1960s, Cultural Issues, Photojournalism, Protest

DANCES WITH DOPES

No Comments

Marvin (Pima native), A.I.M. (American Indian Movement) takeover of the B.I.A.
(Bureau of Indian Affairs office), Chicago, March 23, 1970

Text and Photograph by Bruce Berman

I was having a pretty good year when I was 23.
What the heck… worked in a camera store, the boss let me buy a Canon QL camera at cost, there was built-in “subject matter” everywhere. This was the aftermath months of MLK’s assassination, the riotous 1968 Democratic debacle, Bobbie’s takedown,
in L.A. and rthe rise of the SDS Weathermen.
Even if, as a beginning photographer, I didn’t know what to shoot or even, really, how to (let alone was just beinning to get some chops down in print production in the darkroom), there was always something happening.
Marvin was a guy I had met at an inti-war demonstration in Lincoln Park earlier in the year. He called me and informed me he was part of a group that was going to do a demonstration at the Midwest Regional office of the B.I.A. (Bureau of Indian Offices). He asked if I could come down and make some photographs.
March 23, 1970: Activists in Chicago staged a massive sit-in alongside protests at five other BIA regional offices across the country to demand that the federal government provide services to Natives living off reservations. These localized Chicago demonstrations paved the way for larger actions, including the 1972 Trail of Broken Treaties which culminated in the takeover of the national BIA headquarters in Washington, D.C
Specifically, he said, “… I think all hell’s gonnna break out and it would be great to have some pictures.”
I pondered that. Did I want to be in the middle of a breakout of hell?

Continue Reading

1960s, Coolness, Music

MUDDY

No Comments

Muddy Waters, Wise Fool’s Pub, Chicago, Oct. 1968

Photograph and Text by Bruce Berman©

Never gonna be another.
The Mississippi Wave, coming up from the Delta like a furious hurricane.
All of ’em. Muddy. Wolf. Buddy. Jimmy C. Jimmy R. Fred Below beating on those skins!
I can hear it now. No, not on Spotify.
In my head.
And it sounds like, well, like beauty.

Continue Reading

1960s, African-American, Protest

LOST IN THE CROWD

No Comments


Old Civil Rights leader lost in the crowd, (from ChiTown Journal) Chicago, by Bruce Berman. 1968

TEXT AND PHOTOGRAPH BY BRUCE BERMAN

Eras are always changing. They’re changing now. Old liberals aren’t enough now, socialists may not be  enough next year.
In 1968 the era was changing as well. In the photograph above, Martin Luther King had been assassinated only  six months before. Bobbie Kennedy, only three months before.
The old Civil Rights movement was being paralleled by the anti-war movement. The old Baptist church arguments, high on morality and sincere ecumenicalism of previous years was being replaced by the Hell No I Won’t Go movement, sincere, but clearly lacking in thought-out ideology. “I won’t go,” isn’t a spiritually-driven theology.
In one of the many protests in the hot summer of 1968, in Chicago, during the Summer of Rage, Part II, the contrasts between these two eras was becoming evident and the clash was real. The old Civil Rights leaders’ voices were being drowned out by the new Black Nationalist voices of the Black Panthers and others. The middle class kids were more enraged by getting grabbed by the Draft Boards than they were by Segregationist southern sheriffs.

This photograph, shot in Lincoln Park, Chicago, in August 1968 was a glimpse into the divide to come. By September, 1969,  fourteen months later, the divide was complete. MLK was gone. The Kennedys were gone, Black Panther Fred Hampton had been assassinated by the Red Squad of the Chicago PD, Bill Ayers and the SDS Weathermen started to learn the craft of bomb-building (and went underground one year later), and the old, moral voice of the Civil Rights movement was all but drowned out in the dark and strident days that tagged the next ten years in the coming 1970s.
Eras change.

Continue Reading