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Transcription below by: Elana Levin (2007). Edited transcription by: Judy Minton (volunteer). Please report errors to: info@tellingstories.org

Telling His Story

Did you receive any criticism for your photos from the white community?

Oh, they hated me. We were Yankee agitators. The interesting thing, though, was that the Southerners really wanted to tell their story. They felt, "If the rest of the country only understood our life here and what we go through, they'll come to believe as we do." I once interviewed the guy who founded the White Citizens Council which was really the middle-class version of the Klan. All the mayors and people in the White Citizens Council said, "We don't go out and burn houses." But they were quite happy that other people did it. He had an office in Greenwood and he was a real fanatic. I came in and I said, "I'm a photographer and I'd like to interview you." He said, "Yankee photographer, I'll give you five minutes." So we sat down, and I just asked him non-inflammatory questions about what he believed, what he was doing, and so on. This guy had an opportunity to pour out all of his beliefs, and I didn't say, "That's shit," you know? I said, "Well that's interesting." I would write some stuff down, and he would go on. An hour later he said, "I really gotta go. I have an appointment, but here's all this literature!" He loaded me up with all this White Citizens Council literature, clapped me on the back and saw me to the door. Southerners really thought they were being terribly discriminated against. That was their view. If you were neutral in the way you approached them, they would open up to you. If you were hostile, they could be extraordinarily hostile in your direction.

One final question. What do you think your personal impact on the Civil Rights Movement has been?

I had, for a brief eight weeks, an interesting project with some other photographers, which turns out to be the only time since the Farm Security Administration in the '30s that anyone had tried to field a team of documentary photographers. It's a very small piece of history but that's what made me decide to write the book. I was told by the Smithsonian when they put the show together that I was the teacher of Civil Rights photographers. I never thought of myself as that. They said, "All the photographers in the show say that you were their teacher." I thought about that. They used to come through our place in New Orleans and use the darkroom, look at my books. I had a lot of books about photography. We would talk photography, I would look at their work. I would say, "Why don't you go out and try to do this?"—mostly to get them out of my hair, because I was busy. I showed them how to use a few cameras and stuff like this. I never thought of them as teachings, but they did. I know from my experience that sometimes critical teaching can be very swift. It doesn't have to take weeks and years. I probably had some effect as a teacher.

My pictures are widely used. I would never say that I am the Civil Rights photographer. There were a lot of people, very good photographers—Bob Adelman, Danny Lyon, myself, Flip Schulke, Charlie Moore—all really good photographers. I think the one thing I've done has been to pull together in one place, a collection of civil rights photography which is accessible and which I put together partly with the idea that it could be a teaching tool. I spent a lot of time gathering caption information to augment the photographs themselves. My website is now a resource. I think that will grow and I think that's probably important. As for the rest, I'll let other people decide. I'd rather not decide for myself. I haven't done a book yet and I'm about to. I think some things will change as a result of that.

Do you have anything to add before we end?

No, I'm talked out.

Where in your growing up did you develop this desire to participate in life in this way? To fight, to advocate for others?

I think I've always been a bit of a rebel. I don't quite know where that comes from. I can remember when I was about three, my mother would lock me in the fenced backyard and there was no lock on the gate. She would tie this complex knot and I would spend hours untying this knot. When I got the gate open, I would run away. Who knows what forms character? I know early on in my youth hostel days, I had this relationship with an older man who had been incarcerated in the Second World War because of his German ancestry, much like Japanese Americans on the West Coast. He had met conscientious objectors in prison and became one himself. My high school teacher who I mentioned. Some people would go through those experiences and not be changed by them but I think I was changed. I don't know why. I just know that I always felt a need to try to live a moral life, to try to be truthful and to be true to whatever my beliefs were. They would lead me in certain directions. Did I enjoy making a fuss? Yeah, I probably enjoyed making a fuss. Most of us enjoyed making a fuss. That was probably part of it.

I was just wondering what you said to your children to explain that period of your life when you moved down south.

That's a good question. They were pretty young. We tried not to involve them in the politics too much because they were too young to understand it. What they had to understand was there were certain things they couldn't say to their school classmates about what we did because it would endanger them and it could endanger us. I remember in New Orleans trying to explain to Melissa, my daughter, that she couldn't talk to her classmates about all our black friends. Not because we were ashamed of it, but because it would be dangerous.

There were times when stuff came out. While we were living on Bellhaven Street in Jackson, we got friendly with our next door neighbors who were real rednecks. They knew who we were. They began to figure out what we were doing. I guess they tolerated us because there was something they saw in our marriage that they didn't have, and they were intrigued by that. They had twin sisters who were about the age of Melissa, our daughter. Jeannine watched them one afternoon. The girls were playing dress up in the backyard. They were putting on Mommy's high heeled shoes and flouncing around. What the grown up mommies do is they smoke cigarettes. The two twins were smoking cigarettes and Melissa wanted to do that too so she went [mimicked smoking pot]. On that note, better that we end this interview!