{"id":3409,"date":"2013-02-25T14:56:41","date_gmt":"2013-02-25T22:56:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/?p=3409"},"modified":"2013-02-25T10:15:37","modified_gmt":"2013-02-25T18:15:37","slug":"um-photographer-captures-kings-last-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/um-photographer-captures-kings-last-year\/","title":{"rendered":"UM photographer captures King\u2019s last year"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (left), flanked by the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, shakes hands with Rabbi Abraham Heschel during a Feb. 6, 1968, prayer vigil by Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam at Arlington Cemetery.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

A UMNS Feature by Linda Bloom*<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

A year to the day before\u00a0Martin Luther King Jr.<\/a>was assassinated, the civil rights leader made a major public speech against the war in Vietnam.<\/p>\n

John C. Goodwin, then 25 years old, was at\u00a0Riverside Church<\/a>\u00a0in New York to document it.<\/p>\n

His photographs of King from that day and several other anti-war events from 1967 and 1968 have been in demand ever since.<\/p>\n

Goodwin, who later spent many years as the staff photographer for the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries, had a goal when he began his professional career in photography. He wanted to show that those opposed to the Vietnam War were not just \u201chippies and wild radicals\u201d but also respectable and concerned religious leaders.<\/p>\n

The April 4, 1967, \u201cBeyond Vietnam<\/a>\u201d speech to the National Emergency Committee of Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam drew some 3,000 people to Riverside and captured the nation\u2019s attention.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was his coming out,\u201d Goodwin told Isaac Littlejohn Eddy, who crafted a cartoon video for Time Magazine, called \u201cCapturing King: John Goodwin, anti-war photographer<\/a>\u201d to re-create the day of the speech. \u201cWhen he spoke at Riverside Church, that was his \u2018coming out\u2019 in terms of being anti-war.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among his reasons for opposing the war, King said in his speech, was the recognition \u201cthat the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons, their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them 8,000 miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, Goodwin remembers being impressed with the speech; at the time, he \u201clistened with one ear\u201d as he carried out his assignment. While the speech\u2019s content was not a surprise to the audience, he said, \u201cnot everybody in the Civil Rights Movement was in favor of him doing that.\u201d In fact,\u00a0King was criticized by many<\/a>, including President Lyndon B. Johnson, who did not like King\u00a0making connections between civil rights and Vietnam<\/a>.<\/p>\n

April 15 peace march<\/h3>\n

Eleven days after the speech, Goodwin photographed King marching with Dr. Benjamin Spock, the celebrated pediatrician, at a major peace demonstration in New York. This was just the beginning of the \u201cVietnam Summer\u201d campaign that the pair was promoting to mobilize grassroots anti-war activists.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (right) and the Rev. William Sloane Coffin address a 1967 news conference by Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam in Washington. A UMNS photo \u00a9 John C. Goodwin.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The April 15 march, which proceeded from Central Park to the United Nations, was the first mass anti-war demonstration that Goodwin would shoot. It was a paid assignment for \u201cYouth Magazine,\u201d a publication started by the United Church of Christ but which eventually represented a number of denominations.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was exciting, and I, of course, was happy to have maneuvered myself to get the first row of marchers,\u201d he said. His photograph captures King and Spock marching arm-in-arm.<\/p>\n

As Goodwin recounted in 2008 to Suzanne Pekow of American Radio Works for a photo essay, \u201cKing\u2019s Last Year: Photographs by John C. Goodwin<\/a>,\u201d he also remembered the march \u201cbecause people were throwing bags of flour out of their windows in anger,\u201d and Goodwin was doused with hot coffee.<\/p>\n

In big New York marches, he explained to UMNS, some participants would line up on side streets and then merge onto Fifth Avenue as the march passed by. On that particular day, Goodwin had wandered down one such side street to see who was lined up and found waiting marchers being pelted with flour and eggs.<\/p>\n

He was looking down into the small screen of his Hasselblad camera, focusing on protesters on the other side of the street, when he saw on the screen an angry woman approaching him. \u201cSuddenly, she was throwing a cup of hot coffee at me,\u201d he said. \u201cI thought, \u2018What a great shot.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, Goodwin\u2019s camera lens did catch the arch of hot liquid in the air, but the coffee also found its mark. Luckily, it did not burn him. He said that was the only time he was attacked physically during a peace demonstration.<\/p>\n

\"Photographer<\/a>
Photographer John C. Goodwin edits photos in the newsroom of the 2012 General Conference of the United Methodist Church at the Tampa (Fla.) Convention Center. A UMNS photo by Kathleen Barry.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Three King encounters in 1968<\/h3>\n

Early the next year, during a Jan. 12, 1968, news conference at the Commodore Hotel in New York, Goodwin had his only conversation with the civil rights leader.<\/p>\n

At the end of the news conference, Goodwin mentioned that King might know his father. The Rev. Dean Goodwin, an American Baptist pastor, was acquainted with both King and King\u2019s parents through encounters at Baptist conferences and events.<\/p>\n

“Yes, I knew your father very well,\u201d King responded when he heard the name. \u201cPlease give him my warmest regards.”<\/p>\n

Goodwin was happy to relay the message. \u201cI brought greetings back to my father, who was pleased,\u201d he remembered.<\/p>\n

That news conference had been organized to announce that Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam was planning a second national mobilization for peace, primarily for church-related groups, the next month in Washington.<\/p>\n

Goodwin was there on Feb. 6, 1968, as about 2,500 people, led by King, gathered for a silent prayer vigil at Arlington National Cemetery\u2019s Tomb of the Unknowns. He captured King and the Rev. Ralph Abernathy shaking hands with Rabbi Abraham Heschel, Rabbi Maurice Eisendrath and Rabbi Everett Gendelrin just before the vigil began.<\/p>\n

He also documented the evening program, when King spoke at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church for the mobilization\u2019s final gathering.<\/p>\n

That was Goodwin\u2019s last opportunity to photograph King. Two months later, the civil rights leader was assassinated in Memphis.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThe intentionality of service to veterans on the MLK weekend is a wonderful corrective to our sometimes disrespect of veterans<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0Read the Rev. Gilbert H. Caldwell\u2019s commentary on King, war and those who served<\/a>. Also view a special feature about other\u00a0United Methodists who walked with the Rev. King<\/a>.<\/p>\n

*Bloom is a United Methodist News Service multimedia reporter based in New York. Follow her at\u00a0http:\/\/twitter.com\/umcscribe<\/a>.<\/p>\n

News media contact: Linda Bloom, New York, (646) 369-3759 or\u00a0newsdesk@umcom.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (left), flanked by the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, shakes hands with Rabbi Abraham Heschel during a Feb. 6, 1968, prayer vigil by Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam at Arlington Cemetery. A UMNS Feature by Linda Bloom* A year to the day before\u00a0Martin Luther King Jr.was assassinated, the civil rights […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":3413,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[202,201,200,203,31],"class_list":{"0":"post-3409","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-umns","8":"tag-civil-rights","9":"tag-king","10":"tag-mlk","11":"tag-photography","12":"tag-umns"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Unknown1.jpeg?fit=480%2C480&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2l75j-SZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3409"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3427,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3409\/revisions\/3427"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}