Charles Moore

(Hackleburg, Alabama, 1931 - 2010, Palm Beach Gardens, Florida)

North America, American

Charles Moore’s photographs of the struggle for equal rights in late 1950s and early 1960s Alabama helped spur the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The son of a Baptist minister, Moore served three years in the Marines, and attended the Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, California, to study fashion photography. As a staff photographer for the Montgomery Alabama Advertiser in September 1958, he witnessed a fight break out between Martin Luther King, Jr. and two policemen. The Associated Press distributed Moore’s photographs of King’s arrest. As a staff photographer for Montgomery newspapers, and later as a contract photographer for Life, he documented many landmark events of the Civil Rights movement, including the Freedom March from Tennessee to Mississippi, the campaign to desegregate Birmingham, voter registration drives in Mississippi, and the march from Montgomery to Selma, Alabama. In 1989 Moore received the first Kodak Crystal Eagle Award for Impact in Photojournalism. He published his book Powerful Days: The Civil Rights Photography of Charles Moore, in 1991. Moore’s later work focused on nature, fashion and travel photography.

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