Double Exposure: Civil Rights and the Promise of Equality

Double Exposure is a major new series based on the remarkable photography collection held by the Earl W. and Amanda Stafford Center for African American Media Arts at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), Washington, D.C.. From daguerreotype portraits taken before the Civil War, to twenty-first century digital prints, Double Exposure is a striking visual record of key historical events, cultural touchstones, and private and communal moments, that helps to illuminate African American life. Volume 2 commemorates the ongoing fight to fulfil the promise of freedom and equality for all American citizens, from the Civil War and Reconstruction to the present. It features powerful images from, for example, Leonard Freed's series, Black in White America, Ernest C. Withers photographs of the Sanitation Workers' Solidarity March in Nashville and Charles Moore's documentation of police brutality during the 1963 Birmingham Childrens' Crusade, AUTHOR: John Lewis is an American politician and civil rights leader who has served in the U.S. Congress since 1987. Former Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Lewis is considered an important leader of the civil rights movement. He was one of the original 13 Freedom Riders in 1960 who road on a bus from Washington, DC to New Orleans, LA to pressure the federal government to reinforce the law that segregating interstate travel was unconstitutional. Bryan Stevenson is Executive Director and Founder of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), a private, nonprofit law organization that focuses in the context of criminal justice reform in the United States. In 1995, he was awarded the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship Award Prize. He is also a 1989 recipient of the Reebok Human Rights Award, the 1991 ACLU National Medal of Liberty, the 2000 Olaf Palme Prize in Stockholm, Sweden for international human rights. He is the author of the bestselling memoir 'Just Mercy' (2014). Lonnie G. Bunch III is the founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture.