Unseen: Unpublished Black History from the New York Times Photo Archives

Description

In February 2016, Rachel Swarms, Darcy Eveleigh, Damien Cave, and Dana Canedy discovered dozens of photographs--and explored the history behind them--and chronicled them in the popular blog series Unpublished Black History. The month-long series was overwhelmingly well-received and garnered 1.7 million views and thousands of comments from readers. This book dives even deeper in the Times photo archives--known as the Morgue--to showcase 120 more photographs and their untold stories. The never-before-published photographs include a 27-year-old Jesse Jackson leading a rally of 4,000 people in Chicago, Rosa Parks arriving at a Montgomery Courthouse, and a candid behind-the-scenes shot of Aretha Franklin backstage at the Apollo Theater. Were the photos--or the people in them--not deemed newsworthy enough? Did the images not arrive in time for publication? Were they pushed aside by words at an institution long known as the Gray Lady? Swarms, Eveleigh, Cave, and Canedy explore all these questions and more in this one-of-a-kind book.

Darcy Eveleigh is a photo editor the New York Times and the creator and editor of The Lively Morgue. Dana Canedy is senior editor at the New York Times, where she has been a journalist for twelve years. In 2001, she was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for "How Race Is Lived in America," a series on race relations in the United States. Damien Cave is the Deputy Editor for Digital on the National desk of the New York Times, where he oversees several reporters and a wide array of digital projects. He was formerly a correspondent in Mexico City, Miami, Baghdad, and Newark. Rachel L. Swarns is a journalist and author, who covers race and race relations for the New York Times. She is the author of "American Tapestry: The Story of the Black, White and Multiracial Ancestors of Michelle Obama,'' which was published in 2012. Her upcoming book about Georgetown's roots in slavery will be published by Random House in 2020.

Unseen reminds me of a lost black history version of 'You Are There, ' told through photographs that The Times commissioned but chose not to print. This book is a vivid account of race relations in America, narrated through images that survived between the spaces of stories, in the gaps, silences, and lacuna buried in the paper's archives. They constitute a remarkably vivid parallel text to the last half century of American history, creating an extraordinarily moving visual narrative of the feelings and actions of black Americans in the striking particularity of black-and-white photography. The book simulates what it would have been like to read The Times each day for the last half century, if the full picture of the African American experience had made the cut. If any book proves that it is never too late to publish 'all the news'--and images--'fit to print, ' this is it.--Henry Louis Gates, Jr., director of Harvard's Hutchins Center for African American Research and an Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker By unearthing these fascinating photographs and sharing the stories behind them, the contributors to this extraordinary project have created a treasure.--Marian Wright Edelman, president, Children's Defense Fund Maya Angelou said that 'there is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. Indeed, there is an agony in our nation that the stories, the voices, and the images of Black Americans are so unknown, untold, and unseen in our wider understanding of history. This bountiful collection of once-unpublished photographs both gives expressive voice to their subjects and helps to relieve this agony, bringing to life a more complete picture of the compelling, complex, and beautiful story that is America.--Cory Booker, U.S. senator and bestselling author of United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good. The power of images is undeniable; so, for many years, has been the power of the TheNew York Times. This new volume, by a team headed by a Times photo editor, contains 175 remarkable (and hitherto-unpublished) photos of significant moments in African-American life and culture.--St. Louis Post-Dispatch This book brings the excitement of opening a time capsule, with powerful photographs and searching commentary by an all-star cast that gives us new and original insights into modern African American history.--Michael Beschloss, historian and bestselling author of Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America 1789-1989