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The Racial Bias Built Into Photography

Sarah Lewis explores the relationship between racism and the camera.

By Sarah Lewis

This week, Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study is hosting Vision & Justice , a two-day conference on the role of the arts in relation to citizenship, race and justice. Organized by Sarah Lewis, a Harvard professor, participants include Ava DuVernay, Henry Louis Gates Jr. , Wynton Marsalis and Carrie Mae Weems. Aperture Magazine has issued a free publication this year, titled “Vision & Justice: A Civic Curriculum” and edited by Ms. Lewis, from which we republish her essay on photography and racial bias.

— James Estrin

Can a photographic lens condition racial behavior? I wondered about this as I was preparing to speak about images and justice on a university campus.

“We have a problem. Your jacket is lighter than your face,” the technician said from the back of the one-thousand-person amphitheater-style auditorium. “That’s going to be a problem for lighting.” She was handling the video recording and lighting for the event.

It was an odd comment that reverberated through the auditorium, a statement of the obvious that sounded like an accusation of wrongdoing. Another technician standing next to me stopped adjusting my microphone and jolted in place. The phrase hung in the air, and I laughed to resolve the tension in the room then offered back just the facts:

“Well, everything is lighter than my face. I’m black.”

“Touché,” said the technician organizing the event. She walked toward the lighting booth. My smile dropped upon realizing that perhaps the technician was actually serious. I assessed my clothes — a light beige jacket and black pants worn many times before in similar settings.

As I walked to the greenroom, the executive running the event came over and apologized for what had just occurred, but to me, the exchange was a gift.

My work looks at how the right to be recognized justly in a democracy has been tied to the impact of images and representation in the public realm. It examines how the construction of public pictures limits and enlarges our notion of who counts in American society. It is the subject of my core curriculum class at Harvard University. It also happened to be the subject of my presentation that day.

It is what my grandfather knew when he was expelled from a New York City public high school in 1926 for asking why their history textbooks did not reflect the multiracial world around him. The teacher had told him that African-Americans in particular had done nothing to merit inclusion. He didn’t accept that answer. His pride was so wounded after being expelled that he never went back to high school. Instead, he went on to become an artist, inserting images of African-Americans where he thought they should — and knew they did — exist. Two generations later, my courses focus on the very material he was expelled for asking about in class.

After the presentation was over, the technician walked toward me as I was leaving the auditorium. I had nearly forgotten that she was there. She apologized for what had transpired earlier and asked if one day she might sit in on my class.

What had happened in this exchange? It can be hard to technically light brown skin against light colors. Yet, instead of seeking a solution, the technician had decided that my body was somehow unsuitable for the stage.

Her comment reminded me of the unconscious bias that was built into photography. By categorizing light skin as the norm and other skin tones as needing special corrective care, photography has altered how we interact with each other without us realizing it.

Photography is not just a system of calibrating light, but a technology of subjective decisions. Light skin became the chemical baseline for film technology, fulfilling the needs of its target dominant market. For example, developing color-film technology initially required what was called a Shirley card. When you sent off your film to get developed, lab technicians would use the image of a white woman with brown hair named Shirley as the measuring stick against which they calibrated the colors. Quality control meant ensuring that Shirley’s face looked good. It has translated into the color-balancing of digital technology. In the mid-1990s, Kodak created a multiracial Shirley Card with three women, one black, one white, and one Asian, and later included a Latina model, in an attempt intended to help camera operators calibrate skin tones. These were not adopted by everyone since they coincided with the rise of digital photography. The result was film emulsion technology that still carried over the social bias of earlier photographic conventions.

Concordia University professor Lorna Roth’s research has shown that it took complaints from corporate furniture and chocolate manufacturers in the 1960s and 1970s for Kodak to start to fix color photography’s bias. Earl Kage, Kodak’s former manager of research and the head of Color Photo Studios, received complaints during this time from chocolate companies saying that they “weren’t getting the right brown tones on the chocolates” in the photographs. Furniture companies also were not getting enough variation between the different color woods in their advertisements. Concordia University professor Roth’s research shows that Kage had also received complaints before from parents about the quality of graduation photographs — the color contrast made it nearly impossible to capture a diverse group — but it was the chocolate and furniture companies that forced Kodak’s hand. Kage admitted, “It was never black flesh that was addressed as a serious problem at the time.”

Fuji became the film of choice for professional photographers shooting subjects with darker tones. The company developed color transparency film that was superior to Kodak for handling brown skin. Yet, for the average consumer, Kodak Gold Max became appealing. This new film was billed as being “able to photograph the details of a dark horse in lowlight,” a coded message for being able to photograph people of color. When I first learned about this history from my own father, a photographer, well before I learned of this history from professional photographers, I finally understood why he went, almost obsessively, to the camera store down the street from our apartment in Manhattan in the 1980s to buy Kodak Gold Max film to capture the broad range of skin tones in our family.

Digital photography has led to some advancements. There are now dual skin-tone color-balancing capabilities and also an image-stabilization feature — eliminating the natural shaking that occurs when we hold the camera by hand and reducing the need for a flash. Yet, this solution creates other problems. If the light source is artificial, digital technology will still struggle with darker skin. It is a merry-go round of problems leading to solutions leading to problems. Researchers such as Joy Buolamwini of the MIT Media Lab have been advocating to correct the algorithmic bias that exists in digital imaging technology. You see it whenever dark skin is invisible to facial recognition software. The same technology that misrecognizes individuals is also used in services for loan decisions and job interview searches. Yet, algorithmic bias is the end stage of a longstanding problem. Award-winning cinematographer Bradford Young, who has worked with pioneering director Ava DuVernay and others, has created new techniques for lighting subjects during the process of filming. Ava Berkofsky has offered her tricks for lighting the actors on the HBO series Insecure — including tricks with moisturizer (reflective is best since dark skin can absorb more light than fair skin). Postproduction corrections also offer answers that involve digitizing the film and then color correcting it. All told, rectifying this inherited bias requires a lot of work.

What is preventing us from correcting the inherited bias in camera and film technology? Is there not a fortune to gain by the technology giant who is first to market?

In the meantime, artists themselves are creating the technology for more just representation. We are hearing more about issues with race and technology as we consider the importance of inclusive representation with the success of films from “Black Panther” (2018) to “Crazy Rich Asians” (2018). Frederick Douglass knew it long ago: Being seen accurately by the camera was a key to representational justice. He became the most photographed American man in the 19th century as a way to create a corrective image about race and American life.

Yet, for many, the question is still: Why does inclusive representation matter so much? The answers come through viral examples such as the image of a young 2-year-old Parker Curry gazing up at Michelle Obama’s portrait by Amy Sherald at the National Portrait Gallery, her mouth dropped open, convinced that Mrs. Obama was a queen. Former White House photographer Pete Souza has captured an image of a young boy, just 5 years old, who wanted to know if his hair texture really did match that of the president. You can’t become what you can’t accurately see.

I often wonder what would have come of more time to talk with the technician. Her eyes were glassy as she said goodbye. Mine were, too, grateful for her vulnerability. The exchange was the result of decades of socialization that we often don’t acknowledge has occurred whenever we look through the lens.

Race changed sight in America. This is what my grandfather knew. This is what we experience. There is no need for our photographic technology to foster it.

Sarah Lewis is an assistant professor at Harvard University in the department of history of art and architecture and the department of African and African-American studies. She is an author, a curator and the guest editor of the “Vision & Justice” issue of Aperture (2016), which received the 2017 Infinity Award for Critical Writing and Research from the International Center of Photography. This week’s event grows out of her research and teaching in her course, Vision & Justice: The Art of Citizenship.

Follow @ nytimesphoto and @sarahelizalewis on Twitter. You can also find us on Facebook and Instagram .

This article has been revised to provide more context.

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At the Black Lives Matter Protests in NYC: A Photo Essay

Rachel cobb documents 10 days in the streets of new york.

In the days following the killing of George Floyd by white policeman Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis on May 25, protests erupted across the US and many parts of the world. After weeks of Covid-19 confinement, hundreds of thousands poured into the streets to express their outrage, to demand police reforms, and to fight for social justice. I’ve been documenting this moment.

–text and photos by Rachel Cobb

Ibrahim Diop, 20, at a rally in Washington Square Park, June 6, 2020 “The principles of how this country was founded—the stolen land, the people who were stolen from Africa—this country is rooted in racism. I would like everyone to be aware of the skeletons they’re walking on.”

Jada Cooper, 20, at the Memorial Prayer for George Floyd, Cadman Plaza, June 4, 2020: “We’re tired of our youth being afraid of cops—our people dying, our youth dying. Our boys need to be able to make mistakes.”

Protestor arrested in Lower Manhattan, May 29, 2020

Minutes before 8 pm curfew begins, police watch protestors at Barclays Center, Brooklyn, June 6, 2020.

Marie Blanchard, 34, at the Memorial Prayer for George Floyd: “The whole world is screaming and crying for the same things we’ve been saying for generations.”

March past Trump Tower, Columbus Circle, Manhattan, May 30, 2020.

Justin Maffett, 26, says “the 1033 program is probably the most significant vehicle for fueling the militarization of police in America that you have never heard of. It is directly responsible for putting weapons, machinery, equipment and technology made for the war zone on American streets. Write to your congressman and demand that they defund and eliminate the 1033 program.”

A protestor faces the police at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge in Lower Manhattan. May 29, 2020.

Diana Rose, 48, says “a badge does not give you the right to murder. Any cop that has a history of abuse should be put in a database of priors.”

Times Square, May 30, 2020.

Jibrill Morris, 26, at the Memorial Prayer for George Floyd: “I have five younger siblings and I promise they will not have to face the injustices I have. Not one more.”

Heidi G., 31, would like to see “police reform [that] would include the repeal of article 50-A that makes it so that police misconduct records are confidential unless you go through court order. If that’s repealed, the public would have access to the records. And more support for the police—mental health checks.”

On the first weekend after George Floyd’s murder, New Yorkers protested throughout the city. Some demonstrations turned violent and dozens of police vehicles were burned. May 30, 2020.

Anthony, a retired policeman hired as a security guard at the Soho Louis Vuitton store calls for police backup. May 31, 2020.

Outside Louis Vuitton store, Soho, Manhattan May 31, 2020.

Union Square, Manhattan May 30, 2020.

Police arrive late to the scene in the Soho neighborhood of Manhattan. In New York City, as elsewhere, the majority of protests have been peaceful, however, in the first few days, rage sometimes gave way to destruction. Soho, May 31, 2020.

Bobby C., 37: “I would like to see police reform nationwide, accountability for police who use excessive force. I believe the arrest of four officers in the George Floyd case was the beginning. Systematic reform is needed nationwide.”

Andrew Akinmola, 16: “Any time a black person steps outside of their house, they’re immediately accused whereas a white person is free to do anything they want.”

At 10:33, two and a half hours after curfew was imposed on New York City, a white man jogs past a dozen police cars on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. June 4, 2020

Michael Thomas, 53, hopes that “white America hears our voice. You don’t have to dehumanize a person to lock them up. You can still do it with their dignity intact.”

Nysheva-Starr, 43, at a protest at Barclays Center, Brooklyn, would like to see “the implementation of a policy that will hold officers accountable whenever they take a life.” June 6, 2020.

Rebecca Oginni, 32, at the Memorial Prayer for George Floyd: “I realize how powerful the police unions are. I want people to absolutely demand transparency in their local communities from their local police department.”

Isaiah D., 25, the Memorial Prayer for George Floyd, hopes “that we can imagine a better world is possible and we can collectively manifest that world.”

Paulette P., 82, waits for a bus to take her to lower Manhattan, so she can join a protest, 10:05 PM, June 7, 2020. “After the 60s we saw some change. I was in Paris in 1968 on the Left Bank when they were protesting and throwing paving stones. My wish is that this will never happen again.”

__________________________________________

All photos ©2020RachelCobb; @rachelcobbphoto .

Rachel Cobb

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• HISTORY & CULTURE
• RACE IN AMERICA

Why does this legendary Black photographer's work continue to resonate today?

Recent protests in St. Paul evoke the work of Gordon Parks, an influential 20th-century interpreter of African American life and culture.

Gordon Parks became one of the 20th century's most influential interpreters of African-American life and culture. Here, a 1948 self-portrait.

Sometimes one of the most interesting things about a photograph is what's just outside the frame. That's the case with the portrait of Deveonte Joseph that Nathan Aguirre made on a street corner in St. Paul, Minnesota a month ago during the protests after the murder of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, by Derek Chauvin, a white Minneapolis police officer.

Across the street from where Joseph stood, barely outside of the camera's view, is a building that connects him to another young black man who lived in St. Paul nearly a century ago. The building is Gordon Parks High School . Its namesake was a man who, as a photojournalist, became one of the mid-20th century's most influential interpreters of African American life and culture. The connection between Joseph and the school reveals much about the enduring nature of racial oppression in the United States and, at the same time, allows us to think about how that oppression and resistance to it have been represented in photography.

Joseph's portrait, which I wrote about soon after Aguirre made it , captured the public's imagination. It quickly went viral on social media and attracted the attention of mainstream news outlets such as CNN . It's easy to see why. In the photograph, Joseph was incongruously dressed in an academic cap and gown, stylishly torn blue jeans, and basketball shoes, as if he were ready for both a graduation ceremony and the party afterward. Although he was isolated in the center of the frame, enough commotion was visible behind and to the sides of where he stands -- men in riot gear, police cars, a large emergency vehicle of some sort -- to suggest that a civil disturbance was nearby. Joseph's outward calm belied the chaos that surrounded him. For many, the portrait symbolized a hopeful future for young black Americans " as well as our failure to fulfill the promises we make to our youth ," as the writer Connie Wang put it.

Left: This photo of Deveonte Joseph, a teenager from St. Paul, went viral during protests after the death of George Floyd. Right: Parks, center, moved to St. Paul as a teenager to live with relatives after his mother's death in 1928.

The evening's chaos was all too real. Protesters, angered by Floyd's murder, took to the streets. Some smashed the windows of shops and other businesses and made off with merchandise. Arsonists, perhaps at the scene only to cause mayhem , set buildings on fire. The next day's St. Paul Pioneer Press reported that 170 businesses were looted or burned on the evening of May 28 and the early morning of May 29 . One of those "businesses" was Gordon Parks High School.

When I wrote about the portrait three weeks ago, I didn't know that the school was so close nor that it had been damaged on that very night. These facts, as small as they are in the great scheme of things, are more than mere footnotes. Parks would have felt a kinship with Joseph despite the decades that separate their time in St. Paul. Both men struggled to finish high school (Parks never did), to climb out of poverty, and to live with dignity in a world where the odds were stacked against them. They also share a determination to transform the visual representation of African Americans—that is, to change what is said about them in pictures.

Joseph's backstory is at least as compelling as his portrait. He comes from a large family and is the first among his siblings to graduate from high school. Getting to that point, he told Wang, was hard. "I’ve fought through it, but I did it," he said. "I graduated." It's no surprise that Joseph struggled to finish school. The Minneapolis-St. Paul area has what one commentator has called some of the nation's " greatest racial disparities in housing and income and education ."

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Yet Joseph did graduate and was consciously making a statement when he put on his cap and gown on the evening that he was photographed. CNN reported that he dressed as he did because he wanted to challenge what he saw as the misrepresentation of African Americans. " People look at my people like we're down, like we don't have anything. I just don't think we're respected enough ," he told CNN. He is also someone with ambitious plans for the future. He told the St. Paul Pioneer Press that his dream after high school was to study animation in art school, although his inability to afford tuition payments might prevent it. (After his portrait went viral, friends established a fundraising campaign for him.)

All of this would have been familiar to Parks. Racial discrimination in St. Paul created barriers to education and upward mobility that he fought and eventually overcame. He moved to St. Paul, from his birthplace, Fort Scott, Kansas, as a 16-year-old after his mother's death in 1928. Although his father sent him to the city to live with relatives, he found himself homeless and on his own after an argument with an older brother-in-law. For the next decade and a half, he bounced from one menial job to another. The racial discrimination in employment that he encountered in St. Paul prevented him from finding the economic security that would allow him to finish high school.

Parks' work documenting Chicago's impoverished South Side won him a fellowship in photography with the Farm Security Administration, where he photographed life in the Great Depression.

None of this stopped Parks from dreaming, nor did it blunt his ambition. When he discovered photography and found that he had an enormous talent for it, he devoured technical manuals and pored over copies of popular picture magazines such as Life . The photojournalism and documentary photography that he saw in magazines convinced him that photography could serve several purposes. It could be a way out of poverty, a mode of artistic expression, and a tool with which to fight racial injustice.

Although Parks would have seen a reflection of himself in the portrait of Joseph, he would also have understood the protesters who broke shop windows and carried away merchandise. He had been an angry young man. In his memoir, A Choice of Weapons , he acknowledged that "scalding experiences" with racism and white brutality in Kansas and Minnesota made him "quietly but dangerously violent."

Parks did not remain so volatile, of course. His memoir traces the path that led him to choose "love, dignity, and hard work" as the weapons with which he would fight racism. But he wrote that he would always "recall the elaborate conspiracy of evil that once beckoned" him toward violence and an early death.

Parks' anger connects him to the protesters who contributed to the chaos that surrounded Joseph when Aguirre made his portrait. In a recent the New Yorker article, Elizabeth Alexander refers to today's young African Americans as the " Trayvon Generation ." This is the protesters’ generation and Joseph's generation, one that has always understood the fragility of black life in America. They knew that a white policeman or private citizen might kill them at almost any moment, with impunity. They had seen it happen to Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and so many others. "They always knew these stories," Alexander writes. The stories "instructed them that anti-black hatred and violence were never far," and they "were the ground soil of their rage."

Parks remembers hearing about the Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921, when white mobs killed African Americans and destroyed an entire community. Here, a Black man lays on the ground beside train tracks after the massacre. His fate is unknown.

The black cohort into which Parks was born possessed a similar knowledge. We can call them "the lynching generation." Parks' birth coincided with what Rayford Logan and later historians have called " the nadir of race relations .” This was the Jim Crow era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the position of black people in American society was at its lowest point since the end of slavery and when lynchings were near their peak. African Americans were both segregated and terrorized. The Equal Justice Initiative has counted more than 4,000 racial terror lynchings in the period between the end of Reconstruction, in 1877, and the dawn of the modern Civil Rights era in 1950. In Fort Scott, Parks' birthplace, Jim Crow segregation was the abiding custom, if not the law. Lynchings were well known in the town and the surrounding Bourbon County . There were at least eight lynchings between the end of the Civil War and the 1930s, including one, in 1867, in which three black men lost their lives. Another black man was lynched in neighboring Crawford County, in 1920, when Parks was eight.

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The knowledge that Black lives mattered little to the white community affected Parks from an early age. Two of his earliest memories involved the potential lynching of a cousin and the destruction of an entire black community. In A Choice of Weapons , he remembers hearing about the 1921 massacre of members of the African American community and destruction of the black business district in Tulsa, Oklahoma , 160 miles from Fort Scott. White mobs killed scores, perhaps hundreds, of African American citizens, destroyed homes and businesses, and left 10,000 people homeless. At about the same time, a cousin of Parks’s narrowly escaped being lynched after killing a white man who had called him "n-----." On the run, the cousin stopped by the Parks home one night looking for food. He left that same night, and the family never heard from him again.

The incident made a deep impression on Parks. He wrote that he "would lie awake nights wondering if the whites had killed my cousin, praying that they hadn't. ... And my days were filled with fantasies in which I helped him escape imaginary white mobs." These episodes were, as Alexander put it about the Trayvon Generation, "the ground soil" of his rage. And they would have given him insight into the psychology of the protesters who turned to violence.

In "American Gothic," a parody of the iconic 1930 oil painting, Parks sought to capture how older African Americans dealt with the daily indignities of life and call out the country's racial inequality. It became one of Parks' most famous photographs and gave a rare spotlight to a black female worker.

Parks learned to contain his anger and channel it into his work as a photographer, writer, and, decades later, a filmmaker. During the 20 years that he spent as the only African American on the staff at Life, he produced nearly a dozen lengthy photo essays that brought the reality of American racism home to the magazine's millions of mostly white, mostly middle-class readers. He produced one of his most effective stories specifically to answer a question that he heard so often in the late 1960s: " Why are those people rioting ?"

The "riots" were uprisings against police brutality and racial injustice that erupted in the black neighborhoods of towns and cities throughout the nation during the mid- to late 1960s and that reached their peak during the summer of 1967. Scores of people lost their lives; property worth hundreds of millions of dollars was destroyed. The roots of the uprisings lay deep within America's political, social, and economic structures. Parks knew, however, that photography has difficulty making structures of oppression visible. As he said in a 1983 interview , the camera could instead "expose the evils of racism, the evils of poverty... by showing the people who had suffered most under it." So Parks answered the question "why?" by introducing his readers to members of a single impoverished family, the Fontenelles. He said that he wanted to show what their lives were like, "the real, vivid horror of it" and "the dignity of the people who manage, somehow, to live with it."

With his series, "A Harlem Family," which appeared in Life in March 1968, Parks answered the question, "Why are those people rioting?" without ever showing a protest.

" A Harlem Family " appeared in Life in March 1968. It contained no photographs of protesters, uprisings, or violent cops. Instead Parks kept readers almost entirely within the walls of the Fontenelles' apartment. His black and white photographs were marked by high contrast and deep shadows. In many, the details were hard to make out. The expressions on the faces of the Fontenelles were easy to read, however, showing despair, anguish, bone-deep weariness, and a grim perseverance. The effect was impressionistic rather than conventionally documentary. Parks appealed to his readers' emotions more than their intellects.

The text that he wrote to accompany his photographs opened with a direct challenge to his readers. "For I am you," he wrote, "staring back from a mirror of poverty and despair, of revolt and freedom. Look at me and know that to destroy me is to destroy yourself." White people, he implied, would have to shoulder the burden of ending the racism that they had created. But Parks also envisioned a better and shared future for blacks and whites. "I too am America," he continued. "America is me. ...There is yet a chance for us to live in peace beneath these restless skies."

Readers' responses to "A Harlem Family" were strong and immediate. I've read the hundreds of letters that they wrote to Life and to Parks himself, now housed in the Gordon Parks Papers at the Wichita State University library. Readers overwhelmingly said that the photo-essay had moved them, often to tears. Many asked how they could help the Fontenelles. Some included money that they asked the magazine to forward to the family. Life added funds of its own to the readers' contributions and bought a house for the family in a middle-class African-American neighborhood in Queens. Heartache followed the Fontenelles out of Harlem, however, and what should have been a blessing turned to tragedy when the house burned , killing Norman Fontenelle, the father of the family, and one of his sons.

There was no easy resolution to the Fontenelles' story—just as there has been no resolution to the racial injustice that Parks faced and that sparked the nationwide uprisings in the 1960s and this year. Racism persists, protest endures, and photography continues to play an important role. It can't solve our problems, but it can keep them in our line of sight and encourage us to act.

Related Topics

• PHOTOGRAPHERS
• AFRICAN AMERICANS
• PHOTOJOURNALISM

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clock This article was published more than  4 years ago

The Washington Post Magazine releases a photo issue on visualizing racism

The Washington Post Magazine today released an issue devoted to photography that documents both external and internal struggles with racism. In the issue, nine photographers created photo essays that take on the challenge of depicting bigotry. Washington Post Columnist Eugene Robinson writes in the introduction, “Some of the images are beautiful and unsettling. Some are jarring. If some make us uncomfortable, that is progress. An easy conversation about racism is not a real conversation at all.”

FULL ISSUE : https://wapo.st/2pOK5vo

In the issue, readers will find:

• LAW ENFORCEMENT: The photographer created his own crime scene. The infraction? Being black.
• SPEAK YOUR MIND: Talking about discrimination can require careful navigation
• TOY STORY: Even in dolls, our tendency to objectify black female bodies comes through
• FACE TO FACE: How our skin color affects the way others see us
• UNWANTED NEIGHBORS : In some areas of Chicago, the signs of environmental injustice are everywhere
• CHOKEHOLD: The dangers of internalizing racism
• THE RACE CARD: The photo industry’s historical bias toward particular skin tones
• CARVED IN STONE: At Georgia’s Stone Mountain, the state’s ties to the Confederacy cast a long shadow
• IN OUR SKIN: A photojournalist depicts what it feels like to be on the receiving end of ignorance and hate

The issue will run in print on Dec 1.

9 Photo Essays Highlight Racial Justice Movements

A look back at images of demonstrations and public outcry one year after the killing of George Floyd.

9 Photo Essays Highlight Racial Justice

CHANDAN KHANNA | AFP | Getty Images

People raise their hands and shout slogans as they protest at the makeshift memorial in honor of George Floyd, on June 2, 2020 in Minneapolis.

There was heartache and outrage in Minneapolis over George Floyd’s killing. Grief and anger in Kenosha, Wisconsin after a police officer shot Jacob Blake multiple times in the back at point blank range. Passionate speeches from civil rights activists on the National Mall as tens of thousands gathered in Washington, D.C. Tears in the streets of Louisville after a Kentucky grand jury did not charge police officers with killing Breonna Taylor. Heated demonstrations and emotional vigils over the police shooting of Daunte Wright. And some relief, after a jury found former police officer Derek Chauvin guilty of murdering George Floyd. The following photo essays chronicle flashpoints in the past year’s racial justice movement in the United States.

In May of 2020, after shocking videos capturing the final moments of George Floyd taken by bystanders circulated social media, Minneapolis became the site of ongoing protests over the disturbing police killing, sparking a racial justice movement throughout the country.

Photos: Raging Protests in Minneapolis

From Los Angeles to London, protests over the police killing of George Floyd multiplied as curfews were imposed in dozens of cities. According to the New York Times , activists rallied in over 500 places across the United States. Some protests lasted for months, potentially making the demonstrations over George Floyd’s killing, the largest movement in the country’s history.

Photos: Floyd Protests Across U.S., World

As continued demonstrations over police abuse took center stage in the U.S., for many Americans they conjured memories of important civil rights moments from the 1960s.

Civil Rights Images Echo Floyd Protests

In August of 2020, protests erupted in Kenosha, Wisconsin after a police officer shot Jacob Blake multiple times in the back at point blank range. A widely shared video showed a police officer following Blake, pulling on his shirt and shooting him in the back as he started to enter his car, where his three children were inside.

The protests gained more attention after they turned deadly. Kyle Rittenhouse , of Antioch, Illinois, was charged with fatally shooting two protesters and wounding a third. Attorneys representing Rittenhouse have said he acted to defend himself.

Photos: Protests in Kenosha

Tens of thousands of protesters gathered at the Lincoln Memorial on the 57th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream‚” speech made from the same location. Dubbed the “Get Your Knee Off Our Necks” Commitment March, the demonstration highlighted civil rights issues of today including police brutality and re-upping of the Voting Rights Act.

Several family members whose loved ones had been killed or injured spoke with heavy emotion to the crowd, thanking people for their support and asking that the tragedies be used to achieve change. "It's never been more clear. The change right now, it's happening right now because we demanded it," said Philonise Floyd, the brother of George Floyd. "Our leaders – they need to follow us."

Photos: March on Washington

In September of 2020, Protests filled Louisville streets after a Kentucky grand jury did not charge police officers with killing Breonna Taylor. The 26-year-old Black woman whose name has become a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement, was killed on March 13, 2020 when police broke down the door of her home after midnight while serving a no-knock warrant that would allow them to enter the residence unannounced. A grand jury returned three charges of wanton endangerment against Officer Brett Hankison for shooting into a home next to Taylor’s with people inside. Police shot Taylor , who was unarmed, six times. The Courier-Journal reported that medical aid wasn't rendered for more than 20 minutes.

Photos: Breonna Taylor Protests

In April of 2021, a wave of angry demonstrations and vigils engulfed the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center after the fatal police shooting of 20-year-old Daunte Wright, a Black man. The shooting occurred just 10 miles away from where former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was on trial for the murder of George Floyd. Kim Potter, the officer identified as the one who shot and killed Wright during a traffic stop, resigned days later. Brooklyn Center Police Chief Tim Gannon also resigned.

Killing of Daunte Wright Sparks Protests

A jury in Minnesota convicted Derek Chauvin of murder for the killing of George Floyd last May, finding the ex-Minneapolis police officer guilty of all three charges he faced in a long-awaited verdict that triggered celebrations and sighs of relief around the country. Chauvin was convicted of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter for the killing of Floyd, a Black man who was detained by officers.

Photos: Reactions to Chauvin Verdicts

In April 2021, as news of Derek Chuvin’s guilty verdict spread through the streets of Minneapolis, local photographers Awa Mally and Andrea Ellen Reed asked residents to reflect. Many expressed relief. Many felt much more work needs to be done.

Portraits and Voices From Minneapolis

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Tags: Minneapolis , racism , Photo Galleries , The Racial Divide

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