In March of 1968, Bob Black became the first African American staff photographer hired at the Chicago Sun-Times. A month later, he was on the streets of Chicago photographing history as the unrest on the West Side following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. unfolded dramatically through the lens of his camera.
“I can’t believe I was even involved in all of that, being an observer of it all. It’s just so unreal sometimes,” Black told Chicago Stories.
Black grew up on the South Side of Chicago and became interested in photography as a child. He got experience shooting family photographs and weddings for the people in his family’s church and eventually got a job as a photographer for the Chicago Defender – one of the leading African American newspapers in the country. While working for the Defender in 1966, Black captured a photo of King speaking at a church when he lived in Chicago to bring attention to discriminatory housing practices.
His experience at the Defender paved the way for his job at the Chicago Sun-Times. He was on his way home from work on April 4, 1968 when he heard the news on Black radio station WVON that King had been killed.
“I had to pull over to the side of the curb in order to try to digest what I had just heard,” Black said. “[The radio station] had brought over another report that Liberty Baptist Church was opening their doors for people just to come and sit. I knew I needed to cover it. I didn't know how, I didn’t know where, I didn’t know what was going on. I was hoping things would not flare up with violence.”
When he arrived at the South Side church, he discovered he was the only person from the media there. Black said the church was very quiet, though some churchgoers were sobbing. He captured their anguish.
“I had to be careful not to be obtrusive,” Black said. “I took one camera in, no flash, and I shot very quietly and silently, one exposure at a time, maybe two at the most…I got enough that illustrates how folks are feeling, because that’s how I was feeling. I was feeling the same way. I was expressing my own inner self through the pictures I was making.”
While Black was photographing at the church, the paper’s evening deadline approached. He rushed back to the lab to process the film and watched as the editors scrapped the planned layout and printed his photos of a community in mourning.
“It says a lot about having a diverse staff where you have people who can bring you something from their world into the pot,” Black said. “In my case, I was listening to the right radio station, and I could bring with me my experience from the community into the situation where we helped illustrate the story.”
The next day, as the paper with Black’s photographs hit newsstands, the grief had transformed into anger. A student protest on the West Side devolved into chaos after police fired a gun into the air, and looting and rioting soon followed. Black and his camera were there to document the unrest.
“I was very careful about how I conducted myself and how to position myself so that I didn’t pose a threat to anybody…I saw people being beat up with billy clubs. I saw people being grabbed by the seat of their pants and yanked up and thrown on the hood of a police car…[The police] also had these shields that they used to push the crowd and back them off. I saw police wading into a crowd of folks with their billy clubs just swinging wildly.”– Bob Black, Chicago Sun-Times photographer
Black photographed some of the looting, too. He witnessed people breaking windows and taking items such as televisions, but also “practical stuff” such as diapers from supermarkets. He had a police scanner and could hear the fire department frequency, so he knew where to go. Sometimes he’d get there ahead of the police and fire department.
“We saw, in the light of day, all the windows torn out and glass all over the street. Cars were overturned,” Black said. “It did look like a war zone. And then you’d come upon a fire scene. Oftentimes, you’d see the firefighters worn out. They had tried their best to stop the fires, but they became too overwhelmed.”
Black witnessed the turmoil from another perspective: as a National Guardsman. He was a member of the photo unit in the Illinois National Guard at the time, and he was called to report for duty. He remembers being adamant about one thing.
“I reported, and they were going to give me a sidearm. I said, ‘Oh, I don’t want that,’” he recalls saying about the gun. “I’m not gonna shoot anybody, not with that. I showed them my camera on my neck. I said, ‘This is where I’m going to do my shooting.’”
As his camera captured the devastation left behind on the West Side, he understood why the riots were happening, but was dismayed by the aftermath.
“I was conflicted. I made pictures, but in my heart, I understood why. I was sorry that it was happening,” he said. “If the community was being treated right and had been treated humanely, maybe it wouldn’t have been as bad – not to say that it wouldn’t have happened. It might have still happened, but it wouldn’t have been as bad.”
Black doesn’t remember much from the days he spent on duty as a guardsman, but he does remember he didn’t get to go home during the uprising. He also covered the protests that turned violent amid the Democratic National Convention later that summer. Black views his camera as a necessary tool for history. His work earned him a spot in the National Association of Black Journalists’ Hall of Fame.
“There’s nothing like it, because it really tells the story,” Black said. “Without photographs, you don’t have any clue as to how things were. It’s our history being told.”
