For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights

This exhibition is the first to reveal the historic role of visual images in shaping, influencing, and transforming the fight for civil rights in the United States. The struggle for racial justice in the United States was fought as assuredly in the media— television, movies, magazines, and newspapers—and through the artifacts and images of everyday life, as it was on the streets of Montgomery, Little Rock, or Watts. The movement produced myriad images in multiple formats and sensibilities and in various contexts, from the modest newsletters of local black churches to televised news reports on the state of American race relations. This exhibition looks at images in a range of venues and forms, tracking the ways they represented race in order to perpetuate the status quo, to stimulate dialogue, or to change prevailing beliefs and attitudes.

Organized by the Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture, University of Maryland, Baltimore County in partnership with the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.