Herbert Randall Freedom Summer Photographs

In the spring of 1964, Herbert Eugene Randall, Jr., a talented young African and Native American photographer, had been awarded the John Hay Whitney Fellowship for Creative Photography. Using this fellowship, Randall was to spend a year photographically documenting contemporary Negro life. Shortly after receiving the fellowship, he met Sanford Rose "Sandy" Leigh, a Field Secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and director of the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project in Hattiesburg. Upon their meeting, Leigh suggested that Randall use his fellowship to photograph Freedom Summer activities in Hattiesburg.

Herbert Randall did just that. During the summer of 1964, Randall not only documented the social and political efforts of the Hattiesburg Project, but also vividly depicted the hardships of Negro life in a racially discriminating Mississippi.

Herbert Randall, born in 1936 on Long Island New York, studied photography under Harold Feinstein in 1957, and, from 1958 to 1966, worked as a freelance photographer for various media organizations. His photographs were used by the Associated Press, United Press International, Black Star, various television stations, and other American and foreign publications. Mr. Randall was also a founding member of the Kamoinge Workshop, a forum for African American photographers, in New York City in 1963.

Following Freedom Summer, Randall returned to New York to continue his career in photography, serving in several photographic positions with youth organizations; as Coordinator of Photography for the New York City Board of Education; and Photographic Consultant to the National Media Center Foundation.

Mr. Randall was awarded the Creative Artist's Public Service Grant for Photography for 1971-72, and his photographs have appeared in exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Brooklyn Museum, The Art Institute of Pittsburgh, and other notable museums. His photographs are permanently represented in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, and various other repositories.

In June of 1999, Herbert Randall returned to Hattiesburg, Mississippi to attend "Faces of Freedom Summer: The Photographs of Herbert Randall," an exhibit of selected images from Randall's Freedom Summer photographs. In 2001, The University of Alabama Press published a book entitled Faces of Freedom Summer, which features the photographs included in the exhibit.

At the time of this writing Herbert Randall is retired and resides on the Shinnecock Indian Reservation on Long Island, New York.