The best-known images of the civil rights struggle show black Americans as nonthreatening victims of white aggression. Though this imagery helped garner the sympathy of liberal whites in the North for the plight of blacks, it did so by preserving a picture of whites as powerful and blacks as hapless victims. Freedom Now! showcases photographs rarely seen in the mainstream media, which depict the power wielded by black men, women and children in remaking U.S. society through their activism. This exhibition has been curated by Martin Berger, Professor, History of Art and Visual Culture, UC Santa Cruz.

Unknown photographer, Woman Resisting Arrest, Birmingham, Alabama, April 14, 1963, courtesy of Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images, Los Angeles, California