Now the stuff of history books, the iconic photographs of the
Civil Rights Movement in the United States were once front-page
news: snarling dogs, baton-wielding police, high-pressure fire
hoses, and more used to keep African-American men, women, and
children from realizing the promise of the American dream. White
Northerners saw such images and pushed for legislation such as
the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965
to aid African Americans, bringing to an end that sad chapter of
American history. Or so the story goes. In Seeing through Race:
A Reinterpretation of Civil Rights Photography, Martin A. Berger
argues that the story in the history books isn’t true. Instead,
Berger believes, those images portrayed African-Americans as
weak and incapable of saving themselves—a portrayal that
continues to prevent true equality and plagues race relations to
this day. “With great consistency,” Berger writes, “white media
outlets in the North published photographs throughout the 1960s
that reduced