In poor cotton picker's cabin, far from the towns and cities where the civil rights agitation is taking place, a new force has entered the lives of the isolated Negro youths. Television, with its instant communication, direct to the living rooms of the poorest, has created a revolution the likes of which the world has not seen before. Television confronts today's Negro youth with a way of life completely at odds with his own experience. The richness advertised makes him acutely aware of the gulf separating his physical and moral condition from that of the whites, North Carolina

1964

In poor cotton picker's cabin, far from the towns and cities where the civil rights agitation is taking place, a new force has entered the lives of the isolated Negro youths. Television, with its instant communication, direct to the living rooms of the poorest, has created a revolution the likes of which the world has not seen before. Television confronts today's Negro youth with a way of life completely at odds with his own experience. The richness advertised makes him acutely aware of the gulf separating his physical and moral condition from that of the whites, North Carolina, 1964. Leonard Freed (American, 1929–2006). Vintage gelatin silver print; image: 7 x 24.7 cm (2 3/4 x 9 3/4 in.); paper: 20.3 x 25.2 cm (8 x 9 15/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg 2016.288 © Leonard Freed /Magnum Photos “The faces he sees,” wrote Freed, “are those of whites speaking to whites and now white society has reached him in the depths of his innermost being. For the Negro youth there is now no flight; he is being forced to acknowledge his condition, to take note that he lives as a black in a white America. And he is in revolt.” —from Black in White America