Martin Luther King Jr. speaking with reporters at the Montgomery County courthouse on March 17, 1965 after a meeting with local officials in Montgomery, Alabama. Ralph Abernathy is to the left of King, and Fred Gray and James Forman are to the right. The meeting followed a march held to protest the violent dispersal of a group of SNCC demonstrators on March 16. (Spider Martin, Alabama Department of Archives & History)
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An array of photos covering the Civil Rights movement in Alabama by famed Birmingham News photographer Spider Martin will be on display for the next few weeks at Birmingham City Hall.
City of Birmingham Public Information Officer Marie Sutton said, “We are so excited to be able to display these images from Spider Martin, who was a photographer of the Birmingham News and a Fairfield native.”
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The display is called “Two Minute Warning,” named for the famous picture Martin captured on March 7, 1965, at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma.
“He was there the moment it happened,” Sutton said. “His famous photo, the ‘Two Minute Warning,’ captures the tension between the police and the marchers before they collided.”
It is one of several photographs by Martin on display on the second floor of Birmingham City Hall. He is known for his work documenting the American Civil Rights Movement.
This display comes as the nation commemorates 60 years since Bloody Sunday, one of many moments captured in time through photographs in Spider Martin’s body of work. That work includes the faceoff in the two minutes of warning from the Alabama state troopers to marchers to turn around, and the images of the brutal attack that happened afterwards.
Visitors to Birmingham City Hall can see the “Two Minute Warning” display through the end of March from 8 a.m.to 5 p.m. when City Hall is open.
