Through his eyes, the Civil Rights Movement is presented as a human story. To visit these pages is to be there. Bob Adelman’s view was unique and uniquely informed.

This collection of photographs by LIFE photographer Bob Adelman takes the reader on a rollercoaster ride through America’s Civil Rights Movement. These unforgettable photographs of America’s dramatic journey through racial conflicts include evocative and penetrating portraits of ordinary people, rallying under some of the most charismatic leaders of recent years, as well as artists and writers as diverse as Sidney Poitier, Miles Davis, James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison.

This is a book about time, a people and a cause. It is a passionate chronicle of one of the epic undertakings in American history, the struggle during the second half of the twentieth century for civil rights. It is a story about a nation fighting to make itself whole. Bob Adelman witnesses that fight and recorded it with his camera.

Growing up, Adelman knew that what was most un-American about America was its mistreatment of blacks. Stirred by the heroic students whose sit-ins were breaking the shackles of segregation, he felt called to join and lend his skills as a photographer to the cause. The Movement became his mission.

Adelman was there: in Birmingham, in Selma, in Washington. He was by Martin Luther King Jnr’s side, at Malcolm X’s speeches and funeral, in the trenches and in the marches. He was there as well, in the Bed Stuy ghetto, on the streets of Newark during the riots, in Harlem schools, on Beale Street in Memphis, in the plantation fields and at the quilting bee in Gee’s Bend, Alabama. He had a great calling and now looks back with this stirring book.

Through his eyes, the Civil Rights Movement is presented as a human story. To visit these pages is to be there. Bob Adelman’s view was unique and uniquely informed. His subjects knew which side he was on. And he stayed the course. He was there in the 1950s as the struggle was beginning and still present in 1998 when the last of these photographs was takn Senator Richard Selby of Alabama shaking hands with Prince Arnold, the black sheriff of Wilcox County. Some of these iconic images seem like small miracles. Mine Eyes Have Seen is Adelman’s testament to a time, a people and a cause that he believed in and believes still.

ISBN 9780500543481

Publication Date: November 2007