"Mississippi Eyes: The Story and Photography of the Southern Documentary Project"

Fifty years ago, in 1964 -- during what would come to be called Freedom Summer in the American South -- a young photographer named Matt Herron, who'd recently relocated to Mississippi from the North (with his wife and kids) in order to work on civil rights issues while also shooting photo-stories for Life, Look, and The Saturday Evening Post, put together a group of talented photographers that was known as the Southern Documentary Project. Herron drew upon the advice of his friend, the noted documentary photographer Dorothea Lange, to both establish and lead this small but active group, which traveled all over the segregated South, cameras at the ready, and thereby assembled a file of unforgettable photographs. Some 160 of those black-and-white photographs have now been collected by Herron in a new book: "Mississippi Eyes: The Story and Photography of the Southern Documentary Project." Herron is our guest today on ST. He looks back on that fearful, exciting, and historic time while telling us how this striking book was created.