https://foundation.app/@magnumphotos/mpa75/41

August 28, 1963 was a historical day for democracy in America. More than 250,000 people gathered at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to mount a peaceful protest demanding equal rights and economic equality for African Americans. 

Leonard Freed’s This Is the Day: The March on Washington (published by Getty Publications in February 2013 to coincide with Black History Month and the 50th anniversary of the march), is Freed’s powerful visual testimony of the event that culminated in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s prophetic I Have a Dream speech, delivered at the base of the Lincoln Memorial.

Freed’s images reveal the powerful impact of the march, which took place in the midst of the civil rights movement when racial inequities were being most painfully exposed to the nation and the world.

Freed’s holistic approach to photographing the events of this historic day is revealed in the details he chose.

In the hours before the march, he photographed the area surrounding the Mall as people arrived in buses and cars, protest signs were stacked in preparation for distribution, policemen took up their posts, and people passed by the famed Ford Theatre, where a sign read ‘House Where Lincoln Died’.

With the Washington Monument, the Reflecting Pool, and the Lincoln Memorial as his visual anchors, Freed photographed the massive crowd as it gathered and swelled, and then went in tight to capture groups of marchers chanting and singing in their Sunday-best, a range of individual expressions, and the interplay of text and image on placards. He photographed well into the evening when the remaining marchers linked hands for a final rendition of ‘We Shall Overcome,’ and the aftermath as the crowds dispersed and the visual remains of this history-making event were reduced to placard scraps blanketing the ground.

Freed would return to the National Mall numerous times to photograph other marches and rallies, including Vietnam War protests. In 1964, he photographed individual African Americans exercising their right to vote for the first time, and in the same year made an iconic photograph–reproduced in the book–of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. being celebrated in a Baltimore motorcade after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.

To find out more about Leonard Freed’s This Is the Day check out the full article here.

To find out more about Leonard Freed click here.

https://foundation.app/@magnumphotos/mpa75/41

August 28, 1963 was a historical day for democracy in America. More than 250,000 people gathered at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to mount a peaceful protest demanding equal rights and economic equality for African Americans. 

Leonard Freed’s This Is the Day: The March on Washington (published by Getty Publications in February 2013 to coincide with Black History Month and the 50th anniversary of the march), is Freed’s powerful visual testimony of the event that culminated in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s prophetic I Have a Dream speech, delivered at the base of the Lincoln Memorial.

Freed’s images reveal the powerful impact of the march, which took place in the midst of the civil rights movement when racial inequities were being most painfully exposed to the nation and the world.

Freed’s holistic approach to photographing the events of this historic day is revealed in the details he chose.

In the hours before the march, he photographed the area surrounding the Mall as people arrived in buses and cars, protest signs were stacked in preparation for distribution, policemen took up their posts, and people passed by the famed Ford Theatre, where a sign read ‘House Where Lincoln Died’.

With the Washington Monument, the Reflecting Pool, and the Lincoln Memorial as his visual anchors, Freed photographed the massive crowd as it gathered and swelled, and then went in tight to capture groups of marchers chanting and singing in their Sunday-best, a range of individual expressions, and the interplay of text and image on placards. He photographed well into the evening when the remaining marchers linked hands for a final rendition of ‘We Shall Overcome,’ and the aftermath as the crowds dispersed and the visual remains of this history-making event were reduced to placard scraps blanketing the ground.

Freed would return to the National Mall numerous times to photograph other marches and rallies, including Vietnam War protests. In 1964, he photographed individual African Americans exercising their right to vote for the first time, and in the same year made an iconic photograph–reproduced in the book–of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. being celebrated in a Baltimore motorcade after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.

To find out more about Leonard Freed’s This Is the Day check out the full article here.

To find out more about Leonard Freed click here.