Civil Rights Childhood: Picturing Liberation in African American Photobooks

(Paperback)

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Childhood joy, pleasure, and creativity are not often associated with the civil rights movement. Their ties to the movement may have faded from historical memory, but these qualities received considerable photographic attention in that tumultuous era. Katharine Capshaw's "Civil Rights Childhood "reveals how the black child has been--and continues to be--a social agent that demands change.Because children carry a compelling aura of human value and potential, images of African American children in the wake of "Brown v. Board of Education" had a powerful effect on the fight for civil rights. In the iconography of Emmett Till and the girls murdered in the 1963 Birmingham church bombings, Capshaw explores the function of children's photographic books and the image of the black child in social justice campaigns for school integration and the civil rights movement. Drawing on works ranging from documentary photography, coffee-table and art books, and popular historical narratives and photographic picture books for the very young, "Civil Rights Childhood" sheds new light on images of the child and family that portrayed liberatory models of blackness, but it also considers the role photographs played in the desire for consensus and closure with the rise of multiculturalism.Offering rich analysis, Capshaw recovers many obscure texts and photographs while at the same time placing major names like Langston Hughes, June Jordan, and Toni Morrison in dialogue with lesser-known writers. An important addition to thinking about representation and politics, "Civil Rights Childhood" ultimately shows how the photobook--and the aspirations of childhood itself--encourage cultural transformation.

Reviews

"Katharine Capshaws new studyintersecting photography, childrens literature, and the civil rights movementis a rich and strikingly original addition to the growing scholarship on African American childhood. Many scholars will appreciate and be indebted to this important work." Gerald Early, Washington University in St. Louis

"Capshaws analysis and contextualization of the works in question break entirely new ground, offering original ways of thinking about how the photographic book operated as a medium particularly suited to African-American authors, child readers, and messages about civil rights." Julia Mickenberg, University of Texas at Austin

"This is an important and engaging book that offers one of the few extended discussions of depictions of black childhood. "International Review of Childrens Literature

"Civil Rights Childhood will no doubt be an influential text in our understanding of the visual representations of black childhood now and in our future."MELUS

"A fascinating, well-conceived and empirically rich study."Visual Studies

"To read Capshaw is. . . to receive a lesson on the cultural importance and responsibility of literary scholarship. Civil Rights Childhood not only advances our scholarly understanding of the politics of childhood, but also enables readers to better contextualize so many of the images and injustices we continue to encounter."International Research Society for Childrens Literature

"Deeply researched and engagingly written."Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth

"Civil Rights Childhood is notable for its steadfast and vocal commitment to its political project. Capshaws continual engagement with the real implications of the work she analyzes and also of her own would make this book a useful one to use in the classroom."CAA Reviews

"Impeccably researched. Capshaw does some incredibly impressive literary recovery work, shedding light on texts completely unfamiliar to many contemporary scholars of either childrens literature or African American studies."Childrens Literature Association Quarterly

Author Bio

Katharine Capshaw is associate professor of English at the University of Connecticut, Storrs. She is the author of Childrens Literature of the Harlem Renaissance, winner of the Childrens Literature Associations 2004 award for best scholarly book.