On May 3, 1963, 15-year-old Walter Gadsden was skipping school when he became the center of national news. Gadsden was walking around Birmingham, Alabama—then the most segregated city in the United States—when his curiosity drew him near the crowds of a protest organized by Martin Luther King Jr. As Gadsden watched the demonstrations, a K-9 lunged at him and the dog’s corresponding officer clutched the teenager by his shirt. The photographer Bill Hudson captured the moment, depicting Gadsden looking down blankly at the German shepherd, the teen a vulnerable recipient of the violence set upon him. The image would become one of the most iconic photos of the civil-rights movement, with Gadsden emerging as an unwitting emblem of racial injustice. It was used as a political symbol to help Black leaders gain attention for their cause, turning eyes to the ugly truths of segregation and attracting white sympathy for the movement. The image of Gadsden is said to have pushed President John F. Kennedy to propose the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which he announced one month after the photo was published.
Leaders of the civil-rights movement knew that protest photography—such as the famous image of Rosa Parks riding a bus—was a successful tool to inspire transracial solidarity. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, in particular, “understood the importance of photographs not only as documents of efforts of thousands to raze the world of southern oppression; but also as visual bricks in the raising of a new, integrated free world,” wrote the African American studies professor Leigh Raiford in her book Imprisoned in a Luminous Glare. But because these images of unambiguous conflict received substantial news coverage, many of the protest photos from the civil-rights era are ones that emphasize Black stoicism and white aggression. The lasting result is a popular archive of “visual bricks” that prizes Black passiveness and white agency.