ATLANTA—Neal Broffman said making his film Voices of Freedom felt "incredibly satisfying on many levels, some easy to talk about, some not."
His father, Morton Broffman, was one of the photographers who recorded the Freedom Summer and the events that followed. His earliest memories are of his father's darkroom, where he was impressed by his father's sense of justice, and his using his camera to have an influence on the world. His father died in 1992.
Julian Cox is the Photography Curator for the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. He assembled 130 photographs from famous and unknown photographers, from newspaper archives, private collections and attics. They tell the story of the American civil rights movement, which showed that "Non violence is a way to overcome incredible odds, incredible oppression," said Cox.
He asked Neal Broffman to make a supporting film. Broffman, a former CNN producer, is interested in "compassion, empathy, and the idea that our humanity compels us to reach out to those less fortunate," said Cox.
Two of the most powerful images in the exhibit were taken by the elder Broffman. Police bend a man's hand behind his back. The next picture shows several men dragging him face down on the ground with his feet in the air.
"There is something in the American character … that would be repulsed by such an image, that would have to sympathize with the victim," says Hank Thomas in the film.
Road to Freedom: Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement, 1956-1968 fascinates with famous and obscure stories. Rosa Parks sits on her Montgomery bus, and a group of girls, some as young as twelve, are spirited away to a stockade in the middle of the night. They had been annoying their jailer by singing and dancing to pass the time, so the sheriff exiled them.
Released After Photos Are Published
According to Sandra Russell Mansfield, after a photographer hid in the trunk of a car to take pictures of her and the others, they were released. They smile at the photographer through the stockade bars, seemingly full of mirth.
Hank Thomas calmly recounts an aborted Freedom Riders trip. When he saw the children on parent's shoulders and the barbecue grills set up near the Greyhound bus station "That's when I knew this would be very dangerous." First, the crowd beat the reporters and photographers. Men cut the tires. They broke the windows. The driver pulled to the side of the road, where a firebomb sailed though the rear window, and with the bus in flames, the crowd held the doors shut.
Explosion
The gas tank exploding saved their lives—the mob holding the doors shut ran away when it happened, and everyone on board lived to tell the tale.
Broffman heard the "most courageous people suffering the most outrageous insults," yet speaking without bitterness.
He found that many of the people who speak in the film have spent the rest of their lives working for justice.
John Lewis, Atlanta's long-serving congressman, said he goes back to Selma, to Philadelphia, and to Americus, Georgia, "to be inspired and renewed, to continue to build a truly interracial democracy."
More than one activist in the film said the journalists who recorded the events helped them end segregation. Danny Lyon, one of the photographers, said "To be asked to do something was such an honor. Like being at a baseball game and they ask you to play."
The High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia hosts the exhibit until October 5.
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