DANNY LYON: The Civil Rights Movement

Danny Lyon's Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement, with a foreword by Julian Bond, an early leader in the American Civil Rights Movement. (Twin Palms Publishers)

Demonstrators block traffic to protest segregation and unfair hiring practices in downtown Atlanta. (early 1960's) Photograph © Danny Lyon/ Twin Palms Publishers

Arrested for demonstrating, teenage girls are kept in a stockade in the countryside. They had no beds and no sanitary facilities. Lyon photographed them through the broken glass of the barred windows. (early 1960's) Photograph © Danny Lyon/ Twin Palms Publishers

"An important historical record of the Southern Civil Rights Movement"

Pictures, eyewitness reports, and text take the reader inside the Civil Rights Movement creating an authentic work of history

If you don't know the story of the real-life murders of these three young civil rights workers in 1964, rent Mississippi Burning (Gene Hackman, Willem Dafoe, Frances McDormand) based on the FBI investigation.

Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement
Danny Lyon

"In the summer of 1962, 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.

In Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement, Danny Lyon tells the compelling story of how a handful of dedicated young people, both black and white, forged one of the most successful grassroots organizations in American history. The book depicts some of the most violent and dramatic moments of Civil Rights Movement, including Black Monday in Danville, Virginia; the aftermath of the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham; the March on Washington in 1964; and the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1962. Lyon’s photos were taken when he was the first staff photographer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

The book also includes a selection of historic SNCC documents such as press releases, telephone logs, letters, and minutes of meetings. Pictures, eyewitness reports, and text take the reader inside the Civil Rights Movement, creating both a work of art and an authentic work of history." (text from Twin Palms Publishers)

Danny Lyon gained broad recognition as a photographer, filmmaker, and writer. Working in the style called New Journalism, which involved immersing himself and becoming a participant in a given subject, Lyon photographed motorcyclists in the Midwest and documented life within the Texas prison system. Lyon’s talent was recognized by the Guggenheim Foundation, which awarded him a fellowship in photography in 1969 and another, in film, a decade later. Lyons has had one-person exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; and the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona.

Twin Palms Publishers

Other Notable Photographers of the American Civil Rights Movement