Chapter Six: Wyatt Walker
The story of the photograph—and of all
the iconic civil rights photographs—is
brilliantly told by Martin Berger in
Seeing Through Race: A
Reinterpretation of Civil Rights
Photography (University of California
Press, 2011). Berger’s book is the
source for all the discussion of the
photograph and the impact it caused.
Berger’s larger point—which is deeply
thought-provoking—is that mainstream
white Americans in the 1960s needed
black activists to seem passive and
“saintly.” Their cause seemed more
acceptable that way. The denunciation of