Transcripts For CSPAN3 Newly Discovered Black History Photographs 20180116

Discovered dozens of unpublished photographs. They were hugely popular, unpublished black history. The monthlong series explored the history behind the photos, garnering 1. 7 million views and thousands of comments from readers. Were thrilled to welcome tonight two of the authors who were involved with creating the book inspired by their discovery, unseen, unpublished black history from the New York Times Photo Archives, which is available for purchase and signing following the program. Darcy eveleigh is a contributing photo editor at the New York Times, and the creator and editor of the lively morgue, a times blog and tumbler series. Rachel swarns is a contributing author. She is the author of american tapestry, the story of black, white, and multiracial ancestors of michelle obama. Moderating the conversation this evening is rhea combs. The curator of film, history and culture. She serves as the head of museum africanamerican media arts. Please join me in welcoming darcy eveleigh, Rachel Swarns and rhea combs. [ applause ] i would like to echo laurens wonderful comments and say thank you so much for joining us tonight. I think were in for a delightful conversation. Im so thrilled to be here with both of these two dynamic women. I want to sort of start off by asking you to give us the context and situate how you were able to sort of, as lauren said, uncover and find so many photographs that hadnt been published before. Well, our coauthor dana kennedy, another writer of the book had come to me in can you hear . Is that better . Hello. Okay. How we doing . Okay, everyone can hear me now . Sorry. My coauthor dana kennedy approached and asked if there was something that we could do from the New York Times Photo Archives that would be of interest to young africanamerican readers. And immediately i thought of an idea. A couple years prior to that the former New York Times picture editor john godfrey morris, i asked him, is there anything in the archive that i should be going back to look for . And john immediately grew a little agitated and said, go back and reedit everything. They didnt let us run the right pictures. They had to edit for space constraints for the print newspaper. They had to edit for the style of the times of the day, a stiffer picture, somebody clearly looking at the camera. And john knew what was left behind. The idea stuck with me. When dana approached, was there something in there . I said, oh, yes, theres something in there. Rachel and our other coauthor damian and i, we started with a list of names, who could we name with who the times might have covered. Martin luther king, and rosa parks, and all the others you might thigh but what happened was the names we never in a million years expected, the ordinary people. Thats really what drew us in. And eventually the book started to take shape because we wanted to include those unknown people. So how long did this process take . I mean, how many photographs are we talking about here . Well, the times archive, they know they have 10 million print photographs in the archives, 10 million. Of that 10 million, about a third of them are New York Times from New York Times Staff Photographers, onethird are from wired agencies, Associated Press, getty images, and another third were handout photos. Like publicity . Yes. In addition to that, you figure if you have 3. 5 million staff photographs, they had the negatives stored from those events. So if one print got made, theres potentially 36 frames, 35 frames left over. Or more. In some cases, and well show you some examples in the book, some of the photographers went out and shot hundreds of rolls of film. Were talking early 20th century through present . Thats right. We started i think we hired the first Staff Photographers in the 20s. I believe it was 1920s. But the negatives collection is pretty well intact from about the late 1940s on. There was a period of culling in the early years, unfortunately. From about the 1940s on. With this sort of call to do something for black history month, or related, you had this kind of thought in your mind from your conversation. Yes. And then a team of colleagues came together and went through 3 million photographs . I get asked how many i went through. I dont really know. A lot. I spent months curled up on the floor with sacks of negatives and a loop going what is this . Thats fantastic. She brought us when we started the idea was we would look at wed have an image or a series of images every day for the month of february. That was our idea. And we thought that there would be amazing images that had never seen the light of day before, which is awesome, and youll get to see that. But it was also an opportunity for us to look at the New York Times as an institution and about how we covered and didnt cover africanamericans. And so basically we were it was kind of a scramble in that first month or so as we were first few weeks, darcy started in november, were sitting around a table in january, and literally going through images. Then afterwards for the book. So the but the initial intention was for to just live online. Yes. And in print. Right. For interactivity and social engagement. I think we realized very soon after, though, that this could be more than that. Because there was such an incredible response to these images. You know, people saw themselves in some of these images, some of the parade photos. We actually asked people to engage with the images. And right away people said how can we get them . And, you know, we were realizing, oh, goodness, we have to make these available. So i would like to ask sort of how did you go about, then, crafting and conceptualizing . When you have such a vast amount, and the initial sort of thought was unpublished work. So can you kind of talk us through either how you had to triangulate the fact that it was unpublished and or how you conceptualized what got in, you know, you already mentioned, rachel, that it was like one a day, beyond that, for the book. I mean, and sometimes, you know, we have amazing images. What was interesting to us as a process too, though, were the images that we couldnt find, the people who werent there, and the reasons why, perhaps they werent there. You know, there were you know, most of our photographers were based in new york. And so and we had some in washington too. But, you know, were talking about a period of time where we have most of these images from the 40s on. But we did not have or have not yet to find, which might be the better way of saying, bearden, the artist, richard wright, w. E. B. Duois. It was in the beginning about what we found. One of the first things we looked for was Martin Luther king. Lowhanging fruit. We know we shot him. Lets go see what else. It happened i started with the most popular photo i knew of him, the times ran hundreds of times. I went in to reedit that family expecting to see a port trat series when, in fact, that wasnt the case. It turned out he was at a round table event. He was speaking. He left the event, and he was attacked. He was egged. The next day there was a page 1 story in the paper, right at the top of the page about the attack. Happened in brooklyn. And there was no photograph. Well, the photograph that was shot that day was a portrait of him. It didnt make sense for the story. When i opened up the pictures. It wasnt a series of portraits. It was distance shots of thoo round table event. At the end of the event, they walked out the door and they went home. They werent there. They had gone home already. Oh, i got my shot. Im leaving. Im out of here. And that, to me, sort of epitomizes what happens sometimes when the press isnt there. I was just going to say, in a way that sort of speaks to what at the time perhaps was deemed newsworthy. This wasnt a newsworthy picture. They probably rushed that portrait out, the next time a portrait was needed that was the goto, it became a goto for 50 years. So you all were able to find other sort of surprises even within what we would consider lowhanging fruit, these sort of we know well have a photo of this. Then there were surprise stories. Part of what we wanted to look at, too, was to think about how the choices were made. These were amazing photos that had remained unpublished. So why . And so we have some photos of, you know, prominent people, and then we looked and we talked about, well, why didnt this and well show you some of these. And that was kind of a lot of the exercise. Well, why . There are many, many reasons why. We were a newspaper that was dominated by text. It was not the kind of newspaper that we are now. And i think thats what the photo editor was saying is that they were limited sometimes. Sometimes it was just practical, you only had so much space. Issues with getting film somewhere. There were harder questions where we did wonder, and darcys a photo editor, researchers, reporters say, well, why wasnt that person there . Or looking at the photo that was published and the one that didnt get published and saying, hmm, you know, we were a big institution at a time when american institutions were marginalizing people of color. And so, you know, there was some of that in some of these instances too. As you were speaking, i was wondering, did your research allow you to sort of look as youre theorizing as to why some images were in and some werent, did you look at other publications, like the Washington Post, or l. A. Times, or others that may and see if they ran a different image of the same story . I did some research both with the daily news imagery, and with the amsterdam news imagery, the amsterdam covered everything and they had wonderful photographers. The daily news was the picture paper. I did not go through the Washington Post archives, looking more at the locals, because, you know, we covered the local stories. So, yeah, it was quite a difference between the coverage of the times and the coverage of these other organizations. Again, the gray lady. Their stories were 400word stories and ours were 1,500 word stories, ours were stories and ads. The advertising was taking up the art space on the page. Fascinating. I would love to see if, you know, maybe we can go through some of the the images. And there may be some stories, or, before we even get into that id ask each of you, is there an image that didnt you know, in this cooperative experience where you all are working as a team, you know, trying to get these selections for the book, was there one that each of you would have loved to have seen been in there, a story that didnt make the cut that you would love to share with us . I know you talked about music, right . Its not a singular image, its a category for me. We had amazing coverage of music and jazz at the New York Times. They spent a lot of Energy Sending photographers to these events. At the end of our ordering this book we realized we had so much music that i left some behind. I thought i didnt want this to be strictly a book about that genre. Or leaning in that. But the collection of music photography there is spectacular. That does beg the question, though, how did you all sort of, you know, go about concept not the conceptual, but sort of ordering and organizing and the process of figuring out. We didnt want a book that was going to be like politics, music, sports. We didnt want that. Part of the part of the experience that was really wonderful for us as journalists was the discovery, really. You know, we were looking. And sometimes we found stuff, sometimes we didnt, sometimes we thought we didnt have it and then darcy did find it. I think we really wanted readers and viewers to have that sense of surprise. Each page, you wanted something different. Thats exactly how we found it. Not chronologically. We worried it would be too heavy 1960s if we did it chronologically. The point of it was really about i found this today, oh, i found this today, i found nothing today, but tomorrow ill find these three. I want the reader to experience that. I want the pages to turn and for people to be surprised. Tell us what you found. Show us some of the things you found. So this this is the opening of the book. And this is 1971. This is an organization that was based out of new york. It was called negro im sorry, im forgetting the acronym. Restoration, growth, opportunity. They were doing some good works in the new york area, and they were angry with the New York Times that they were not covering the progress that they were making in the communities. And they accused the New York Times at that period of only writing stories about the negative, crime. Violence. Violence, to some extent politics. But leaving out the positive contributions that black new yorkers were making. And so the big protest gathered, thats the old New York Times building on 43rd street. A massive gathering happened out there. And as the day went on, unfortunately things turned rather violent. They lit the trucks on fire. The police came. There were dozens and dozens of arrests. And this was all taking place in front of the office. Well, the next day in the paper there was a big twocolumn i remember the times at that point was the broad sheets, oversize paper, big twocolumn story. And no photographs. Yet nearly every single one of the New York Times Staff Photographers had gone out there that day and there were this blew my mind. There must have been 50, 40, 50 rolls of film from this event. And not a single image made the paper. And it was so unbelievably violent. Well, after this whole thing, a dialogue happened between the times and this organization. There were some promises to be better at the reporting. And so change, you know, was at least promised at that point. But it was fascinating thing that something so violent happened, and the public never got to see it. They got to read about it. And the story that was written was very, very detailed about the events of the day. Ill give them that. It was true to the visuals i was looking at. But why not the pictures . Would you suspect that, you know, did they not want to reinscribe some sort of idea around urban decay and violence, and that sort of thing . Actually, you could have run that first picture, right, if you wanted . Sometimes media out lets were sensitive about perception optics. Or criticism, right. There was an interesting debate, dana and i did talk about this, you know, theres always a protest in front of the New York Times. Youll see protests in front of the post or any news organization. Does the times today run out there and cover it because theyre protesting that they dont like what the times said about israel or something in the middle east . No. So is that the same thing that happened back then . The turn of events was so remarkable that it made it striking that they were if they lit trucks on fire, we would see it. We would cover it. I hope. Who was the photographer . This, i believe, i think this was artie brower. So were looking at lena horn in her apartment. Yeah. So for those of us who were writers, this was a really interesting project to work on because normally at a newspaper photos come after. We go out and report and we say okay, we need this person photographed, this covered, this image or whatever. Sometimes its a working collaboration with a reporter and a photographer at the same time. But often the photographer comes after weve done some legwork. This the photographs were the main event. This was the point of departure. We had these images. And we had to look at them and say, okay, well, what story is there here . And so this was an article that ran about lena horn had a new variety show that was coming out. And so it was an interview with lena horn. And the photo that ran was just like a tiny head shot photo of lena horn. A onecolumn photo of her face looking straight on, no crocked head. And theres this wonderful photo. So what is the story to tell here . Well, in the article she mentions, its around christmastime, shes decorating, telling the reporter, you know, its so nice to be here because it was so hard to find an apartment. And im thinking, it was hard for lena horn to find an apartment . I want to report on that. No, i did, i did. And it was, of course, you know, the 1950s, 1960s, and lena horn, one of the most celebrated actresses and singers in the country, was a black woman who struggled to find an apartment in new york city. And the story about how she found this beautiful apartment was a great story and it starts with Harry Belafonte who also could not find an apartment in new york city. Even though he broke every record, the first artist to break a million albums. So he got so fed up that he sent white publicists to this building to sign the paperwork and got the apartment. When he and his wife arrived the building manager was really mad and told them you guys have got to leave and harry got really mad and he bought the building. And he invited and he invited his friends in. And lena ended up with the apartment. She got the penthouse. So thats what a lot of these stories were like. It was kind of the image, but then the history told us something kind of about rachel, was your inclination to do a deeper dive based upon we tried. As much as we could, we tried to tell the story behind the photo. So it required it wasnt just a lena looks lovely today, though she does, it was really trying to tell the story of that moment, yeah. And this is such a remarkable photograph in the sense that she just really looks at ease. Yes. She doesnt look as though shes performing in any way. She really does feel like i would you know, at home. And running this with her, with the print, you would have thought would have been the natural choice. A onecolumn head shot. They didnt have enough space. It was a long story they wrote. So this is a contact sheet i found that James Baldwin was on our list. We ran frame number 19. I think its in the second column, the third one down. They ran that as the head shot to accompany the article. When i found this object, i saw this object not as a singular photograph. I saw this almost as a movie. She brought it to us because we were like we need baldwin. She said, well, i think i have like many baldwins. She brought this to us, and immediately her idea was, you know, were going to depict this, the whole thing. And it was it just if you look, its just amazing. Because its its you know, you can imagine the photographer just click, click, click. And it is like this mini Motion Picture the many moods of baldwins. You can see his animated personality, passion, everything throughout this contact sheet. I wanted to give the readers of this series an opportunity to see the photos the way the photo editor saw them. Why did they choose frame 19 . I mean, for me, looking at this right now i would have gone for the gram down on the bottom where hes got the cigarette in his mouth. Its so expressive. Me too. Which one is frame 19 . Frame 19 is the smiling one. The second column, the third one down, i believe, that was the one they ran. No, no, no. It is the third one, first row. I cant see. First row, second one down. Profile shot. That seems more of a timesian picture. His eyes are shut. Hes smoking a cigarette. No way. To me it says, you know, the photographer had three minutes with him, and was bound, determined he was going to capture James Baldwin. I think he captured him in this contact sheet better than any singular frame ever would have. In doing the verj, again, about what story do i tell about this image . I started reading about it was just his face really that i mean, i started doing research. And it said he had grownup with this very complicated, you know, relationship with his own face that, you know, he grew up being told he was ugly, that he had frog eyes, and that he really internalized that and struggled with that for a lot of his life. And so its so hard for me, you know, you see James Baldwin, thats the last thing you think of. But it also just spoke to me about, you know, africanamericans and how we, you know, internalize some of these ideas about how we look. Standards of beauty. Thats right. Which he wrote about eloquently in many essays and really grappled with. Here again you see all of the beautiful expression in his face, and in his life. So the next series i wanted to show all of you is a series from our first africanamerican Staff Photographer hired by the New York Times in 1964, Don Hogan Charles came on staff. And don was a harlem resident. These images is a much bigger series of them in the book. But these images, don was sent on assignment over a weekend, on a saturday and sunday, to go cover harlem life. This was 1966. Harlem was a pretty rough part of town at that point. And the times wanted to show a different side of it. And very surprisingly, by monday morning, six photographs were on the front of the metro section at that point. That must have been the biggest photo essay to hit the pages. I cant even imagine. But don shot more than 100 rolls of film that weekend of his community. So were talking 36, 3,700 frames, six made the paper. Well, there were many, many, many more still left behind. Don certainly captured you could have done a book we could do is a book just on this weekend in harlem. And i love this i love this no ball playing permitted on the wall there, and the kids are just going for it anyway. A dominos game on the street. And this was a view from one of the local buildings. This is what you saw when you looked out, cathedral of st. John the define in the background. So there was just this, again from my understanding, there was this understanding, real or perceived, that harlem was just sort of this very rough, forbidding rough town, rough town. And were seeing quite the contrary. Absolutely different. And the pictures ran i think were very true to what don shot. The photo on the front there we go. Just beautiful. When theres only six images to run, and again, this essay, even though they did run so many photos, took up about only onethird of a page. So your pictures werent running sixcolumn photographs the way the times does these days. Theyre running in three and fourinch spaces. The editors were going for tighter photographs, things that would look good at three to four inches. If you go back to this, that would have looked like mud in the paper at the time. Which is understandable why they left it. But so beautiful now, and for a book. Were going a little too far, sorry. These works remind me of, i think, something that, you know, i read in the book that i believe sarah lewis mentions as sort of a reclamation. And thats what this feels like in terms of sort of reclaiming and throughout the text, throughout your book is, you know, as you mentioned, darcy, about sort of the ordinary, how youre already sort of looking at photos of those that we know. But then also those that were less familiar. And it seems like its a reclamation of sort of these stories of as well as the people behind those stories that is so poignant to the project, initial project, and maybe this book as well. I think it was very important for us, for me especially as the photo editor, to put the voice of the photographers into this. I really wanted to see what i would now edit to be their best work. I wanted that to be the edit of the day. Because we edit very differently now. We edit not for space and not so much to match visual to text perfectly. But we now edit to tell a secondary story that can run parallel to the words that the writers are writing. And now does this follow is this going to be the same for something thats running online . You know, that only lives online, and not in print as well . Thats a very, very good question because we often do edit very, very differently. And there was an example that the times did in the newspaper just last week, im no longer a staff picture editor there, but they had a cover of harvey weinstein, and it was one image, and then online they ran a very different image. Its because how the images would be perceived. They come out very differently. We edit to that extent still to this day. Is it a slide show . Whos seeing it, how are they seeing it . Are thigh looking at it on a mobile device . Those kind of things affect editing these days. Thats different, but still these questions around voice are still being made. Absolutely. And then whos in it and whos not in the picture. I think thats what these images bring to us. Its not just historical question, its a question that we grapple with that our viewers ask us about the choices were making, who are we showing, who are we not showing, what are we showing, what are we not showing . You know, when you look at some of these images and you think about the choices that were made, you know, harlem, from Don Hogan Charles lens, is a very different place from the forbidding harlem that, you know, we described s. A. T. We the New York Times described in the 1960s. It does make you think about you know, i think if we were true to ourselves, think about how are we doing it now . Where are those blind spots now . Absolutely. I also am struck just by the series of three photos that youve shown us, or three or four, that he took 3,600 photographs over the course of a weekend. Unbelievable, yes. And that what hes capturing, just in this ordinary daily life, a photographer who was not from the community or neighborhood, might not have may have overlooked some of these moments. Absolutely. And probably just as important, might not have been able to approach. I mean, that kind of goes without saying to me. Don, in the book, don got into the community center, don got into the bowling alley, don got into he knew the people. I was going to say a lot of these people probably knew him. And he probably had been photographing it wasnt a surprise to see him walk in with his camera or down the street with the camera, it just so happened these might be in the New York Times. Incredible talent. Next in the series, this was one of my favorite finds because of the subjects. Seems so timely. Was this last week . Oh, this was this was actually the same month that the big battle over the Confederate Flag was happening in south carolina. Thats why we were so shocked when we saw this. So this is reverend Kendall Smith. And reverend smith was rather annoyed that the Confederate Flag was still being flown in parts of new york city. And in particular, i believe it was either a part of a display or part of a series of flags if city hall. So he went down to city hall, with the Confederate Flag, waved it around, got all mad about it, and then took the flag outside to City Hall Park across the street and he lit it on fire. So looking at this picture theres City Hall Park, not too many people standing around. Whats interesting is this was about two, three, maybe four weeks after the big protest in central park, the antivietnam protest where there were hundreds of thousands of White College students burning the american flag. Well, Kendall Smith was arrested for inciting riot. Not much of a riot going on there. And whats even more fascinating, and i dont have any arrest records from the previous event in central park, but i cant recall reading the paper and seeing hundreds of White College students being arrested for burning the flag, the american flag. He was arrested, thrown in the clink. And the next day the times had a big article about it, it was two columns down the metro section, but no photos, not a single photo. They continued to write stories about his legal case, never, ever publishing these photos showing that there was never a riot. In fact, the text of the articles were very, very detailed saying it was a small crowd of reporters and a photographer or two. I think the writer at one point got funny and said something about pigeons in the park. Do you recall the redline . Did the headline say riot . It was a pretty straightforward they used to write very straightforward, somewhat dry, informative headlines. The text was clear in describing the scene very well, but never was a picture published. He eventually got off on a technicality that others werent arrested for the doing the same thing and it wasnt, in fact, illegal to burn a flag at that point. And he was he was acquitted. Is this his pastoral cloak he was wearing. He took a sheet from a nearby hotel so that as a i dont know if he swiped it or paid for it. Details were not given. He wore it to emulate a ku klux klan robe to make a point. So its a performance piece. Its a performance. You know, that one could but this is he was arrested for inciting a riot. Inciting riot, yes. And the pictures were so clear, the photographer had moved the camera around. I think at one point i saw a picture of the bench behind the photographer, and there were three people sitting on it like this looking whats this guy doing . But it was incredible that i wonder, if the times had put this image in the paper the next day would the case have would the case have gone away that afternoon . Hard to say. And your theory around sort of editorial choices of size and space, how does that sort of fit into its a mystery. They had a twocolumn space. Right. It wasnt as if they had no space in the paper for the article. The page was filled with ads on the other side. They were never going to can an ad, understandably. Why would they not put anything to go along with this. Okay. It doesnt make any sense, does it . No, it doesnt. Maybe it wasnt a big enough deal for them. It could have been some sort of bar that needed to be at a certain level for a picture to accompany a story. Maybe they needed a riot. Right. And its interesting, because im thinking now, what i really do recall were how many pictures the times had of the central park issue. Exactly. I mean, these on one hand there are these sort of benign thoughts of, like, you know, there was a factual, not enough space, the photo choice wasnt there. But then these other sort of slippery slopes that kind of that make us sort of beg the question about sort of what other subtext what subtext was taking place, whats happening whereby we can write two pages about this situation and we can sort of fan the flames, if you will, of, you know, this being this horrible sort of anti what is antiamerican . Its not even an american flag. Its new york. Its not even the south. Its new york. Well, i mean, some argue up south, there is that. Okay. I want to pause. The way in which were seeing these wonderful images in this range of sort of stories is that the same that we will expect from the book in terms of yes, a little bit all over the place. But theres a through line as well. Oh, yes. Which makes me think about the question of, you know, when youre dealing with so many years, how did you determine whether or not these had been published or not . How did you figure out that process of so with each image that we found, there were three ways in which we could search the New York Times archives. Theres something called the times machine, subscribers have the ability to go in and look through old actual physical copies of the paper as they were published. Theres something called theres two other ways internally to go look through times pass, which is an internal search engine. And then theres another internal search engine. I also used proquest actually to search as well. And then eventually i also, because its so good, i did a Google Search on the names as well because if you googled a name and New York Times you can see if the articles and the names appear together. And then finally about maybe six weeks or so before i handed the contents over to the publisher, i literally started with the earliest picture of the book in the 1940s and clicked on every single page of the New York Times just to make sure i was panicking. I hope nothing was published. What if i find theyre published. Im going to be ruined. And i panicked about it. I had to look at every single page of the New York Times. It is important to know, and there is a section in the book that does address this, proquest, and all of the times, any copies for the libraries as well, any copies of the New York Times, its only the very last edition. There is a very, very remote possibility that an image could have appeared in a First Edition paper. But theres no record of it. Theres no electronic record of it. So we did address that sort of challenge in the book. And figured we would proceed anyway with them as unseen, unpublished because there would be no way for anybody in this audience to ever see it. And its not fair, then, to not show it. And so i think that one other way of checking it, if a name was famous. We could go into clipping files in the library and we clipped from our own first and second editions, images that were not famous, a whole series of parade pictures. We wouldnt have clipped generic parade, but we would have clipped metger evers. I searched for famous names in the clippings. Okay. To make sure. The hardest part of the book was the vetting of the content, not the finding of the content. Now, you know, a photograph can tell you as much on the front as it can on the back. I think in the blog you all sort of used the back of the image as well. How much of that was critical in terms of helping you with your research. It was critical. Or, you know, useful in determining a selection. I mean, this is a good example. This photograph, which we believe is the only photograph that the New York Times took of metger evers, came from the lens of a reporter. Claude sitton, the civil rights correspondent who spent a lot of time with metger evers and others, and so he his notes are a lot of what i relied on to tell the stories. He was writing notes on the back of these images. Mimeographed sheets mime owe graphed onto the back of the photographs. They were really conversations in a way with his editor, you know, telling him, you know, i saw this guy and heres where i was and this is what this person is. Some of them he did have photos that appeared in the New York Times. But, you know, he was a writer. But he talked, too, about, you know, issues about, you know, light and shadow, and, oh, i wish you know, we could get there had been better light. But it was really remarkable to see, you know, his notes and it gives you some insight into kind of what was going on, both in new york, and out in the field. And did his note recommend that they actually run this . This was an amazing photograph. I didnt see anything, at least in this series where he said run this. In one part he talked about how he apologized to his editor saying the lighting is bad and the skin tones are dark. One thing to note is that claude never intended for many of his some of them did run, but many of them didnt. He used these photographs as reporting notes. He was out in the field, go and use his camera, get his film developed, sate back down and he would write his stories from the contact sheet and using the contact sheets, describing in great detail what the scene looked like, what the people wore. An example of image as text, if you will. Yes. In some instances, some of these photos you could see where the story that was connected to them. He was writing about white nationalists, White Citizens Councils for instance, and we never could find a story that that was connected to. It was kind of politics, white supremacy, basically. And so he took these photos, but there wasnt a story that we could actually find that accompanied it. Again, i believe some of that was because he just wanted to have a record of it so he could go off and describe it in detail later in other elements of his writing. Were also talking about, you know, snail mail. The process that some of these things may not have made it to the photo editor, and to the new york desk in time for the image, if you will, in terms of accompanying a story. Heres a very good example of that. This is merrily evers at metgers funeral, and the New York Times had its Staff Photographer based in d. C. , and he was primarily shooting for the magazine at that time. Most of his photos wound up in the magazine publication. George was at that funeral, he was at the casket. He had, i dont know, 30, 40 rolls of film from this event. And one more spectacular picture after the other. I can also tell from the film that george wasnt penned into a single spot. George had freedom to roam. He shot theres another photo in the book that shows the crowd. He walked that room. But the next day the times ran a beautiful photograph, but it was from the Associated Press. It was a broad, big image, big, broad image that showed the funeral procession and the enormity of the procession, it was a lovely picture, a famous picture. Why would they have chosen an ap photo over these staff photos when ap was stuck in the back and were up front . Unknown, unknown. Was it that george was doing this for a magazine feature that never ran . Was it that the film never got to new york in time . They had to process the film, fax it back to new york. Why did it not get there in time . Why was it not in the paper . And this is and so this is your opportunity, darcy, as contributing photo editor for the times to sort of reedit. Absolutely. You know, with the sort of hindsight being 20 l 20, you ha the sort of opportunity to say, you know what, they didnt run it then, but im running it now. I feel so much for the photographers. I said in the book, in the acknowledgments, this book is really for them. They did all of this work, and so few of these amazing images were shown. Not just in this category, but in categories across the board. And this is truly a tribute to the great work that tames. I think this idea now that is kind of in terms of images text as well, thats another way of reading into and sort of diving deeper into the ways in which we understand things may it seems like text was king. It was all about the text. Text is king. Versus this kind of relationship between the way in which someone can understand a story, and sort of the complexities of a story. Fascinating. Wonderful stuff. I love this picture. Dizzy. So dizzy was at a local school. He was working with the Mary Williams Jazz Foundation at that point. The school was a recipient of some of the funding. He came up to jam with the kids. And the next day the New York Times had a nice article, a lovely article, and a photograph of a small one or two inch picture of dizzy standing there holding his horn staring at the camera. And i looked i saw this picture, and i was so mad as a photo editor. How could you not run this gorgeous picture of him . I understand it. He has his eyes closed. Nobody would have done that. It was too big. You couldnt run this photograph. Even with two inches detail . The version they ran was a somewhat cropped moment of this that was just tied in on him before or after he picked up his horn and the photographer just got him looking straight on and holding that horn. And left this one. I think its a shame. Again, it was space restraint, it was space restraint. This great series of photos in the book, sam fauk, a photographer, went to detroit a week or so after the 67 riots. There was a roll of film sam shot 40 or 50 rolls of film. There was a roll of film in the sack of negatives that was marked destroy. And of course thats the one i went right for. So i pulled it out and i saw the whole roll was double exposed and i was so excited. One of these has to work. And i is an incredible story when you see whats happening and even better it was a big mistake meant to be thrown out. The family in this photograph was left homeless by the riots. We tried to locate the mom. She had a very common name. We couldnt find her. But she and her children left after their home was burnt down. In the background you see the bamboo show bar, which in the 1950s was the hottest nightclub in detroit for the jazz age. John kol train played there and thelonius monk and all these big, big names played there. So youre seeing this superimposed image of detroit at the time at its best and its worst. This broke my heart. I also think its probably my most favorite photo. I think its the most beautiful photo in the book. In the car too, having the car in there as a symbol of detroit, theres so much happening in that picture. To me its a work of art, the kind of thing i wanted to frame and put on my wall and somebody wanted to throw this out. Even worse you have the children there, the promise of tomorrow, the ways in which the uprising were about, who, you know, what it embodied. Theres so much. I hope either this book, either one of the children comes forward and identifies who they are and tells the story today. Have you had any sort of stories like that . Yes. We have. One of the things we really wanted to do when this project was launched was for it to be an interactive experience. We didnt want to just show photographs. We wanted people to connect to them and tell us their stories too. This isnt one we thought this would happen. This is an image of a school in princeton, new jersey, that recently had been integrated. And we presented the photo. And readers said, okay, nice photo, what happened to the kids . So we were like, well, we dont know. We went to facebook. Yeah, so we asked Readers Online and on social media does anyone know who these children are and where they are now. Boy did she have a story to tell. Someone had been posting about these photos and shared them on these were folks whod gone to the school and someone said, evelyn, isnt that you . And she said, oh, my gosh, this is me. Does she remember that day when the photograph was taken . She remembered that experience. You know, of being so excited. And she talked about being growing up in a part of princeton which was what people she said at the time would have described as the ghetto, but she said it was a golden ghetto. It was a place where, you know, teachers, all kinds of working people lived. And she said it was just such a wonderful it was a porch community. So it was a wonderful place to grow up. So she remembered going to an integrated school for the first time and what that was like. And she just remembered she talked about how there were challenges in it, you know, about for a while kids were just kids. And then things changed as they got a little older. But she talked about just the influence of the educators in her life. Thats what she recognized in the first photo. What a fantastic story. It was. We were so excited. We had a full circle. So if anybody has recognized any of the people in these pictures, please let the ladies know. Please. We want to hear their stories. Speaking of someones story, this is a picture, the man in the dark coat he was the first africanamerican man to win a pulitzer. He won for the photograph of Coretta Scott king at the funeral with her daughter on her lap. Of Martin Luther king . Of her husbands funeral, yes. And with him is his son greg. And greg happened to be touring colleges. I found a sack of negatives, its talked about diversity on College Campuses. I look through the film, i didnt see anything in there that was of interest, but i came across a note stuck in the sack to the photo editor john dugan at the time and said, hey, john, youre never going to believe i ran into manetta at the shoot today, he says hi, this was about three or four weeks before he was given his pulitzer and the guys knew each other from the beat. But what was fascinating we wanted to include him in the original round and we couldnt find him in the times archives. We couldnt find anything unique to include in the first round of projects, so when i found this and i wanted to include it because to me this is an example of the enormity of the collection at the times. I mention theres 10 million prints. We think they have somewhere between maybe 400 million, 500 million negatives. They just dont know. Theres no count that theyve ever been able to do because the collection is so enormous. Its arranged in such a way that a sack can contain 36 frames or 3,600 frames or more. So its impossible for them at this point to get a count. But they think hundreds of millions of photographs. What i also love about this as you mentioned hes, you know, monetta, hes on his college tour. There are these kind of stock stories, either its going to be harlem and the forbidding city, its going to be riots, its going to be destruction, its going to be the mob thats homeless, but these kind of everyday moments, a tender father son walking across a College Campus occasion is just as, you know, sort of relevant to the africanamerican story as the other sort of marks. And i think that the sort of i guess ordinariness of this photograph kind of really resonates for me. One of my favorite photos was a photo we found of ken clarke, the sociologist who was pivotal in brown v. Board of ed decision, his research. That overturned segregated schools. It was just him outside smoking a pipe of his west chester suburb. It was an opportunity it was just him at home. Right. And it was just it was just it was such a great image. And it was also an opportunity to think about how did this guy who pioneered the research on the harmful effects of segregation live out his life. And it was really interesting and complicated. And i agree and echo that in the thought of, you know, this is a photographer who knew monetta. You can feel that in the access you were saying. That there was this sort of ability to take these pictures and capture these moments and sort of that unfeddered access that sometimes now as we get sort of, you know, there are so many layers that photographers have to go through to get pictures taken. Thats true. I know we have short of time. I do want to get to the last one here and well speak quickly. This is another point talk about access. Exactly. What a segue. This is the interior of malcolm xs home right after it was fire bombed. And this was by Don Hogan Charles. And don got into the house because he was friends with the family. The times the next day ran the Associated Press photo that showed malcolm fleeing the home. Its a wonderful picture. Dont get me wrong. Its a stunning picture getting the fear on xs face, its wonderful. But don had access inside this house and the times never ran the pictures the next day. He was, i think, the only photographer. I havent seen other pictures from inside the home. And to me why didnt they run this . I still come back to maybe the inability to make that photograph clear in newsprint. Newsprint was a 65 line screen dot, the quality wasnt particularly good. This is a very dark image. Its very hard to see. Was that the reason these images got left behind . I mean, but the sort of you know another reading of that would have been if you could have shown two, you would have shown malcolm but then this is what hes responding to. Its so powerful. Thats the table that your family eats on. Everyone in america and all over the world sits at, you know, can relate to that. Someone might have in their own imagination an understanding of what they felt or who malcolm x was and his beliefs and how that may have created a distance, but an interior shot of the living room thats bombed out is going to resonate, i would think, with anybody, you know . So its an interesting conversation. Theres his wife in the kitchen. Why wouldnt they run that . Maybe it was the back of the head. Back of the heads i would say. There were standards to what a picture should look like too that had to be met for the times. Finally, i wanted to get to this one. This is one of the most hysterical stories we did in this book. This is gradio cummings, claimed to be the second africanamerican man ever run for president. We didnt put that in the book because we couldnt confirm it. And he was also, he was a little too young to run for president. Maybe officially. He put his name in the hat, regardless grady was an interesting fellow. He ran a newspaper and was written about many times in New York Times as being this up and coming politician who is supposed to be this dynamo. And one day, maybe 10 or 15 articles down the line i come across this picture im researching who he is. I never heard of him. I come across this tragic obituary. Grady cummings drops dead of a heart attack at the age of 35, 36 years old, tragically, right . And the story ends. But then ten years later the name Grady O Cummings pops up in an article and im going this is really weird. So we wrote a story, we ended the story with his ditch e death because it was his obituary in the New York Times. A beautiful twocolumn obituary. And were trying to come up with some words for this thing and we just didnt have enough information. So we decided let go back and research this guy. So turns out we discover that mr. O cummings faked his death. And he faked his death in the New York Times. He actually hoodwinked the company into running his obit. He did it because he was in trouble with the black panthers. And there were some Death Threats going on. And he took his family and he escaped to canada for a couple of months, but then he reappeared. He reappeared and he told the press, he invited the New York Times, he invited amsterdam news. They showed up and covered it. They said he faked it, it was all a hoax. The New York Times didnt show up and cover it. And it turns out after this book closed, this is something i can only tell people in person, after the book closed we had run a quick article about this in the times and i got a call from an 80somethingyearold former times living in london who remembered. Actually, i have it in here in the story because ill never remember these words, but he called up, got arthur geld in the executive editor on the phone and said it was all fake. I faked the whole thing. And gelb apparently came flailing down to the newsroom to Clint Knowles who was then the politics editor at the time and said i just got this call from this guy named o cummings and says he faked the whole thing. He said he called to say that he faked his obituary and he was very much alive. Arthur again said, concentrating on the story, again, still concentrating this on his story he was writing, clay replied, dont believe a word he says. Cant be trusted. And the times left it at that. They never ran the correction. Never did. In fact until this ran, we ran this short piece on it in february, right . Yep. We corrected it how many years later . We corrected it 48 years after the fact. And when damian and i discovered this whole thing, we were running into the standards editor because we had the oldest correction ever. We were so excited. And they really look the standards editors are thinking, what should we do, should we run a correction, the way to properly correct this is to correct with a story rather than run an official New York Times correction. So, yes, turns out he died. I was going to say we did call up his death certificate. Hes really dead. It was a fascinating discovery. And i did go to the editor about it and said its only the second known case of a faked obituary. Wow. I hope to discover more. Well see. Well see what else we can find. Well, i think we have some time. Thank you, ladies, this is fantastic. [ applause ] i wanted to leave room for a few questions if anyone has some questions . Yes. This wonderful woman. Thank you for a fascinating program. As you were talking, and im a retired finance executive, i was thinking about the cost of all those rolls of film. Because i can remember trying to buy rolls of film years ago and hoping i had enough money. You mentioned someone who went on 100 rolls in one weekend, im thinking thats like 2,000. Who paid for all that . Oh, the advertisers. You know, i dont know. I came to the times in the digital age, so its very different. But i would imagine the paper was stacked with ads. And there was plenty of money. I also imagine the companies probably got discounts. They didnt pay what you would pay for a roll of film when buying in bulk. But, yeah, it was big that begs the question for me in terms of, you know, the photographers having to turn in all of this material. Did you all come across in correspondence from them saying, you know, these are sort of work for hire kind of things but did they ever have any of their you know, want some of those photographs . Have you come across any where they were published in other monographs by the photographs . Not necessarily. The thing i did come across is there was a period where the company was calling a lot of this stuff for space and the photographers were extremely worried about that. And many of them stole the film, their important film. However, over the course of many, many years now that weve been working on projects like this and the blog and other things that the times is doing in terms of restoration and preservation of photos, theyve given back. Many of the photographers have reached out and said, you know, i have about 800 rolls of film here that belong to you guys, do you want them . Yes, bring them back. So it was a good thing that they preserved them. They protected it. Theres also a period where this stuff was stored in a way that it was close to the loading docks, there was a lot of traffic and prints especially would get lifted, you know, print of Marilyn Monroe there, hey, thats great, ill take that. I have so many questions, but i want to hear from the audience. Is there someone else . I thought i saw a hand. I used to work at a Photo Library in the los angeles times. And im always concerned about storage because, i mean, film especially that stuff is very fragile. Yep. So what condition its in excellent condition. And its in some basement which never changes temperature. Its not a climate controlled room per se. Theres two sets. Theres the prints and the negatives and theyre stored in two different spaces. Actually, the negatives are in two technically three different spaces because the more modern collection is on a different floor. But it is locked behind, you know, a keyed room. And its well taken care of by it curators. Its not in any sort of, you know, white sleeved container. But whats so fascinating is its packed in so tight and rarely touched that we think thats helped preserve it. There was a flood there about a year ago, there was a leak in the building and there happened to be so many boxes stacked on top that when the water came down it just kind of went around and it was packed in so tight that almost nothing got damaged. We opened up the boxes, there was a few that were stuck together but the film the paper, excuse me, at the time, we just washed it, hung it to dry and pressed it back flat and dry again. Yeah, its very fortunate. Rolls of older film just destroyed. So everything thats left is safety film. Theres none of the flammable film left, i think that probably all deteriorated long ago. Yes, i see some questions here. Thank you very much. When you saw and selected the photos, did it change your perception of what or any preconceived notions object what you were going to find or anything about africanAmerican History or anything about in other words, internalizing what you saw. Did it alter any of your perception what you thought . Absolutely. No doubt. I had no idea what to really expect. I didnt expect such a broad history. I thought i only knew what i knew. I knew what i only saw. I knew of rosa parks, of the pictures weve seen of rosa parks. I didnt know Shirley Chisolm went out and was a census taker. And i didnt know why she did it. I think thats another fascinating part. When you look at these pictures and you understand why people did what they did, and that was the biggest discovery for me. Absolutely. You, question . You know, i think it was interesting for me to think about how we as journalists did these, i think that was interesting to me. I mean, there are also many discoveries for me as well just in terms of doing the research, but i think what was interesting to me was to think about the institution and the roll that we play make visible or not and i think thats the thing that really stuck with me. Selfreflection about the times responsibility for keeping things on scene, seems like there are two dimensions i would love to hear your thoughts about. One is that just seeing photos at the funeral home, there was a huge interest amongst historians in wanting to explore far broader and deeper than youve been able to capture in one book, same with malcolm x, you would expect historians would now want to absorb the visual imagery thats been hidden in a different kind of way than youve been able to do. So the question is, are people now going to come towards you saying we want to gain access to the archives a little bit more quickly . And the other big question is, how many other unseen histories of immigration, of other topics are just waiting to be drawn upon. You know, whats so interesting is that this project which was such a huge success, you know, of course immediately spawned other projects. And darcy can tell you about some of the work she did and its still being done. And i think that really this is a resource i mean, i think newspapers around the country, unfortunately a lot of newspapers have like regional newspapers and their archives in terms of just going back into communities its such an important resource. Im actually curious, ive done a bunch of Historical Research outside of this, so i dont know whether you know, i dont even know, Corporate Archives are not necessarily just open to the public, so i dont know what the response would be if historian came knocking. Im not sure actually. They do come knocking. Theres an archivist there, jeff roth, and he responds to calls individually. But hes one person. The one thing i think what is important about what we did here with this project and the projects that followed was that for a long time organizations would come into the New York Times and offer buy the collection. Well give you x amount of money for it and digitize it for you and dont worry about it. Thankfully the times have a good sense to never get rid of their collection because that never seemed to work for any organization that did it. And they held onto it. And i think that theyre understanding its value in its use by creating books like this, by using it for their own journalism, by using it for future stories. I think they see it will now pay off holding onto it. Its enormous and it costs them money to keep it. Its not free to keep it in the basement. And its not free to pay the employees who have to do the work with it. But i think utilization of this collection is the best possible thing that could happen to it. Any other questions . I thought i saw a question up here from the young lady. How did he how did he get a word out that he was dead . Oh, thats a very good question. That is a good question. Its a good question. And for those of you who havent guessed, this is my daughter sidney. Shes asked, shes been a very big help in this book as i know your children have too. He wrote what they call a press release. And he sent it to the writers at the times and he convinced them. Fake news. Yes, early fake news. And the writers believed it because why would somebody lie about their death . Thats exactly how that happened. But thats a good question. Yes. Thank you. Well, i think that, you know, you all have done a remarkable yeomens job here. And i want to give you another round of applause and remind everyone [ applause ] this phenomenal book that is just a fraction of the archives and the discovery. And it sounds like there are multiple opportunities for more to be discovered and uncovered. So thank you so much. Thank you. [ applause ] thank you all. A tweet from mad men across the water asking about an issue that still resounds today. His question is about how many people were fathered by g. I. S, u. S. G. I. S in vietnam. How were they treated 45 years after the u. S. Departure . You could be featured during the next live program. Join the conversation on facebook at facebook. Com cspan history and on twitter at cspan history. American history tv is on cspan 3 every weekend featuring museum tours, films and programs on a the presidency. The civil war and more. Heres a clip from a recent program. Now i was in iran as an army adviser. How strange it all seemed at fir first. [ cheers ] i had been trained for over a year and brought halfway around the world to serve for two years as a member of the military Assistance Advisory Group in iran. U. S. Army special forces training teams during the course of the next two years will visit for short periods to instruct in specific subjects to help the iranian army train a special forces group of its own. Being able to speak the language and participate in thing a tifts of the unit help to bridge the gap to separate a stranger and the people of the country hes in. As the american adviser to the Iranian Special forces group, i participated in the units training in order to pass on those techniques which i felt were the most important. [ speaking in a Foreign Language ] you can watch this and other American History programs on our website where all our video is archived. Thats cspan. Org history. During world war ii the United States Army Air Forces formed a group of africanamerican military pilots. They were known as the tuskeegee airmen. Next, jeremy paul amic, author of together as one is joined by the now 94yearold mr. Shipley to talk about his wartime experiences. The Kansas City Public Library hosted the event. It is just over 50 minutes. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Kansas City Public Library. Im Deputy Director carrie kucagn, were so happy youre here tonight. I want to let you know tonight is our final program for 2017. Can you believe it . Its kind of bittersweet. Anyway, if youre new here, if