the Civil Rights Movement,
2018-2019
In late 2017 I met Dr. Karcheik Sims-Alvarado to discuss her book and activism. Our shared passion to dismantle the inaccessibility of academia and the traditional history museum model lead to collaboration. In 2018 we translated her literary text into the largest Civil and Human Rights outdoor photography exhibition at the time for display on the Atlanta BeltLine.
The photography is sourced from Dr. Sims-Alvarado’s book-Images of America: Atlanta and the Civil Rights Movement, 1944-1968 (Arcadia Publishing, 2017). The book is a portable exhibition narrative that offers a pictorial history of the modern civil rights movement in Atlanta, curated from photographs largely taken by award-winning Associated Press photojournalists. From testing the landmark US Supreme Court decision in Smith v. Allwright to mourning the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the exhibition illustrates how Atlanta came to be recognized as the epicenter of the Civil Rights Movement.
“Atlanta and the Civil Rights Movement, 1944-1968” was presented across four miles of the Eastside and Westside Trails of the Atlanta Beltline.
Celebrating the city’s legacy as the epicenter of the civil rights movement, Dr. Sims-Alvarado used historic photographs to document and to identify the cross-generation of Atlanta activists who changed history – many of whom resided in the neighborhoods around the Atlanta BeltLine.
To ensure that the arts and the learning of the city’s history are accessible to all, she says, “This massive public exhibition allows families in Atlanta to boast that they have a museum, not bound by walls, just walking distance from their homes or schoolyards. They can learn the names and identify the faces of community residents or relatives, both past and present, who helped secure civil and human rights for citizens 100 years since the ratification of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments.”
The exhibition has since traveled as far away as the Nobel Peace Center in Norway.
Photography:
The Sintoses
