(CIVIL RIGHTS) Photograph of a school desegregation confront

Sale 2697 - Lot 120

Price Realized: $ 1,500

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Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200

(CIVIL RIGHTS.) Photograph of a school desegregation confrontation on Long Island. Wire photo, 8 x 8 inches; originally captioned in negative, with caption section torn off and the text laid down on verso, along with inked and manuscript Chicago Sun-Times markings; minor wear. Malverne, NY, 4 September 1963

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The desegregation struggles of the 1950s and 1960s were hardly limited to the deep south; East Coast suburbs were notorious for their segregation. In 1963, the New York education commissioner James E. Allen ordered that all schools should be desegregated. Many local districts opposed integration, including suburban Malverne on Long Island.

The caption on verso of this photograph tells the story: "While his mother, Mrs. Madeline Thompson, argues with a white man outside predominantly all-white Davison Avenue School in Malverne . . . Gregory, 8, holds fists ready to counter whatever develops. . . . Mrs. Thompson was among Negro parents trying to enroll their children in the school. Police arrested five Negro parents and a civil rights official for staging a sit-in when officials refused to register the Negro students."

This Associated Press photo, and a variant UPI photograph taken within moments of this one, appeared in newspapers across the country on 5 September 1963, including the Syracuse Post-Standard. The Spike Lee film School Daze uses this AP image in its opening montage of historic images.