Lesson 7

Lesson Goals

Texts

Core

• • “Introduction,” excerpt from Imprisoned in a Luminous Glare: Photography and the African American Freedom Struggle, Leigh Raiford, The University of North Carolina Press, 2011

Materials

Tools

• Mentor Sentence Journal

Reference Guides

• Academic Discussion Reference Guide
• Conventions Reference Guide

Question Sets

• Photojournalism: Section 3 Question Set

Editable Google Docs

• Mentor Sentence Journal

• Photojournalism: Section 3 Question Set

Activity 1: Read – Discuss – Write

We will read an excerpt from the beginning of the book Imprisoned in a Luminous Glare: Photography and the African American Freedom Struggle and consider text-specific questions in a whole-class discussion.

Step 1

Read the first five paragraphs of an excerpt from the Introduction to Imprisoned in a Luminous Glare: Photography and the African American Freedom Struggle, a scholarly study by Professor Leigh Raiford that "examines the vital yet contentious role photography has played in the mobilization, expansion, and consumption of three twentieth-century African American social movements.”

Annotate the text, marking ideas, claims, and examples that stand out to you as important.

Step 2

In a class discussion, analyze what Raiford means when she makes the following claims:

• The actions and images of protest in Birmingham “confronted a watching world with the contradictions of contemporary southern race relations. They vividly and visually challenged an entire economic and social regime of power.” (para. 1)

• “With bright enough lights and an army of cameras trained in the right direction, images were central to changing public opinion about the violent entrenchment of white supremacy in the South and that system’s overdetermination of black life and possibility. The visual proved a tool as effective as bus boycotts and as righteous as nonviolence.” (para. 2)

• “Photographs become tools to aid memory. We are invited, expected, even demanded to recount and memorialize. To remember.” (para. 3)

• “King’s apt phrase ‘imprisoned in a luminous glare’ as metaphor for the work of the camera in African American social movements alerts us to the dialectical relationships between mass media and mass movements, photography and race, history and memory.” (para. 4)

Step 3

Summarize what you think Raiford is saying about the relationships between photography and the African American struggle for equal rights. Consider examples from the photojournalists you have studied to support your summary. Write down your thinking in your Learning Log.

Activity 2: Read – Discuss

We will examine two examples of figurative language that are essential to the excerpt, focusing especially on the one that forms the title of the book from which the excerpt is derived.

Step 1

In a group, reread the following excerpt from Raiford’s Introduction, in which she quotes Dr. Martin Luther King and sets up the title of her book:

The brutality with which officials would have quelled the black individual became impotent when it could not be pursued with stealth and remain unobserved. It was caught - as a fugitive from a penitentiary is often caught - in gigantic circling spotlights. It was imprisoned in a luminous glare revealing the naked truth to the whole world.

Step 2

Discuss the following questions with your group, and note your responses in your Learning Log:

1. What "was caught - as a fugitive from a penitentiary is often caught - in gigantic circling spotlights"? What are the "spotlights"?

2. What is the connotation of the word fugitive? What does it imply?

3. What does "imprisoned in a luminous glare" suggest? How does this metaphor relate to the image of “circling spotlights”?

4. King is using an extended metaphor in this quote: the "fugitive" is "caught" and "imprisoned." Who or what is the “fugitive”? How is it “imprisoned”? What is the "luminous glare" that King references?

Activity 3: View – Discuss

We will re-examine selected images we have studied in this section of the unit to determine what it is that they “Imprison In A Luminous Glare.”

As a class, review and re-examine photographs you have studied earlier in this section of the unit, in light of Dr. King’s quote:

It was caught - as a fugitive from a penitentiary is often caught - in gigantic circling spotlights. It was imprisoned in a luminous glare revealing the naked truth to the whole world.

For each image, identify and discuss the following:

• What the image “caught”—in terms of the “brutality” that did not “remain unobserved”

• How the photojournalist used the “circling spotlight” and “luminous glare” of the image to tell a story about what had happened

• What “naked truth” the photograph might have revealed “to the whole world”

Activity 4: Read – Discuss

We will examine the use and effect of parallel structure in an excerpt from imprisoned in a luminous glare.

Step 1

In study groups reread these sentences from Paragraph 5 of the excerpt from Imprisoned in a Luminous Glare: Photography and the American Struggle for Freedom, and pay attention to the structure of each sentence:

King's apt phrase “imprisoned in a luminous glare” as metaphor for the work of the camera in African American social movements alerts us to the dialectical relationships between mass media and mass movements, photography and race, history and memory. It also suggests the tensions between captivity and fugitivity, the contradictions inherent in attempting to fix that which by its nature is mobile and mercurial. It calls attention to how mass media attempt to capture mass movements, photography tries to name and regulate "race," and history works to tame memory. The photograph in particular imposes a unitary vision and helps fix the meaning of that which it records. It provides the illusion of seeing an event in its entirety as it truly happened.

The sentences in this paragraph often demonstrate the rhetorical device of parallel structure, which uses the same pattern of words, phrases, or clauses to connect ideas and show that all elements in the series have equal importance. Underline or highlight the three parallel clauses in the sentence beginning “It calls attention to how…”

Step 2

Individually, find another sentence in the paragraph that demonstrates parallel structure, and underline or highlight its parallel elements. Compare what you have noted with what other students in your group identified.

Write down one of the sentences you, or a member of your group, identified in your Mentor Sentence Journal.