Baltimore -
Just look at the rage and scorn on the faces of these angry, racist women in Little Rock, AR (images below). They were outraged that a Black woman, the 15-year-old Elizabeth Eckford - one of the "Little Rock Nine" - would dare enter Little Rock Central High School in 1957 to be educated and become a productive member of society.
UPI photographer Johnny Jenkins and AP photog Will Counts certainly caught the moment, vividly reflecting the ignorance and scorn of an angry mob against the stoic resolve of one young woman. This is the power of great photojournalism. The images help you imagine how afraid Elizabeth Eckford must have been that day and for her entire matriculation at that high school. They help put you in her shoes, an empathetic connection that effective photojournalism makes and that has eroded in our society.
How proud Arkansas Governor and certified ignoramus Orville Faubus must have been to illegally deny these Black students entry into the school. Republican President Eisenhower quickly intervened, however, and sent the National Guard to uphold the law and the U.S. Constitution. That's called leadership. That's called adult behavior. The U.S. Supreme Court had issued the historic Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, reinforcing the Fourteenth Amendment, and declaring segregated schools to be unconstitutional. Faubus and his mobs were breaking the law and Eisenhower was defending it.
These images raise many questions about the role of photography and photojournalism in telling the history of this current moment of racist-fueled American decline. Who's archiving today's images? What story will they tell? How will they be preserved, positioned, and presented in ways that don't enable modern-Fabuses to simply dismiss them as "fake news" or "AI generated"? If there is to be a corrective in coming years or even decades, and a return to some level of democratic and civilizational norms, photographic images will help lead the way. Jenkins' and Counts' work certainly did.
Images courtesy of Jack Jenkins (UPI) and Will Counts (AP).