A Past That Won't Rest: Images of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi

by Jim Lucas (Photographs), Jane Hearn (Contributor), Charles L. Overby (Contributor)

Contributions by Howard Ball, Peter Edelman, Aram Goudsouzian, Robert E. Luckett Jr., Ellen B. Meacham, Stanley Nelson, and Charles L. Overby
A Past That Won't Images of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi collects never-before-published photographs taken by Jim Lucas (1944-1980), an exceptional documentary photographer. His black-and-white images, taken during 1964 through 1968, depict events from the civil rights movement including the search for the missing civil rights workers in Neshoba County, the Meredith March Against Fear, Senator Robert F. Kennedy's visit to the Mississippi Delta, and more. The photographs exemplify Lucas's technical skill and reveal the essential truth in his subjects and the circumstances surrounding them.
Lucas had a gift for telling a visual story, an instinctive eye for framing his shots, and a keen human sensibility as a photojournalist. A college student in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1964, he was on his way to becoming a professional photojournalist when Freedom Summer exploded. Lucas found himself in the middle of events that would command the attention of the whole world. He cultivated his contacts and honed his craft behind the camera as a stringer for Time and Life magazines as well as the Associated Press. Lucas tragically lost his life in a car accident in 1980, but his photographs have survived and preserve a powerful visual legacy for Mississippi. Over one hundred gorgeously sharp photographs are paired with definitive essays by scholars of the events depicted, thereby adding insight and historical context to the book. Charles L. Overby, a fellow Jacksonian and young journalist at the time, provides a foreword about growing up in that tumultuous era.

172 pages, ebook

Published March 22, 2018

Reviews

[Dan Ream]

This only took one afternoon to read, but the images here will linger in my mind for a long time. Jim Lucas was a young photographer for the Jackson, Mississippi newspaper whose career later focused on cinema, before he died in 1980 at age 36 in a car accident. His widow, many years later, found his archive of prints and negatives and in them found a rich collection of photos documenting civil rights history in Mississippi in the 1960s. Marches, protests, planning meetings are all here, but most memorable and striking to me were the photos of Robert Kennedy on a 1967 fact-finding trip to Mississippi and the poverty he found there. He described the conditions there worse than any third world country he had visited and the visit greatly impacted him. Excellent essays here to explain and exists upon the photos.