This volume offers a compelling visual record of the people, organizations, and coalitions that shaped the civil rights movement in Los Angeles, presenting a first-of-its-kind photographic history of activism on the American West Coast.
In 1963, during a landmark speech at Wrigley Field before nearly forty thousand people, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. challenged Angelenos to confront inequality at home, stating that meaningful change required action within their own city: “The most important thing that you can do is to set Los Angeles free, because you have segregation and discrimination here, and police brutality.”
Marching West traces this urgent call through the lens of photography, revealing how images not only documented the struggle for Black equality but also actively participated in shaping its visibility and momentum. The book brings together more than one hundred photographs, including previously unpublished works, that connect local activism in Los Angeles to broader national movements.
Spanning churches, street demonstrations, cultural gatherings, and political organizing, these images highlight the role of a diverse network of participants—community leaders, religious figures, Hollywood personalities, and everyday citizens—who collectively advanced the fight for civil rights in the American West.
Drawn from significant archives such as the Tom & Ethel Bradley Center at California State University, Northridge, the Getty Research Institute, and other Southern California collections, the volume features work by photographers including Harry Adams, Howard Bingham, Charles Brittin, Joe Flowers, Vera Jackson, and Charles Williams.
Together, these photographs offer more than documentation. They form a layered narrative of resistance and solidarity, expanding the historical understanding of the civil rights era by foregrounding voices and events often overlooked in mainstream accounts of American social progress.
Marching West: The Los Angeles Civil Rights Movement in Photographs
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