Special Reception and conversation with photographer Matt Herron and UCSC professor Martin Berger. There will be a booksigning for Matt Herron's recent book, Mississippi Eyes.
Matt Herron has been a photojournalist since 1962, and his pictures have appeared in virtually every major picture magazine in the world. Based in Mississippi in the early 60's, he covered the Civil Rights struggle for Life, Look, Time, Newsweek, and the Saturday Evening Post, as well as providing pictures for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In 1964 he founded and directed the Southern Documentary Project, a team of five photographers that attempted to document the process of social change in the South. In 1965, he won the World Press Photo Contest for a civil rights photograph.
The exhibition documents the 1965 freedom march from Selma to Montgomery, the most significant of all civil rights marches and the one that led directly to the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Voting Rights Act outlawed the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states after the Civil War, including literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting.
Free and open to the public.
Parking permit required. $4