Carol Wray, Mary White Thompson, Michael Paul Williams and Yvonne A. Mimms-Evans — a selection of the Richmonders featured in the exhibition at the University of Richmond's Joel and Lila Harnett Museum of Art (Photos by Brian Palmer)
“Growing Up in Civil Rights Richmond: A Community Remembers” opens with a preview reception at the University of Richmond’s Joel and Lila Harnett Museum of Art on Jan. 16 and runs Jan. 18 through May 10. “Growing Up” presents 30 of journalist Brian Palmer's photographs of Richmonders who were shaped by the city’s experience of the civil rights movement. The images are paired with oral histories compiled by Laura Browder, UR professor and cultural historian.
Palmer began his 30 years of photojournalism as a New York City street photographer for the now sadly defunct Village Voice, and he later took on assignments for CNN and the New York Times in China, Afghanistan and Myanmar, as well as three embedded media tours of Iraq with a U.S. Marine combat unit (2004-06). The latter experience led to the Ford Foundation-funded 2011 documentary “Full Disclosure.”
His investigation into a small private cemetery located on the grounds of Camp Peary outside Williamsburg brought him to the unkept grave of his great-grandfather, born enslaved in York County, who served in the United States Colored Troops. On this site, now a training ground for the Central Intelligence Agency, there once stood a free black community called Magruder. This story ultimately led Palmer and his wife, Erin Hollaway Palmer, to the black cemeteries in Richmond's East End, where he moved, he says, “from the literal to the lyrical.” The Palmers today reside in Richmond.
UR's long-planned civil rights project drew Palmer in after conversations with Browder and curator Ashley Kistler.
Among the images in “Growing Up” is a photo of the Jefferson Davis monument getting scrubbed clean of a “Black Lives Matter” tag. A workman’s arm fortuitously imitates Davis’ outstretched hand. This image was taken at a distance, while the portraits of the subjects are close in, conducted mostly with available light and either in domestic settings or near places meaningful in the subjects' youth, including churches, schools, libraries and the Richmond Slave Trail. The simple portraits are monumental in scope, bringing the sitters and their experiences into sharp focus. They are not only witnesses but participants in history — and those events weren’t that long ago.
Programming for “Growing Up” includes a Jan. 27 panel discussion, “Civil Rights Richmond,” at 2 p.m. Moderated by Richmond Times-Dispatch writer Michael Paul Williams, it will feature Palmer, Kistler, Browder and historian and lecturer Elvatrice Belsches. Additional events are in the works.
The exhibition comes with two companion presentations. At UR’s downtown space, “Hope, Faith, and Courage: Early Civil Rights Leaders in Richmond” runs from Jan. 21 to March 22. In addition, 1708 Gallery will exhibit mixed media and photography related to a limited-edition book by the Palmers, “The Afterlife of Jim Crow,” a meditation on the history of East End and Evergreen cemeteries, segregated graveyards created during the early 20th century, their neglect, and their ongoing reclamation.
"Growing Up in Civil Rights Richmond: A Community Remembers" and related programs are running until May.
