Mar 21, 2024 - Sale 2663

Sale 2663 - Lot 147

Price Realized: $ 1,062
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
(CIVIL RIGHTS.) Group of photographs from the shooting of James Meredith in the March Against Fear. 3 photographs, 8 x 10 inches or a bit smaller, each captioned in the negative, with inked newspaper library stamps on verso; minor wear. Hernando, MS, 6 and 9 June 1966
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The activist James Meredith was hit with a shotgun blast on the second day of his March Against Fear from Memphis to Mississippi. In the first of these images, the wounded man drags himself to safety toward a car, where several other marchers and reporters are already crouching in safety. Photographer Jack Thornell took two famous AP photographs of Meredith moments before this scene, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize; although we have not found him credited for these.

In the second photo, Meredith lies face down on the roadside, apparently unconscious, as his press secretary and a fellow marcher call for help. The final photo is from three days later: "Two Negro prisoners from DeSoto County search the underbrush for evidence in the area where James Meredith was ambushed." They had found two spent shotgun shells, and were looking for a third.

Meredith survived the attack. Martin Luther King and others completed the march on his behalf, and Meredith was able to join them in Jackson nineteen days later.