The Long Civil Rights Movement: Photographs from the Ronnie Moore Papers, 1964 -1972 digital collection, funded by the Patrick F. Taylor Foundation, consists of photographs from the Ronnie Moore papers. Moore is a civil rights activist and community development consultant who trained leaders in community organization, youth development, cultural diversity, and team building. Moore was the field secretary in the South for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the executive director of the Scholarship, Education and Defense Fund for Racial Equality, Inc. (SEDFRE); these photographs come from his time with these organizations.

The Ronnie Moore digital collection captures the political and social empowerment of African Americans in the South during the 1960s. Images of CORE activists, and the African American populations they served, are displayed in photographs of voter registration drives in Florida and South Carolina, freedom schools in Mississippi, and direct protest demonstrations in Louisiana and North Carolina. Images from Moore’s work with SEDFRE emphasize the economic activism carried out by African Americans during the late 1960s and 1970s in places such as New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Indiana, and Maryland. Other economic initiatives depicted are farming cooperatives in Louisiana, job training for youth and adults in Mississippi, and the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign in Washington D.C.

Most importantly, Moore’s photographs exhibit a shift in the Modern Civil Rights Movement from direct protests targeting disenfranchisement and segregationist practices in the 1960s, to federally funded programs that were created to raise the economic viability of African Americans in the 1970s.