Oh Freedom Over Me Exhibit

The Spady Cultural Heritage Museum (www.spadymuseum.org) will showcase a multi-media exhibition detailing the sacrifices, challenges, vision and everyday courage demonstrated by political leaders, students and regular people during the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-1960s. “Oh Freedom Over Me” will be on display from January 4-March 27, 2010, held in conjunction with the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast on January 18, 2010. On loan from the Center of Documentary Studies at Duke University , “Oh Freedom Over Me” is a collection of 13 documentary-style photographs and ten photographic banners, along with video and film footage, of the work done in the southeast U.S. to bring about voting and educational rights for African-Americans. Inspired by the work of the Farm Security Administration photographers, Matt Herron sought to create a similar record of the Civil Rights Movement, in which he was active. Though he was admonished by Dorothea Lange that he might have a problem with objectivity, in the summer of 1964 he organized a team of eight photographers, called the Southern Documentary Project, in an attempt to record the rapid social change taking place in Mississippi and other parts of the South as civil rights organizations brought non-southern college students to work in voter registration and education. Many photographers were doing work in and around the movement at this time—some as independent documentarians, some as photojournalists on assignment for media organizations, some as part of their work for the movement. Danny Lyon, for example, who became part of the Southern Documentary Project, was the official photographer from 1962 to 1964 for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which helped to organize the action that came to be known as Freedom Summer. With varying degrees of success and with financial support from Life magazine and Black Star Photo Agency, Herron, Lyon , George Ballis, Dave Prince, and others created one of the more important bodies of documentary images from the Civil Rights era. “We selected this exhibit not only to coincide with the celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy, but also to remember how much work, faith and physical sacrifice was devoted to bringing our country to where it is today,” said Spady Museum Educator Brandy Brownlee.