1,000 Words
A Message from the Editor, Victoria L. Valentine...

     When Coretta Scott King died, The Crisis sought photographs of Martin Luther King Jr.’s widow from countless resources. We wanted to find editorial and documentary photographs to accompany the story veteran journalist Vern E. Smith reported on her life and legacy, which appears on page 16. In addition, we needed a special image for the cover of the issue

     Most of the photographs the staff culled, we had seen before. The search did turn up a number of gems, but few offered the impact and composition we wanted to portray on our cover. Then Wayne N. Fitzpatrick, our creative director, contacted noted photographer Chester Higgins Jr. He sent us the gorgeous black-and-white image we chose for the cover of our March/April issue.

     In the days following King’s death on Jan. 30, much of the media coverage described her as having a certain dignified grace. She held her head high after enduring the assassination of her husband, facing the challenge of rearing four children alone and, amid periodic criticism, shepherding the legacy of Dr. King.

     Higgins’s 1970 image of Coretta Scott King — a tight portrait shot with her chin raised just so, her eyes gazing beyond the camera, her earrings a bold, timeless choice — conveys all of the above and more.

     As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. This I believe is true, particularly with black-and-white photography. Somehow the absence of “color” seems to make the image more rich and real, giving the viewer direct access to the essence of the subject.

    Through the decades, Black life and history have come alive in photographs — from daguerreotypes of slaves in the mid-19th century to James VanDerZee’s portraits of Blacks during the Harlem Renaissance to the documentary news photos from the Civil Rights Movement.

    I don’t think any of us — whether we lived through the civil rights era or have since studied it — would have the same understanding of the vision and bravery of the young activists who faced down Jim Crow, fire hoses and police dogs if it weren’t for the photographs. The first-person accounts from those who participated in the movement and the books that have been written about the period certainly breathe life into the experience, but the photographs are transporting.

    Exceptional contemporary photography continues to have the same impact — consider the images from Hurricane Katrina or the photos of Black farmers featured on page 24 of this issue.

    The photo essay by John Francis Ficara documents the struggles of the dwindling class of Black farm owners. Taken in mostly southern states from 1999 to 2002, the black-and-white images convey more about the bureaucracy and racist lending practices generations of Black farmers have faced at the hands of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, than any newspaper account. As journalist Juan Williams notes in his introductory essay to Ficara’s coffee table book, Black Farmers in America, “there is much sweetness…but also a trace of bitterness” in these photos.

    As I write, news of the passing of legendary photographer Gordon Parks, 93, has been announced. His images of Black America — poverty, segregation, Malcolm X’s Harlem, Muhammad Ali — documented the last century. I am a huge fan of Parks’s work and had the privilege of interviewing him on Oct. 24, 2005. Our conversation, which took place in his New York apartment, appeared in our November/December issue. What drew him to photography — his “main interest” — he told me, was “the welfare of people.”

    Probably his most famous image, “American Gothic, Washington, D.C.,” which captured Ella Watson, a cleaning woman, holding a broom and mop before the American flag in 1942, speaks volumes. If a picture is worth a thousand words, Parks has left us with the equivalent of millions.

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