Alabama State Archives exhibit ‘A Paper for the People’ runs through June
“A Paper for the People”: The Jim Peppler Southern Courier Photograph Collection is on display at the Alabama Department of Archives and History. (contributed)
Black History Month is a good time to visit the Alabama Department of Archives and History to see the exhibit, “A Paper for the People”: The Jim Peppler Southern Courier Photograph Collection. The exhibit of 51 black and white photographs is on display in the Archives’ Milo B. Howard Auditorium and first floor lobby through June.
From July 1965 to December 1968, the Southern Courier newspaper served Montgomery’s African-American community by covering topics from the civil rights movement to music and social events to everyday life. The Courier published hard news, but it also gave readers a platform for sharing their views and experiences. Key to this representation were the images in each issue, and no one contributed more to that visual record than James H. (Jim) Peppler, who served as principal photographer and photo editor for three years.
A native of Philadelphia, Peppler arrived in Montgomery just after graduating from college in 1965. His work at the Courier ran the full journalistic spectrum: from individuals and events of national renown, to grassroots civil rights efforts, to local domestic and social life. He handled assignments fairly and objectively, but always with compassion and a genuine interest in the people he met. By the time he left Montgomery for a position at Newsday in 1968, he had honed the style that would characterize his entire career.
In 2009, Peppler donated 11,000 negatives from his time at the Courier to the Alabama Department of Archives and History. Over the next three years, all of the negatives were digitized and made available to the public in the Archives’ digital collection at www.digital.archives.alabama.gov.
While representing only a small portion of Pepper’s entire collection, the new exhibit drawn from the collection is the first time many of these photographs have been displayed publicly. They provide a compelling look back at events of the civil rights movement, at local concerts by music legends including James Brown and the Marvalettes, and at daily life in Montgomery’s neighborhoods during a decade of tremendous change and transition.
“These images demonstrate how a photograph can be a conduit through which Alabamians in the past speak to us today,” said Archives director Steve Murray. “Even as a very young journalist, Mr. Peppler had a tremendous talent for capturing the joy, sadness, hope, and fear experienced by his subjects, and through these photos we get to experience them, too.”
The Alabama Department of Archives and History is in downtown Montgomery, directly across the street from the State Capitol. It is the state’s government records repository, special collections library and research facility, and is home to the Museum of Alabama, the state history museum. The Archives and Museum are open Monday through Saturday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. To learn more, visit www.archives.alabama.gov or call 334-242-4364.
