Famed civil rights photojournalist dies at age 79

Photographer Ben Martin, left, poses with his friend and colleague Charles Moore during a visit in Florida a few years ago. The two covered many civil rights events together. Moore worked for Life magazine, while Martin worked for Time. ÒWe helped each other as Ôfriendly competitors,Õ Martin recalls. Moore died last Thursday at age 79. Photograph by Michelle Moore Peel:

Another 1965 image taken by Charles Moore shows a klan rally near Salisbury.

In this 1965 photograph taken by Charles Moore, Ku Klux Klan grand dragon James R. (Bob) Jones drives to a KKK rally with his Klan robe hanging in the back of his car.

By Ben Martin

For the Salisbury Post

Famed civil rights photojournalist Charles Moore, who died last week at age 79, chronicled one of the nation's most turbulent eras through searing images that captured historic confrontations and helped galvanize public attitudes against segregation.

Along with vivid photographs of violent encounters in Birmingham and Selma, Moore's widely acclaimed work included pictures of Ku Klux Klan grand dragon James R. (Bob) Jones, who lived in Rowan County, and other images of klan activities in North Carolina. He died last Thursday of complications from cognitive deficit in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.

Born Charles Lee Moore on March 9, 1931, in Hackleburg, Ala., to the Rev. Charles Walker Moore and Autie Monique Ingle, Charles Moore trained as a youthful Golden Gloves boxer and became interested in photography while studying art in high school. After high school, he was admitted to the U.S. Marine Corps School for combat photography. After three years in the Marines, Moore enrolled at the Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, Calif. In 1957, he returned to Alabama as a staff photographer at the Montgomery Advertiser, where he first covered Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the growing civil rights unrest in the South. He soon became chief photographer of both the Advertiser and the Alabama Journal, winning numerous awards and national recognition for his photography.

In 1962, Moore joined the Black Star Photo Agency staff as its Southern photographer covering the civil rights movement and other assignments. During this period, he did his first assignment for Life magazine, covering the violence leading up to the admission of the first black student, James Meredith, to the University of Mississippi under the protection of federal marshals. This began many years of assignments for Life, primarily working out of the Time-Life Miami Bureau where he also covered the civil war in the Dominican Republic and political unrest in Haiti and Venezuela, as well as continuing to cover major civil rights events in the American South.

As quoted in his induction to the University of Alabama Communications Hall of Fame, "The Marine-trained combat photographer would gain world-wide acclaim with his photographs of the confrontations on the streets of Birmingham and Selma. Television news also told the Birmingham story, but it was Moore who took the shots seen round the world: men and women and children being assaulted by billy clubs, then fire hoses, then German shepherd police dogs. These images are now iconic, a word that should be used sparingly but certainly may be used here."

The historian Arthur Schlesinger said, "The photographs of Bull Connor's police dogs lunging at the marchers in Birmingham did as much as anything to transform the national mood É" New York Senator Jacob Javits said Moore's pictures "É helped to spur passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964."

During that same era, Moore made three trips to South Vietnam, photographing the war for Life, Saturday Evening Post and Fortune magazines. The U.S. Air Force presented him with recognition for flying on combat missions, and in 1966 the Aviation/Space Writers Association in New York presented him with their award for photographs of the Vietnam air war which appeared in Life.

In 1973 Moore relocated to San Francisco from New York City, continuing to specialize in corporate/industrial and travel photography, with Southeast Asia being his special corner of the world. His subjects ranged from the Road to Mandalay in Burma and the art, music and dance of Bali to Thai Silk fashions in Bangkok. He shot oil exploration in the jungles of Sumatra and Irian Jaya; photo layouts on the economic growth of Singapore and Taiwan, two of his favorite countries, and a photo essay on a young Peace Corps volunteer working with the Iban River people, deep in the jungles of Borneo.

In 1979, he moved to the beautiful Sierra foothills gold-rush town of Columbia, Calif., where he produced many fine-art photographs and published a book on the California gold rush country titled "The Mother Lode."

In 1989, at the University of Missouri, Moore received the first "Kodak Crystal Eagle Award" for impact in photojournalism from the National Press Photographers Association, an award designed to honor a photojournalist whose coverage was responsible for impact on a vital social issue and the way it changed peoples' lives or beliefs. This recognition was for his photographic coverage of the civil rights struggle from 1958 to 1965. These images are known worldwide, and Charles was very proud that they represented the most important body of work of his career.

He was inducted into the University of Alabama Communications Hall of Fame in 2007. His civil rights images were featured at the International Festival of Photojournalism, "Visa pour l'Image" in Perpignan, France, in 2002.

His work is featured in many exhibits and collections, including: The International Center of Photography, the Howard Greenberg Gallery and the Whitney Museum, all in New York; the Smithsonian, Washington, D.C.; the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance, Los Angeles; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; the Newseum, Arlington, Va.; the Birmingham Museum of Art; the Civil Rights Institute, also in Birmingham; and the Museum of Photographic Art, San Diego.

His book "Powerful Days" (University of Alabama Press, 2002) is a compendium of his civil rights photography. A 2004 documentary film, "Charles Moore: I Fight With My Camera" is still being shown on public television stations and can also be viewed online.

Charles was represented by the photo agency, Black Star in New York City. They agency's director and Charles' longtime friend Ben Chapnick said, "He was not a cool detached photographer; rather he was viscerally involved with everything he photographed. This showed most strongly in his Civil Rights coverage in Montgomery, in Mississippi and in the Selma March. I was always impressed that someone of his generation raised in the South could take such a non-biased view on the issue of race. To Charles everyone was a person and had the right to be treated as one, not as an inferior. He did not preach it — he lived it."

Charles Moore is survived by his brother: Jim Moore, Conway, Mass.; his children, Michael Moore and April Marshall, both of Dothan, Ala.; Gary Moore, Lewisville, Texas: and Michelle Moore Peel, West Palm Beach, Fla.; seven grandchildren and three great grandchildren.

The family plans a memorial service/celebration of life in Florence, Ala., at a later date.

Photographer Ben Martin of Salisbury was a close friend and colleague of photojournalist Charles Moore.