A fantastic Smoking Gun treasure trove! (brand new)

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/1103052mmugs1.html

Heroes Of The Civil Rights Movement
Mug shot treasure trove found in Alabama sheriff's storage room

NOVEMBER 4--In the wake of Rosa Parks's death, a mug shot of her taken during the Montgomery bus boycotts accompanied most media accounts of the civil rights pioneer's life. That 1956 photo (and a similar one of Martin Luther King, Jr.) was discovered last year by a deputy cleaning out a Montgomery County Sheriff's Department storage room. Turns out that Alabama basement contained about 100 other historic booking photos taken at the time of the Parks arrest and, five years later, during a Freedom Riders protest. On the following pages, TSG reproduces all of these images for the first time, a photographic roster of heroes that once seemed lost to history. While most of the images are from the 1956 boycott, 11 photos were taken during a later Freedom Riders protest. Those arrested in May 1961 included three well-known reverends--William Sloane Coffin, Ralph Abernathy, and Wyatt Tee Walker--and Yale Law School student George Bundy Smith, who now is an associate judge on New York's Court of Appeals. Smith, who had never seen the photo until TSG provided him with a copy, recalled having dinner with King the night before his arrest, adding that passengers on two prior Freedom Rider caravans had been attacked and had their buses burned. Along with the mug shots, we've included a scan of a representative page from the sheriff's handwritten arrest ledger, from which we've taken the names of those arrested. In addition, we've reproduced sample pages from the mug shot volumes, which were segregated by race and sex

Recommended.

The look in their eyes just says it all. Most of them are staring down at the camera daring one and all to try and take away their dignity.

Heroes one and all.

William Sloane Coffin was tapped by George HW Bush for Skull and Bones at Yale. I like to use that fact when the tinfoilers start wearing their hats a little too tight. :-)

bad reception.

through these photos. Brings a lump to the throat, and strengthens the will.

for the night krew

Thanks for posting. :thumbsup:

Number five appears to be a reverend. :( Their eyes really tell all.
I like number seventeen's picture. Some of them were handsome too. It's amazing to see Mrs. Parks' picture and MLK's. Truly historic and all of them are so amazing.

on MLK's picture is they had "Dead" written twice on there and the death date. :shrug: The others who were dead did have "deceased". Some of them were really young and handsome too. One guy (number eighty) even wore his uniform. I thought that was amazing (he's really cute too).

image of the arrest report of Rosa Parks from the famous day she refused to leave the bus. They're all at a National Public Radio site linked to and excerpted in the DU thread in my sig line. (That arrest record is now in the National Archives. Wouldn't the officer filling out that form have been surprised to know how it would be treasured as a historical document decades later?)

Important to remember that these famous incidents were far from isolated events; Mrs. Parks, for example, had a long history of civil rights work before and after her famous bus ride. The truth is much richer and deeper - and documents and stories help us fill it in.

report from the National Archives was part of it in two formats. One was a full-page view, and I didn't download that one. The small partial view, showing the warrant number and a bit of the page, which I included in my opening post, is here:



(The link is "http://www.npr.org/news/images/2005/oct/25/rosa_parksreport200" with a ".jpg" added to the end)

The caption said that the arrest report was in the National Archives. I haven't gone there yet to check to see if they have it online.

It really is too bad that NPR has taken down that page with the audio links for the Rosa Parks memorial so quickly. It was wonderful. The Conyers interview was riveting and moving. I'll remove the link to that post from my sig line. (Here is the Tiny URL for it if you still want to look at it: http://tinyurl.com/95gsn)