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Saturday 30 July 2011

In This Great Nation


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Women demonstrating against the Federal Equal Rights Amendment gathered outside the White House
: photo by Warren K. Leffler. 4 February 1977

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Activist Phyllis Schafly wearing a "Stop ERA" badge, demonstrating with other women against the Equal Rights Amendment in front of the White House, Washington, D.C.
: photo by Warren K. Leffler, 4 February 1977

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Ku Klux Klan members supporting Barry Goldwater's campaign for the presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention, San Francisco, California, as an African American man pushes signs back
: photo by Warren K. Leffler, 12 July 1964

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Man on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial holding a banner for the Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention, at Black Panther Convention
: photo by Thomas J. O'Halloran/Warren K. Leffler, 19 June 1970

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Joyce Favell and her children in a basement (?) holding bottles and a bucket of water, St. Louis, Missouri. (Photographer's note: "Joyce Favell, a St. Louis mother of five, is worried sick. Forced out of one apartment in mid-January, she must now leave temporary housing in a city-owned building before it is demolished in early spring...The apartments are to be restored and sold as condominiums. Favell's plight is shared by thousands of other city residents across the country who are being displaced -- pushed out -- as more well-to-do citizens snap up urban properties.")
: photo by Tom Ebenroh, 16 January 1979

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Street in Baltimore, Maryland with rowhouses and building with sign "Neighborhood Housing Services"
: photo by Warren K. Leffler, 15 March 1976

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Lines of people at the offices of the Baltimore City Welfare Office, Maryland
: photo by Thomas J. O'Halloran, 28 January 1975

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Large stack of computer printouts at a New York City welfare office
: photo by Leo Choplin, 24 May 1976

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Woman with a child on her lap, talking to another woman at a desk, at a New York City welfare office
: photo by Leo Choplin, 24 May 1976

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Girl Scout in canoe, picking trash out of the Potomac River during Earth Week
: photo by Thomas J. O'Halloran, 22 April 1970

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Smoke rises near U.S. Capitol, during riot, 1968. (Photographer's note: "D.C. Riot, April, '68: After curfew deserted streets in D.C. -- Smoky sky w/capitol -- damaged area.")
: photo by Marion S. Trikosko, 6 April 1968


Photos from U.S. News & World Report Magazine Photograph Collection, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

5 comments:

Ed Baker said...

I think that's the back of the Capitol Building
1968 ? 2011 ? same fucking morons in that building

watching Rome burn !

so

that smoke most likely drifting from over on 14 th street what at one time was the Jewish Ghetto and in 1968 was the Black Ghetto

mostly small momma-poppa businesses burned out
and robbed...

my cousin, whose grocery store was torched
as soon as he got his insurance money

moved lock-stoc-and-barrel up to Lilly White Land

(North Conway) opened a deli and brought most of his family up. Other White business owners also moved out in droves... up to Vermont, Connecticut and Maine

none of them ever since have connected with me
as
I am still here in what they called Chocolate City !


notice the Corvette in front of the Capitol ?

"you always get your way with a Chevrolet "

most of the burned out areas especially H Street N.E. is now gentrified and they are building trolley tracks
to bring in $$$


and Capitol Hill now extends all the way over to about 12 th Street N. E. big big bucks now for those former slave shacks !

notice the well dressed white kids in those welfare lines ? was very easy then to get food stamps stay in college and avoid the Draft donate a pint of blood every other week for dope money...

anyway not much has changed except that this huge note has become past due...

STEPHEN RATCLIFFE said...

Tom,

Pictures of a time and place ("are you better off now than you were when. . . ?") - what was the anthem, "everybody get together, try to love one another. . ." ?

7.30

grey whiteness of fog against invisible
ridge, song sparrows calling from field
in foreground, sound of wave in channel

actual field, material part
of the left-hand side

system of co-ordinates, one
another, space events

grey white of fog against top of ridge,
pelican gliding across channel into it

ACravan said...

I am unsure that to make of this series (which pretty well fits my uncertainty about most current events), except for the 1 1/4 pretty Girl Scouts in the boat on the Potomac performing good works. I might have known them in high school. Curtis

TC said...

Ed,

Yes, that was the week when everything blew up.


Curtis,

Yes, uncertainty about current events, of that point we may be certain.
..

But what if even what Steve calls the

actual field, material part

was never happening anywhere but in everybody's different heads, all along?

..

Glad you appreciated the Girl Scout cleaning up the Potomac. I was counting (hope against hope) on her as a sort of Good Fairy to save our battered history from a downward cred plunge toward outright mondo yahoo trash. (I think that's about where we're "seen", now.) A forlorn figure, the lass, put in that light. So much world to save and so little time to save it. But good on her and her Troop for trying. She probably recycles, yay until this day.

The post had a private use -- well, don't they all -- which was to remind myself that bigotry, inequality, stupidity, poverty, disillusion and discontent were not just born this week, in our great nation.

The Warren K. Leffler photo of the probably tired young man holding the Panther Banner before the impassive eyes of Lincoln does come back to me as one of the great historical shots.

Leffler was a wonderful photographer, perhaps the best to cover the Civil Rights Movement. His work has value e'en to this day, 'twould seem to me.

The work of Leffler and Thomas O'Halloran has appeared before here, in historical posts (esp. Little Rock).

The fact these photographers were working for a news mag that was in policy well to the right of both Time and Newsweek, again, may suggest something about the difference between that time and now.

Ed Baker said...

about 3 years before that (Black) People's Convention

also here in D.C. was that Black Panther March AND
that Pentagon March

as I recall, Stokeley Carmichael was leading the
Panthers (at that time) after they split from SNCC
my friend, Eli< was Stokeley's room-mate in undergraduate school

I think the college was in NYC. Stokeley also was here in D.C. around Howard University

and spoke several times at U. of Md. where his friend, Eli, was working on his PhD & teaching....

sure was exciting and hope-filled times !

token things got changed.... though not much ...