Combining memoir with oral history, creates a vivid and searing portrait of the Freedom Summer of 1965

This Light of Ours: Activist Photographers of the Civil Rights Movement is a paradigm-shifting publication that presents the Civil Rights Movement through the work of nine photographers who participated in the movement as activists with SNCC, SCLC, and CORE. Unlike images produced by photojournalists, who covered breaking news events, these photographers lived within the movement—primarily within the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) framework—and documented its activities by focusing on the student activists and local people who together made it happen. The core of the book is a selection of 150 black-and-white photographs, representing the work of photographers Bob Adelman, George Ballis, Bob Fitch, Bob Fletcher, Matt Herron, David Prince, Herbert Randall, Maria Varela, and Tamio Wakayama. Images are grouped around four movement themes and convey SNCC's organizing strategies, resolve in the face of violence, impact on local and national politics, and influence on the nation's consciousness. The photographs and texts of This Light of Ours remind us that the movement was a battleground, that the battle was successfully fought by thousands of “ordinary” Americans among whom were the nation's courageous youth, and that the movement's moral vision and impact continue to shape our lives.

"This Bright Light of Ours combines a memoir with oral history to create a very vivid portrait of the Freedom Summer of 1965 in Wilcox County, Alabama, when volunteers and long-standing local black leaders were shaking the cultural norms, registering thousands of new voters. This book documents the first-person experience of Maria Gitin, an idealistic 18-year-old college freshman from San Francisco who felt called to action when she viewed televised images of the brutal treatment of peaceful demonstrators during what became known as Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama"--