Advancing the Civil Rights Movement by DiBari Michael;DiBari Michael Jr.;

Author:DiBari, Michael;DiBari, Michael, Jr.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic
Published: 2012-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Miller was later arrested and taken into custody. Four photographs accompanied the story about the attack. The images, taken by Will Counts of the Arkansas Democrat, showed L. Alex Wilson being attacked by the crowd. Wilson, an African-American editor of the Tri-State Defender, was dressed in a suit and a tie and refused to run from the rioters. He was punched, kicked, choked, and hit in the head with a brick from behind. Roberts and Klibanoff described how Wilson’s refusal to show fear provoked the mob even more. Wilson had been trained as a Marine in World War II, worked as a reporter in Korea, and covered the trial of the Emmett Till lynching, all of which helped him to hold his ground.[30]

The photographs that Life published with the Little Rock story were graphic and violent. The first in the series showed the well-dressed Wilson, hat in hand, being grabbed from behind by a middle-aged white man. In the second photograph, a crowd of men in white T-shirts and angry faces watched as Wilson was depicted with a man on his back applying a “stranglehold” to his neck. The caption read, “Go home, you S.O.B. nigger.” In the third photograph, Wilson was on the ground, being man-handled by a white agitator. A second man, holding a brick, was about to attack, over Wilson’s left shoulder. Head down, hat in his hand, and one knee on the ground, Wilson struggled as the crowd of white men watched. The caption stated that police officers nearby did nothing to protect him or jail his attackers. The fourth photograph showed Wilson struggling to get off the ground as the man with the brick extends his foot into Wilson’s chest. The white men in the background continue to watch the action.

Image 4.3.  A photograph of L. Alex Wilson being attacked outside of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, was published in Life on October 7, 1957. Arkansas Democrat photographer Will Counts took the image.

(Photograph courtesy of the Archives Photograph Collection, University of Indiana.)

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