For All the World to See

Sanitation workers at a Memphis, Tennessee demonstration

The 1960s was a particularly turbulent time in America. Assassinations. Student protests. Riots. Racially motivated killings in the South. Many believed it was an undeclared war. Black photographer Gordon Parks employed an unusual "weapon of choice" in his battle for equal rights. In a 20th century twist on the adage "the pen is mightier than the sword," Parks weapon was a camera and his pictures did indeed help change our country..

In the CBS News documentary The Weapons of Gordon Parks—broadcast in 1968, at the height of the civil rights movement—the celebrated African American photographer and filmmaker engaged in what was for him an empowering act: loading his camera and aiming it at shocking sights for the world to see. In the program, Parks advanced an idea that was unusual in mainstream culture at the time: that photographs could be forceful agents of social change.

Today, Parks work is an essential element of For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights, which we viewed at the National Museum of American History.


Parks was not the only one with the opinion that pictures could make a difference.  "If you give me a television station we won't need a revolution," said black poet and activist Amiri Baraka in 1966.

For All the World to See documents the gradual, sometimes bloody path African Americans were forced to take for equal standing under the law. There are samples of a Little Sambo viewmaster and big-lipped  Zulu Lulu swizzle sticks from the 1940s. There are photos of the 1947 protest of the opening of Walt Disney's The Song of the South for its racist elements. On one wall of the exhibition, For Colored Only signs are juxtaposed with Rockwell-like posters of  white young boys under the slogan "This is America ... where every boy can dream of becoming president."

There are pictures of non-violent protesters being hosed. And, of course, pictures of snarling dogs containing marching children, some as young 8. But eventually those images become replaced by shots of black entertainers, athletes, and intellectuals making huge contributions to American culture.  Finally, in the eyes of the law at least, more than 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, equality had been achieved.

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For All the World to See can no longer be seen in DC. It closed Nov. 30. However, it is on-line and you can view it by clicking here.