In the century since slavery’s end, Black people in America had endured far worse, but most of it had happened without white witnesses in the news media, without widespread photographic evidence. It was the image of this single encounter—a young Black man under attack by a police dog—that appeared the next day on the front page of The New York Times and in other newspapers across the country. The photo shook the world and crystallized the message King and others had been trying for years to express.
