Paper short abstract:

This paper will apply theories and methods in ethnography and social movement analysis to examine a selection of images by photographers Diana Davies and Robert Houston. Davies and Houston captured the photographs during Martin Luther King, Jr.'s final protest movement, the Poor People's Campaign.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will apply theories and methods in ethnography and social movement analysis to examine a selection of photographs by Diana Davies and Robert Houston. Through images of cultural production captured during Martin Luther King's final protest movement, the Poor People's Campaign, this paper will contextualize the connections each photographer made between their work and the ethnography of social movement cultures.

In 1967, against the backdrop of the United States (U.S.) as one of the richest nations in the world, millions of Americans lived in poverty. Seeing this as an injustice in a nation of means and prosperity, King began a national crusade against legislation he believed stood between "the American dream" and the nation's realities. Taking his cause nationwide, King launched a national tour to recruit participants for his poverty movement. The campaign would bring poor communities from across the country to Washington, D.C. to protest the U.S. government for laws that guaranteed equal economic opportunities to every U.S. citizen.

Davies and Houston photographed the campaign. Living among protesters in a tent-city protest encampment, they recorded the movement and the daily lives of demonstrators. While the media propagated heightened images of confrontation during the civil rights movement, Davies and Houston viewed the movement from a different perspective. They studied the everyday moments of movement cultures and the quiet resistance in everyday lives.

Revelatory in their insight and approach, Davies and Houston saw civil and human rights through a different lens.