A series of photographs featuring civil rights activist Rosa Parks and the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, have been found in the archives at Stanford University Libraries.
Taken by the late photographer Matt Heron, the photos were found among the thousands of materials included in the university’s Matt Herron Photography Archive (1950s-2020), which was donated to Stanford in 2022. Herron was present during the 1965 march, where he photographed several prominent civil rights figures, including Martin Luther King, Jr., Coretta Scott King, and Harry Belafonte.
Discovered by a team of Alabama researchers who were visiting the Stanford campus, the newly found photos of Rosa Parks showcase her interacting with other protestors and delivering remarks in front of the Alabama State Capitol. However, the pictures never made it to print, and instead remained on physical contact sheets in Herron’s personal collection.
“Rosa Parks had a long life of activism, before and after her famous protest of segregated buses in Montgomery,” said Lerone Martin, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Centennial Professor and professor of religious studies and of African and African American studies in the School of Humanities and Sciences. “These photos show us Rosa Parks as the trained, deliberate, intelligent activist who was a part of the backbone of the Black freedom struggle.”
The images of Rosa Parks, as well as other materials from Herron’s collection, will continue to be digitized and catalogued in Stanford’s archives.
