Page 79 – LIFE

MLK and the 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom

December 16, 2019February 23, 2017 by

On May 17, 1957, on the third anniversary of the Supreme Court’s epoch-making decision in the Brown v. Board of Education desegregation case, thousands of people traveled to Washington, D.C. not for a visit, but for a pilgrimage. The reason for the gathering, in short, was that the milestone court decision had not yet translated to real integration.

“The camera of Paul Schutzer caught these faces in a crowd of 15,000 people who assembled in Washington from 30 different states on a mass ‘prayer pilgrimage for freedom,'” LIFE Magazine noted in its June 3, 1957, issue. “The pilgrimage, on the third anniversary of the Supreme Court’s segregation decision, was planned to urge the President, Congress and both political parties to make the court’s decision a reality.” (The actual number of participants may have been significantly higher.) Here LIFE revisits Schutzer’s striking images, many of which were not published at the time.

The most important of the day’s speeches, the brief write-up continued, was by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who asked those in attendance to work unrelentingly but for the goal of voting rights and true equality. In an oration that would come to be known as the “Give Us the Ballot” speech, he affirmed the ways in which voting rights were essential to the goal of integration and freedom, and how important he believed it was to face without bitterness the work to be done:

We must never struggle with falsehood, hate, or malice. We must never become bitter. I know how we feel sometime. There is the danger that those of us who have been forced so long to stand amid the tragic midnight of oppression—those of us who have been trampled over, those of us who have been kicked about—there is the danger that we will become bitter. But if we will become bitter and indulge in hate campaigns, the new order which is emerging will be nothing but a duplication of the old order… We must meet hate with love.

The portraits captured by Schutzer that day were more than an attendance list, the magazine pointed out: they were a visual reflection of the spirit of King’s plea “in the expressions of the pilgrims listening, with prayerful intensity, to the exhortations.”

Rallying point for Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, 1957.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. addressed the crowd at the Lincoln Memorial during the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom in Washington, D.C. in 1957.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Gospel singer Mahalia Jackson performed “Keep-A-Trustin.”

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Two women among the estimated 15,000 people at the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, 1957.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A woman listened intently as speakers voiced hope and warning.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

U.S. Representative Adam Clayton Powell Jr. of New York addressed the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, 1957.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

After sitting through the meeting in quiet dignity, this man broke into a pleased smile.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A women listed to the closing speech of Martin Luther King Jr.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Fierce concentration showed on the face of Judge Edward R. Dudley of New York during a speech.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Harry Belafonte and his wife Julie at the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, 1957.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

With quiet force, Martin Luther King called for action to implement the court’s decision.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

At the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, women waved their arms in approval, 1957.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Actor Sidney Poitier during the prayer pilgrimage, 1957.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Civil Rights heroine Rosa Parks at the Prayer Pilgrimage, 1957.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A participant addressed the crowd at the Lincoln Memorial.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A child at the Lincoln Memorial during the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom in Washington, D.C. in 1957.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A women’s chorus performed in front of Lincoln Memorial.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Martin Luther King at the prayer pilgrimage, 1957.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Rev. I. G. Glover from Brooklyn brooded during one of rally’s speeches.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Faces in the crowd at the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, 1957.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C., 1957.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sidney Poitier: Actor and Activist

January 7, 2022February 17, 2017 by

In 1959, when LIFE magazine profiled the star of a new production of A Raisin in the Sun, Sidney Poitier, he was 32 and as the magazine then put it, “already accepted almost without question as the best Negro actor in the history of the American theater.” In the months leading up to that assessment, Poitier had played Porgy in Porgy and Bess and become the first black actor nominated for a Best Actor Oscar, for his work in The Defiant Ones. (He lost that time around but would win a few years later for Lilies of the Field.)

“Whenever Poitier walks on stage, excitement walks on with him,” wrote entertainment editor Tom Prideaux. “He seems to be taking it easy most of the time but with the hidden tension of a coiled spring. In appearance he veers between man and boy. His open grin and handsomely boyish head set off a powerful body. He can be as appealing as a child or show a shattering range of deep adult emotion. Today, acting and Poitier seem made for each other.”

Poitier died on January 6, 2022 at the age of 94. Here, LIFE presents some of the magazine’s most striking images of the star, who appeared in its pages in a 1950 story about the film No Way Out, went on to be featured on the cover in 1966 and became a mainstay of the magazine’s coverage of Hollywood as well as the civil rights movement. As these pictures make clear, Poitier’s career has been one of breadth as well as depth.

“It has been a long journey,” as Poitier said when he accepted his Oscar in 1964, “to this moment.”

Sidney Poitier in a scene from the film “Cry The Beloved Country”, 1952.

Yale Joel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sidney Poitier at the prayer pilgrimage in Washington D.C., 1957.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sidney Poitier with his wife at home, 1959.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sidney Poitier in the play “A Raisin in the Sun”, with Ruby Dee, 1959.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sidney Poitier in “A Raisin in the Sun,” 1959.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The “Raisin in the Sun” party at Sardis with Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier, 1959.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sidney Poitier in a scene from “Porgy and Bess,” 1959.

Gjon Mili The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Folk singer Odetta at a civil rights rally at the Statue of Liberty with Sidney Poitier, 1960.

Al Fenn The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sidney Poitier spoke at a pre-Inaugural gala for President John F. Kennedy, 1961.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, 1963.

Francis Miller The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sidney Poitier in a TV program, “Strolling Twenties,” a story about Harlem of that era, 1965.

Henry Groskinsky The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sidney Poitier during the filming of “The Lost Man,” 1968.

Charles Bonnay The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

See Photos From Every Presidential Inauguration LIFE Magazine Covered

November 19, 2024January 20, 2017 by

During the 37 years that LIFE was published, the magazine covered Presidential Inaugurations from Franklin Delano Roosevelt‘s second inauguration to Richard Nixon‘s first inauguration in 1969, as the above photos show. The Inaugurations, which mark the (relatively) peaceful transfer of power that has defined American democracy for nearly 250 years, are the occasion to welcome a new administration with celebration and ceremony.

FDR’s second Inauguration in 1937 was the first such ceremony that had taken place since the states ratified the 20th Amendment, which moved Inauguration Day from March 4 to Jan. 20 and, though it’s impossible to tell from this photo, the weather was accordingly wintry and it was sleeting. (By his third inauguration in ’41, LIFE pitied Eleanor Roosevelt for having to worry about three inauguration outfits.)

The magazine also documented the times when this transition of power hasn’t been precisely peaceful or smooth, as when the White House accidentally shipped all of President Dwight D. Eisenhower‘s clothes to his Gettysburg farm before the 1953 inauguration, leaving him with only a bow tie and a homburg hat. The former World War II general’s second inaugural parade (1957) was more like an actual circus, with two elephants marching along. And an estimated 1,000 crashed President Richard Nixon’s 1973 festivities, “the first time in memory that anyone had tried to disrupt an inaugural parade,” TIME noted.

As Inaugurations bring the U.S. government together, past and present, it’s fitting that Eisenhower’s 1953 inauguration was the same one at which Herbert Hoover turned to his former political enemy Harry S. Truman and said, “I think we ought to organize a former presidents club.”

A view of the inauguration ceremony of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1937.

Thomas D. McAvoy The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Third inauguration ceremony of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941.

Thomas D. McAvoy The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Fourth inauguration ceremony of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945.

George Skadding The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Harry S. Truman riding with Vice President Alben Barkley during the Presidential Inauguration parade, 1949.

George Skadding The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dwight D. Eisenhower’s inauguration, 1953

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Eisenhower’s second inauguration 1957

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

President John Kennedy and wife Jacqueline during the Inauguration Day parade, 1961.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Lyndon Johnson giving the inaugural at his inauguration, 1965. Lady Bird Johnson is seated to his right.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

President Richard M. Nixon’s inauguration, 1969.

Henry Groskinsky The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Betty Grable Was Famous For Her Legs. Here’s What She Thought About That

August 11, 2021December 16, 2016 by

When Betty Grable was profiled in the June 7, 1943, issue of LIFE, she shared headline status with another entity: her own legs, which the magazine dubbed a “major Hollywood landmark.” The previous February, an impression of her leg had been immortalized in the cement in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theater, and the limbs were reportedly insured for $1 million at one point.

In fact, the published photo essay was nearly all legs. The face of the actress was seen in only one of the 14 pictures that accompany the story. Here, Grable’s face has been restored to several of them.

And, while Grable clearly knew that her legs had helped make her famous, the LIFE profile hints that even in 1943 the reduction of a woman to one body part—and not her brain—could rub the wrong way. As the magazine reported, her first jobs in Hollywood had involved merely posing for publicity stills or standing in as a leggy extra. Her breakthrough into starring roles was delayed by her studio’s focus on her lower-half looks. And she maintained a humorously pragmatic attitude about the whole thing.

“They are fine for pushing the foot pedals in my car,” Grable told LIFE.

Original caption: “The legs at work on the set. They are clad in this costume in Betty’s latest screen appearance, Coney Island, a picture which dwells on them at considerable length.”

Walter Sanders The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “The legs relaxing. Betty is athletic, but she does not have to take special exercises or massages to keep her figure shapely.”

Walter Sanders The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Betty Grable, 1943.

Walter Sanders The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Betty Grable getting cold cream applied to her legs by LIFE photographer Walter Sanders as he prepares her for a photo session at studio.

Walter Sanders The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Betty poses the legs for a still shot on a studio beach set. She has made more such leg art stills than any other actress.”

Walter Sanders The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Going to studio in the morning, Betty steps into roadster. Once asked to comment on her hips, well displayed here, she said, `They’re just where my legs hook on.'” “

Walter Sanders The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Betty Grable, in her dressing room at 20th Century-Fox studios, pulled on black mesh stockings for a scene that would feature her famous legs, 1943.

Walter Sanders The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Betty Grable, 1943.

Walter Sanders The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “In the course of a day Betty’s legs walk, climb stairs, dance and are generally flexed like other legs. Here the legs are shown as she prepares morning shower at home.”

Walter Sanders The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Impression of Betty’s leg made in court of Grauman’s Chinese Theater. “Thanks Sid” is addressed to Mr. Grauman.

Walter Sanders The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Betty Grable’s Legs

Walter Sanders The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

LIFE’s Look At Jimmy Carter From 1971: A Governor Speaks Out on Race

December 29, 2024December 14, 2016 by

When Jimmy Carter, who died on December 29, 2024 at the age of 100, stood before a crowd in Atlanta in January 1971, speaking to Georgians for the first time as their governor, he did not deliver the address that was expected of him. Rather than stick with the tone of his campaign—a tone largely adopted to win over the state’s white population—he made bold declarations against discrimination. Those declarations would set the tenor of the four years to come.

Carter had run a moderate campaign as a way of distancing himself from his more liberal Democratic opponent, Carl Sanders. Though he had taken a stand against racial discrimination in the past, refusing to join an organization of pro-segregation business owners and opposing literacy tests for voting, he stayed relatively quiet on civil-rights issues during the campaign.

Carter had learned the hard way—by losing to segregationist Lester Maddox in the 1966 race—that his hopes of winning a Georgia gubernatorial race required him to avoid alienating the significant percentage of the white population that still opposed integration. This time, he sought endorsements from segregationists and appeared only infrequently before groups of prospective black voters. He campaigned against busing as a means of integrating schools.

So when he stood before that crowd and declared, “I say to you quite frankly, the time for discrimination is over,” his message surprised both the pro-segregation forces that had supported him and the integrationists who had not. “No poor, rural, weak or black person should ever have to bear the additional burden of being deprived of the opportunity of an education, a job or simple justice,” he continued.

The speech to the legislature was the heart of LIFE’s story on Carter in its Jan. 29, 1971 issue. The speech helped the world begin to get to know the man who would be elected President of the United States in 1976.

In the LIFE article Julian Bond, a civil rights leader who was at that time a Georgia state legislator, expressed a wait-and-see attitude about Carter’s remarks. “Will he be good,” Bond said. “You’ve got to remember that good is a very relative term in this state.”

But Carter’s words were more than just an empty promise. During his term as governor, Carter increased the number of black employees in state government by 25%, appointing more minorities and women to state positions than all previous Georgia governors combined. He also hung a portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. in the statehouse, drawing protests from members of the Ku Klux Klan.

While some of these changes were more symbolic than tangible, they helped usher in what TIME would call the “New South,” with Carter on the magazine’s cover as its face. Six years later, he’d have the chance to address those issues with a much bigger crowd, as President of the United States.

Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.

Jimmy Carter at age 45, when he was the newly elected governor of Georgia.

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jimmy Carter in 1971, when he was the newly elected governor of Georgia.

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jimmy Carter posed with a group of students, 1971.

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

In his capitol office, Carter met with Atlanta educator Nathaniel Ingram, who had brought a copy of a Human Relations Day proclamation for Carter to sign, 1971

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

At a joint session of the Georgia legislature, the new governor delivered his first budget message, as wife Rosalynn (center) and former Governor Lester Maddox, who had become lieutenant governor. The popular Maddox was prevented by law from running for a second term.

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jimmy Carter in his first month as governor of Georgia, 1971.

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn, 1971.

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Carter and his wife Rosalynn watched their daughter Amy at play, 1971.

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn, 1971.

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jimmy Carter and daughter Amy, 1971.

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jimmy Carter played with his daughter Amy, 1971.

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jimmy Carter posed for a portrait with his family, 1971.

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jimmy Carter kissed his wife Rosalynn, 1971.

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Louis Armstrong, Marilyn Monroe and More: Photographs by John Loengard

August 11, 2021December 6, 2016 by

In the preface to his new book Moment by Moment, LIFE photographer John Loengard notes that the thing about a good photograph is that it cannot be repeated. What it captures will never happen again, though now it is frozen in time by the image.

“That may explain why an image of a brief moment, an instant in time, can hold our interest forever,” he writes.

Loengard’s latest book is a survey that takes a closer look at a variety of the many iconic images he has created during the last 60 years. It is filled with quiet, intimate moments, from a laughing Marilyn Monroe to a young boy turning his head at the sound of his mother calling. All of his subjects, whether famous or unknown, are treated with the same careful, thoughtful eye catching the moments in between.

Pictured on the cover is the famous photo of the Beatles in a swimming pool at Miami Beach in 1964. This photo in fact never ran on the cover of LIFE magazine – although as illustrated here, it is certainly cover worthy but ran in the back of the book as a Miscellany. (“I never thought it was a terrific photograph,” Loengard told LIFE.com a few years ago. “It’s not a very expressive picture at all, in my opinion. But given the history and the appeal of the people in it, it keeps cropping up, year after year.”)

John Loengard was a staff photographer for LIFE magazine from 1961 to 1971 and went on to be the Picture Editor from 1978-1987. Moment by Moment was published by Thames and Hudson.

Paul McCartney, George Harrison, John Lennon and Ringo Starr of the Beatles took a dip in a swimming pool.

Photo by John Loengard/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation.

Louis Armstrong got a beer and a haircut at his neighborhood barbershop in Queens, New York City, 1965.

John Loengard

Marilyn Monroe blessed the cornerstone-laying ceremony at the Time-LIFE building with her presence. New York City, 1957.

John Loengard/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

England’s Queen Elizabeth II and Duke of Edinburgh wait with their hosts, Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia and his son, the Crown Prince, before they enter the New Cathedral of St. Mary of Zion. Axum, Ethiopia, 1965.

John Loengard

The boy turns his head as he hears his mother’s call from down the street. Manchester, England, 1968.

John Loengard

Dr. Timothy Leary with his wife, at the commune where he lived near Palm Springs, California, 1969.

John Loengard

Buckminster Fuller, architect and inventor, ferries houseguests to Bear Island, which his grandmother bought in 1904 and remained his family seat; Penobscot Bay, Maine, 1970.

John Loengard

Builder Victor Westphall constructed a chapel in memory of his son David, a Marine lieutenant killed four years earlier in Vietnam. Eagle Nest, New Mexico, 1972.

John Loengard

At twenty-two, Twiggy said she was quitting modeling for acting. “You can’t be a clothes hanger for your entire life,” she said. Outside New York City, 1972.

John Loengard

Tom Nesbitt tends his bar. Doheny & Nesbitts Pub, Dublin, 1987.

John Loengard

Richard Avedon sits in his studio before a wall of miscellaneous clippings and his portrait of oil field worker Roberto Lopez. New York City, 1994.

John Loengard

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