DOY GORTON'S
WHITE SOUTH
1969 - 70
WITH JANE ADAMS
"The photos document a time when “everything was changing,” yet what was to come next was unclear. The Supreme Court ordered the immediate integration of schools in the South, the Vietnam War raged and Neil Armstrong walked on the moon." - James Estrin for The New York Times
Artist Biography
Doy D. Gorton is a photojournalist who worked as Chief Photographer of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Washington Photographer for the New York Times covering the White House and Capitol Hill. Gorton attended the University of Mississippi where he became engaged with the Civil Rights Movement through Fannie Lou Hamer and John Lewis. He is the only white Mississippian who was on the staff of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). He also was part of SNCC Photo and a founder SDS Photo (Students for a Democratic Society).
Doy Gorton's White South 1969-70 with Jane Adams
Doy Gorton's White South 1969-70 with Jane Adams
In the fall of 1969, Jeff Nightbyrd and I left Los Angeles and traveled to the deep south. We planned to fashion a book out of photos and interviews. It was conceived as a collaboration in the manner of James Agee and Walker Evans; a "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" for the 1960's.
Jeff and I, white southerners, had attended college in the south, the University of Texas and Ole Miss respectively. We had both been active in the southern civil-rights movement and worked together in the National Office of The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).
Our work continued to the following Spring. In the meantime, Jeff, who was editor of "Rat", one of the best known of the "underground" newspapers of the era, faced a feminist revolt at the New York weekly in his absence. He was also caught up in the Chicago 7 trial (stemming from riot charges at the 1968 Democratic Convention) as a close friend of Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. I got divorced. Tragically, our editor, Hal Scharlett, died.
The book was never published by E. P. Dutton.
There was no way to know, at the time, that this was the end of the white south. The familiar system of white dominance that had remained largely unchanged throughout southern American history was over. The spring of 1970 saw the massive integration of the schools all over the south, and bussing in the border states. The white southern vote for President Richard Nixon in 1968 had yielded little, if any, support for a system in defeat. The white resistance collapsed over the winter of 1969/1970. It is but a memory now.
Looking at the photos after all these years I am struck by the totality of the white world of the deep south. Blacks largely didn't exist within the world that we inhabited, except at our request. I know that people now, especially academics, say these kinds of things about the white south of the recent past. But, I am stunned by the EVIDENCE in these pictures. And I shot them.
I am amazed at my easy entry to red neck bars, debutante balls and state prisons. Yet, that was the way I had effortlessly lived my life, as a white southerner in good standing with the Delta elite; a member of the Bachelors Club of the Delta Debutantes; an initiate of Kappa Alpha Order at Ole Miss, a fraternity founded by Robert E. Lee. Even as I had gone into opposition to the prevailing system, I was privileged inside of it. Looking back, it is astounding.
I am also aware that these are pictures shot by a young man, with his keen interest in women and in other young people. In that sense it is not a comprehensive look at the south. Moreover, we traveled out of my hometown of Greenville, Mississippi and, no doubt, neglected areas of the south. But, the Delta, where Greenville is located, has often been called the most southern place on earth. It was there that cotton was truly king and that caste and class reached a level unmatched in the United States during the era of legal segregation.
- Doy Gorton
Pre-Press Acclaim
Current Titles
Perpetual Care: Limited Edition with Print by Clay Maxwell Jordan
$150.00
