USA – april 5, 1968
The photo is one of dozens that Moyo took during the days of looting and violence that engulfed the city after King’s killing. Moyo, who taught science at a nearby school at the time, followed his curiosity and sense of purpose to what Chicago newsrooms called a “riot”—and what journalist Gary Rivlin later described as one of the most traumatic events in the city’s history. The unrest left 11 dead, dozens injured from police gunshots and two miles of charred rubble where a thriving business district once stood.(…)While journalists scoff and shudder at the suggestion, what can explain the disparity in coverage if not a sort of racial tunnel vision? Though whites actually constitute a minority in Chicago, around 90 percent of the reporters, producers, and editors who shape our news are white. Many of them came of age during the 60s; many were forming their political views at the time of the Democratic Convention, and a few probably went into journalism as a direct result of the events that surrounded it. It would be unfair to fault these journalists for looking back at such a pivotal event in their lives, but one can’t help believing that if there were more blacks in positions of power in the media, some editor would have penciled in his calendar a reminder to commemorate the King riots. Moyo’s photographs are an essential and vivid piece of the story of the April 1968 uprisings. However, with just one exception—a print exhibited in Lagos, Nigeria, as part of the 1977 Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture—the images stayed in a box, and went unseen by the public for nearly 50 years…(read more from source below).
