Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in the Crowd at the United Nations

Artist Benedict J. Fernandez (American, b. 1936)

CultureAmerican

DateApril 15, 1967

MediumGelatin silver print

DimensionsOverall, Image: 8 1/4 × 12 1/4 in. (21 × 31.1 cm)
Overall: 11 × 13 7/8 in. (27.9 × 35.2 cm)
Overall, Mat: 20 1/2 × 24 in. (52.1 × 61 cm)

Credit LineGift of Kodak and Michael S. Engl

Object number97.17.5

Not on view

DescriptionThis gelatin silver print depicts Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the crowd at the United Nations. It is a close up profile of Dr. King face. A figure to the left of Dr. King is blurry.

Label TextDr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in the crowd at the United Nations, April 15, 1967 Gelatin silver print, ca. 1989 Gift of Kodak and Michael S. Engl 97.17.5 This United Nations event was preceded by a stirring speech that King delivered on April 4, 1964 at New York's Riverside Baptist Church. In that address he called for an end to the war in Vietnam citing the irony of black and white young men dying together in a foreign land while in America they were treated unequally: Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. Approval Date: 09/2008Exhibition History"Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement, from the Museum Collection", THE CHRYSLER MUSEUM OF ART, NORFOLK, VA, February 6 - May 31, 1998. "History of Photography," Alice R. and Sol B. Frank Photography Galleries, Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Va, Fall, 2001. "Countdown to Eternity: Photographs of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by Ben Fernandez," Kaufman Theatre Lobby, Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA., September 26, 2008 - March 1, 2009.