Picturing Black History

Photographs and stories that changed the world

A collaboration of and

Martin Luther King Jr.

The Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Preaching peace, yet struck down by violence, the killing of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. reshaped America’s urban spaces and fundamentally changed how the country remembers this civil rights leader.

Aerial shot of some of the more than 100,000 people demonstrating in protest of racial discrimination, jam Woodward Avenue, from curb to curb in a huge, but orderly "Walk to Freedom." Most of the marchers entered and surrounded Cobo Hall and Arena to hear Martin Luther King Junior speak.

Dreaming in Detroit

For one day in June 1963 Detroit was the center of the civil rights movement.

Benjamin Mays American Baptist Minister and Civil Rights Leader at podium

Preaching with the Choir

An Easter Sermon with Dr. Benjamin E. Mays at South Carolina State University, Orangeburg, SC

Chinese Prime Minister Zhou En-lai congratulates American Civil Rights leader Robert Franklin Williams following the latter's speech, Peking, China, August 8, 1966.

Panthers and the Premier: Black Internationalism & Cold War China

From Robert F. Williams and Huey Newton to President Richard Nixon, three moments where Black Liberation movements converged, and diverged, with Revolutionary China.