Fitch Mockup 1

M Bob Fitch was a student at the Pacific School of Religion in the mid-1960s o v when he began his career as an activist photographer. Trained to be a Protestant e m minister and expected to take a pulpit, he says, “Photojournalism seduced me. e n Movements for Change t It is a compelling combination of visual aesthetics, potent communication, s f o The Bob Fitch Photography Archive at Stanford and storytelling. It is one way to support the organizing for social justice that r C is transforming our lives and future.” h a Shortly after working for the Glide Foundation in San Francisco, Fitch be - n g came a staff photographer for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference e (sclc) T , led by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Traveling throughout Alabama, h “In recent decades, historians have given increasing attention to the e B Mississippi, and Georgia, Fitch documented movement events, including o role of talented photographers and artists who were both inspired by b community organizing, violence against African Americans, voter registration, F i social movements and took them as sources of inspiration. Bob Fitch t c and political campaigns. His images and stories were shipped to national h P has been associated with a succession of the 20th century’s most h African American publishing outlets that could neither afford nor risk sending o t significant social justice movements. His photographic archive will o g reporters to the South. Many of his best images document the courageous r a become a major attraction for any researcher interested in the social p contribution made to the civil rights movement by the men, women, and h y transformation of the United States since the early 1960s.” A children who organized in the cause of freedom in their local communities. r c h i —Clayborne Carson Fitch returned to California in 1966 and began to document U.S. peace and v e a Professor & Director, Martin Luther King Jr. social justice activities including Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker houses t S Research and Education Institute, Stanford University t of hospitality; Pete Seeger and the Clearwater Campaign; the first congres - a n f o sional campaign of California Congressman Ron Dellums; and the organizing r d efforts of Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers union. The 2002 Cesar Cover: Chavez stamp issued by the U.S. Post Office is a rendering of a Fitch photo. Farmers pause to observe and greet marchers along the route of the Meredith March Throughout the 1980s and 1990s Fitch worked in a variety of human services Against Fear. Mississippi, Summer 1966. programs for the State of California. He photographed less, but continued to Inside front cover: actively “use any media necessary” to support organizing efforts. After leaving Dorothy Cotton, Education Director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, state service, he settled in Santa Cruz, California where he worked for the teaches literacy skills to adult women students. Camden, Alabama, 1966. Resource Center for Nonviolence (rcnv) , a thirty-year-old community-based nonprofit that Inside back cover: supports various local and national peace and Cesar Chavez waves an American flag to counter Red-baiting during an organizing social justice programs. Fitch currently lives in rally. To his right are an unidentified activist (speaking into microphone) and Watsonville, California, where he continues to Marshall Ganz (wearing glasses). Ganz was a Chavez confidant for many years work in behalf of organized labor and peace and and garnered tremendous support and respect from the farmworker community justice campaigns. in places like Salinas and Watsonville, California. Directly behind the speaker (in plaid shirt) is Bill Kircher, AFL-CIO Director of Organizing and liaison to the —Leslie G. Kelen, Executive Director of the UFW, and members of the Seafarers Union. Watsonville, California, 1974. Center for Documentary Expression and Art Photograph by David Bacon $25.00 stanford university libraries ISBN 978-0-911221-54-1 52500> 9780911221541 Movements for Change Movements for Change The Bob Fitch Photography Archive at Stanford stanford university libraries 2014 Contents 7 Acquiring the Bob Fitch Photography Archive RobertoTrujillo 9 Placing the Fitch Archive in Stanford’s Special Collections BenStone 13 Introduction BobFitch Published by the Stanford University Libraries in conjunction with the exhibition Movementsfor photographs Change:TheBobFitchPhotographyArchiveatStanford Peterson Gallery & Munger Rotunda 16 The Civil Rights Movement in the South | 1965 –1970 Cecil H. Green Library, Stanford University Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian September 14, 2014 through January 19, 2015. Leadership Conference 19 Copyright © 2014 by the Board of Trustees Paving the Way for Black Candidates 27 of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Voter Education and Registration 32 Interview and biography of Bob Fitch on pages 73 –79 The Meredith March Against Fear 38 and back cover inside flap reprinted from ThisLightof Black Power 42 Ours:ActivistPhotographersoftheCivilRightsMovement , edited by Leslie G. Kelen, copyright © 2011 by The Martin Luther King Jr.’s Funeral 47 Center for Documentary Expression & Art (Jackson, Continuing the Work 51 Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2012) 1969 –1975 (www.upress.state.ms.us). 52 The United Farm Workers | Designed and typeset by Becky Fischbach in Sumner Origins of the United Farm Workers 53 Stone’s Cycles family of types and Arepo titling. Organizing Farmworkers 55 Printed by Puritan Capital, Hollis, New Hampshire, and bound by New Hampshire Bindery. Edition 1,000 copies. 66 The Anti –Vietnam War Movement and The Resistance | 1967 –1970 isbn 978-0-911221-54-1 70 Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement | 1970 –1973 Frontispiece: Surroundedbypressandsupportersduringabreakinthe bob fitch oral history MeredithMarchAgainstFear,MartinLutherKingJr.shakes handswithcivilrightsactivistandMississippileaderAnnie 73 Excerpts from an Interview with Bob Fitch LeslieG.Kelen Devine.Canton,Mississippi,1966. Page 6: AlongtherouteoftheMeredithMarchAgainstFear,an enthusiasticfoot-soremarcherachievessomecomfortgoing barefoot.Mississippi,Summer1966. Acquiring the Bob Fitch Photography Archive The Stanford University Libraries acquired the Bob Fitch Photography Archive in late Fall 2013. Although I had been familiar with many of Fitch’s iconic photographs, I came to meet Bob only in 2011 after a graduate student of American history using manuscript collections on Mexican Americans asked me whether Stanford owned any of Fitch’s photographs of people involved with the United Farm Workers union. We didn’t, but the prospect was immensely appealing. So that student, Ignacio Ornelas Rodriguez, who knew Bob Fitch personally through his academic research, arranged for Bob and me to meet. It was immediately evident that Bob’s photographs could be a primary resource of great value not only to scholars and students of civil rights history, the peace movement, and labor and community organizing, but also to the individuals involved in these movements. It was also clear that the photographs would complement heavily used related collections already at Stanford. Bob Fitch has been documenting peace and justice work for close to a half century. From his first volunteer assignment for the Southern Christian Leadership Confer - ence (sclc) in Alabama in 1965, through documenting Luis Alejo’s 2010–2011 cam - paign for a seat in the California State Assembly, Fitch’s photographs are about the people who make up the movements for change. He followed them to the streets, the fields, the factories, the schools, and the churches to record their lives and work. The archive is extensive, encompassing some 275,000 images and including origi - nal film negatives, contact sheets, selected prints, color slides, audiovisual presenta - tions, digital files, and supporting non-photographic material. The archive includes iconic images that many will recognize, as well as thousands of rarely seen photo - graphs that provide context to well-known historical events. Subjects include: Martin Luther King Jr., sclc civil rights organizing in the South, and photographs of the King family during and after King’s funeral [1965–1968] David Harris, Joan Baez, the Vietnam War draft resistance movement, and the San Diego, California, Connie Vote (against the return of aircraft carrier USS Constellation to Vietnam) [1966–1971] San Francisco counterculture and communes [1965–1970] Cecil Williams and Glide Memorial Church, San Francisco [1969–1975] Daniel and Philip Berrigan, the Catonsville Nine trials, and the “underground” [1969–1970] Ron Dellums ’s first congressional campaign [1970–1971] Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement [1970–1973] Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers [1970–1975] Rural Development Assistance Program (r-dap ) of the California Department of Housing and Community Development (hcd ) [1979–1997] Resource Center for Nonviolence, Santa Cruz, California [1999–2011] Sri Lanka campaign of the Nonviolent Peaceforce mediation teams [2005] 7 Fernando Suarez del Solar and the Guerrero Azteca Peace Project march against the Iraq War Placing the Fitch Archive in Stanford’s Special Collections from Tijuana, Mexico, to the San Francisco Latino communities [2006] Luis Alejo’s campaign for California State Assembly [2010–2011] The Bob Fitch Photography Archive is housed in the Stanford University Libraries For the past three decades, the Stanford University Libraries have actively

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