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 Fifty years later as the deaths of unarmed black men at the
hands of white police officers spark protests and the film
"Selma," about King's role leading the march wins acclaim,
Somerstein's photographs are the focus of an exhibition marking
the anniversary.
"All through the march I was thinking, 'This is history in the
making. Can I capture it? Can I give a sense to other people of
what I am experiencing myself?' That was the thread that always
wove through the back of my mind. Am I up for the task?"
Somerstein, then picture editor of the student newspaper at City
College of New York, told Reuters.
"Freedom Journey 1965: Photographs of the Selma to Montgomery
March," which opens on Friday at the New-York Historical Society
and runs through April 19, is proof he was.
In dozens of photographs, Somerstein documented much of the
march with photos of King, his inner circle, marchers, police
and the hundreds of people in small towns who viewed history in
the making from their front porches and sites along the route.
"I turned my camera most consciously to the people watching the
march. It was meant to free them. The march was meant to give
them voting rights. The march was meant to change their lives,"
he added.
A SMALL WINDOW IN HISTORY
The black and white and color photographs in the exhibition are
a fraction of the 400 Somerstein took after setting off in
mid-March by bus from New York, like thousands of other young
people at the time, with five cameras and more than a dozen
rolls of film.
"Instead of looking in, Stephen looked out," said Marilyn Satin
Kushner, the curator of the exhibit. "These are great
photographs of a very historic moment."
Somerstein, now 74, quickly realized the enormity of what King
was trying to accomplish.
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"I wanted the pictures to be a window for people to look back in
time and see what it was like then," he explained. "I needed to
capture a sense of their vision."
Among Somerstein's favorite photos is an iconic image of King, taken
from behind as he addressed a sea of 25,000 people in Montgomery,
and another of people listening intently with their heads bowed,
concentrating on what he was saying.
"I said to myself this is really remarkable, just being there at
that moment," recalled Somerstein, a retired physicist who never
gave up photography.
While walking along the highway he spotted a multi-generational
black family seated on a hilltop under a sign that read, "Things Go
Better with Coke," which Somerstein considers among his best images.
He captured author James Baldwin smiling, singer Joan Baez in front
of the state capitol with a phalanx of troopers on the steps behind
her, a young black teenager with the word 'vote' written across his
forehead and King surrounded by microphones.
Four months after the historic march President Lyndon Johnson signed
the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
"He was a man of that time," Somerstein said of King. "We can only
hope that some similar individual will come our way to take us
through the next set of problems and travails that society always
encounters."
(Editing by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Christian Plumb)
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