DC Public Library System

Civil rights childhood, picturing liberation in African American photobooks, Katharine Capshaw

Label
Civil rights childhood, picturing liberation in African American photobooks, Katharine Capshaw
Language
eng
Bibliography note
Includes bibliographical references and index
resource.governmentPublication
government publication of a state province territory dependency etc
Illustrations
illustrations
Index
index present
Literary Form
non fiction
Main title
Civil rights childhood
Nature of contents
bibliography
Oclc number
877365209
Responsibility statement
Katharine Capshaw
Sub title
picturing liberation in African American photobooks
Summary
"Childhood joy, pleasure, and creativity are not often associated with the civil rights movement. Their ties to the movement may have faded from historical memory, but these qualities received considerable photographic attention in that tumultuous era. Katharine Capshaw's Civil Rights Childhood reveals how the Black child has been--and continues to be--a social agent that demands change. Because children carry a compelling aura of human value and potential, images of African American children in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education had a powerful effect on the fight for civil rights. In the iconography of Emmett Till and the girls murdered in the 1963 Birmingham church bombings, Capshaw explores the function of children's photographic books and the image of the Black child in social justice campaigns for school integration and the civil rights movement. Drawing on works ranging from documentary photography, coffee-table and art books, and popular historical narratives and photographic picture books for the very young, Civil Rights Childhood sheds new light on images of the child and family that portrayed liberatory models of Blackness, but it also considers the role photographs played in the desire for consensus and closure with the rise of multiculturalism. Offering rich analysis, Capshaw recovers many obscure texts and photographs while at the same time placing major names like Langston Hughes, June Jordan, and Toni Morrison in dialogue with lesser-known writers. An important addition to thinking about representation and politics, Civil Rights Childhood ultimately shows how the photobook--and the aspirations of childhood itself--encourage cultural transformation"--, Provided by publisher
Table Of Contents
Friendship, Sympathy, Social Change -- Pictures and Nonfiction : Conduct and Coffee Tables -- Today : Framing Freedom in Mississippi -- The Black Arts Movement : Childhood as Liberatory Process -- Blurring the Childhood Image : Representations of the Civil Rights Narrative -- Conclusion: A Text for Trayvon
Classification
Content
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