History never stops moving. It evolves. It is fluid. What history looks like today is different from what it looked like, say, a hundred years ago; and what today’s history-in-the-making looks like now may be seen very differently just 20 years from now. Did anyone in 1907 really think Henry Ford was changing the world when he started tinkering with how to make his Model T? Other than maybe Henry himself, probably not. Will Elon Musk be seen in 2040 as a world changer because of his electric Tesla? He may or he may not.

When combing the past and the present for a list such as the 100 People Who Changed the World, there are criteria to consider, to be sure, but there are no hard-and-fast rules. There are judgments to be made, but there are no certain truths. Our list was less a hardened document than a current collection—a collection of men and women who, for better and sometimes for worse, have made a clear mark on our civilization. Such a list is by necessity subjective and open to delicious debate.

But while history may be fluid, it does tend to crystallize over time: The significance of Aristotle or Catherine the Great is easy to see from here. And certainly the importance of some of history’s great characters was apparent to their contemporaries: George Washington or Pablo Picasso or Mother Teresa. Others were largely invisible in their own time, their contributions realized only long after they were gone: Karl Marx died in 1883, many years before his writings would inspire powerful communist societies; Alan Turing, who died lonely and tortured, is now lauded as the brilliant father of the computer; and Rachel Carson gained respect as a naturalist writer not long before her death, but appreciation for her impact on environmentalism has blossomed more recently.

Perhaps the most intriguing part of this exercise is pondering the ultimate impact of present-day figures. Steve Jobs makes the list by virtue of his influence on high tech and our daily lives. But what of Mark Zuckerberg, perhaps the founding figure of social media when he launched Facebook in 2004? His impact is huge, and he has made it possible for billions of people to come together; but the social media site has also made it easier to drive society apart, upending the news business and even the way elections are conducted. Can we yet evaluate the nature of Zuckerberg’s controversial creation and his ability to control it?

Similarly, Jeff Bezos presents a quandary. He might be seen as a retailing successor to Richard Sears, who made our list of 100 even though his great namesake legacy is now in bankruptcy. But Bezos also rides the wave of technology, and the power and reach of Amazon are frighteningly large. And by the way, without Robert Kahn and Vint Cerf, would we even have Zuckerberg and Bezos to kick around? Who are they, you ask? Just the guys who figured out a way for all the computers of the world to speak to each other, something we call the internet. If that invention hasn’t changed the world as we know it, well, tell us what has.

When it comes to game changers, Martin Luther King Jr. is of course included here for his enormous impact on civil rights. Yet King also has spiritual descendants whose work continues to alter our lives every day, including Alicia Garza. She’s the organizer who coined the phrase “Black Lives Matter” in 2013, after George Zimmerman was acquitted of murdering Florida teen Trayvon Martin. An anguished Garza posted “I continue to be surprised at how little Black lives matter . . . Our lives matter.” That sentiment was turned into a hashtag and became a movement that appears to be challenging racism in a way that has eluded the nation for centuries.

Will the moment last? Only time, of course, will tell. History will move inexorably forward, our questions today will have answers tomorrow, and lists like these will change—again and again and again.

Here are photographs of some of the people who made the list in LIFE’s 100 People Who Changed the World.

COVER IMAGES: (Mother Teresa) Tim Graham/Hulton/Getty; (Lincoln) Alexander Gardner/Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG/Getty; (Jesus) 3LH/SuperStock; (Einstein) Donaldson Collection/Michael Ochs Archives/Library of Congress/Getty; (MLK) Flip Schulke/Corbis/Getty; (Steve Jobs) Robert Galbraith/Reuters; (Beatles) John Dominis/ The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock; (Edison) Granger; (Hitler) Photo12/UIG/ Getty; (Eleanor Roosevelt) Marvin Koner/Corbis/Getty; (Gandhi) Wallace Kirkland/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock; (Oprah) Matt Baron/BEI/Shutterstock

Mother Teresa at a hospice for the destitute and dying in Kolkata, India, 1969.

Terry Fincher/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

In 1994 Nelson Mandela visited the cell in Robben Island Prison in South Africa where he had been held as a political prisoner from 1964 to 1990.

© Louise Gubb/Corbis/Getty Images

Circa 1910, women worked on an early outdoor version of the Henry Ford assembly line that would revolutionize mass production.

George Rinhart/Corbis/Getty Images

Sojourner Truth, an anti-slavery and women’s rights activist, held in her lap a photo of her grandson James Caldwell, who fought with a Massachusetts regiment and survived being a POW in South Carolina during the Civil War.

Everett/Shutterstock

Helen Keller, blind and deaf, felt the face of her teacher, Anne Sullivan.

Rolls Press/Popperfoto/Getty Images

Albert Einstein in 1947, twenty-six years after the groundbreaking physicist won the Nobel Prize.

Donaldson Collection/Library of Congress/Getty Images

Catherine de Medici inspected the results of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, a crackdown she had ordered against Protestants in Paris in 1572.

Gianni Dagli Orti/Shutterstock

Billy Graham walked with children during an evangelical visit to Nigeria in 1960.

AP/Shutterstock

Oprah Winfrey in 2014 at the Critic’s Choice Awards, where the media entrepreneur had been nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Lee Daniel’s The Butler.

Matt Baron/BEI/Shutterstock

The post LIFE’s 100 People Who Changed the World appeared first on LIFE.

Photos are proof. We know this from our own lives. Here’s what dad looked like when he was in high school. Look at this cake I baked. I ran into Taylor Swift at the mall—see, here we are in a selfie. A telling taunt of our age is “photos or it didn’t happen.”

The same holds true for the wider world. The pictures that really matter are the ones that prove something, that show us a definitive truth, that make us understand. Here’s what a human fetus looks like. Here’s the glory of Muhammad Ali. Here’s the shock we felt when the World Trade Center Towers collapsed.

In our quest to select the most important 100 photographs ever, we looked for pictures that demonstrated something important and meaningful. Some capture a news event or show the brutality of war. Others crystallize a particular cultural moment. Some take us on a fantastic voyage—up into space, perhaps, or inside the human body. Some photographs matter because they showed what cameras are capable of and illustrate the extraordinary power of photography as a medium.

The oldest photo we chose was the first one ever taken, of a French landscape in the 1820s. The process involved chemical applications and a multi-hour exposure that left an impression on a pewter plate. That grainy photo of the view outside the photographer’s window signaled our species’ transition to the world of pictures. Thanks to the internet and our smartphones, with their built-in cameras, we now see more images each day than the people who lived in a world of paintings and prints saw in a lifetime. Most of these photographs we flip past and forget. Others linger. The best reorient our understanding. The rare ones—the ones we feature in this special issue—change how we see the world.

Here are a few selections from LIFE’s new special issue 100 Photographs: The Most Important Pictures Ever and the Stories Behind Them

(clockwise from top left) Joe Rosenthal/AP/Shutterstock; Robert Beck/Sports Illustrated/Getty; Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, [LC-DIG-fsa-8b29516]; NASA

Regarded as the first photo ever taken, this image of a French countryside was achieved when Joseph Nicephore Niepce placed a thin coating of light-sensitive phosphorous derivative on a pewter plate and then placed the plate in a camera obscura and set in on a windowsill for a long exposure.

Joseph Niepce/Hulton/Getty

Lewis Hine’s photos such as this one of “breaker boys” who picked pieces of slate from conveyor belts as freshly broken pieces of coal rolled by, helped raise support for child labor laws.

Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, National Child Labor Committee Collection, [LC-DIG-nclc-01130]

Elizabeth Eckford’s walk through a crowd of hateful tormentors into Little Rock Central High School in 1957 is a defining image of the tumultuous effort to desegregate schools.

Bettmann/Getty

The image of U.S. Marines planting the American flag on Iwo Jima during World War II has been called the famous news photo of all time.

Joe Rosenthal/AP/Shutterstock

In a defining image of the Vietnam war, the wounded Marine Gunnery Sgt. Jeremiah Purdie (center, with bandaged head) reached toward a stricken comrade after a fierce firefight south of the DMZ, October 1966.

Larry Burrows/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Woodstock music festival that drew half a million people to an upstate New York farm in 1969 signified the best of that age’s hopes and dreams.

Bill Eppridge/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Michael’s Phelps’ win over Serbia’s Milorad Cavic by one hundredth of a second at the 2008 Olympics was a golden example of the photo finish.

Heinz Kluetmeier/Sports Illustrated/Getty

Egged on by the bogus claims of the outgoing 44th president, a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 in an historic attempt to disrupt the tallying of electoral college votes.

Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency/Getty

The Hubble Space Telescope’s photo known as Pillars of Creation captured the conditions in which new stars are born.

NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team

The post The 100 Most Important Photos Ever appeared first on LIFE.

But the attraction of this Manhattan crossroads is more than one night only. The role that Times Square plays in America’s largest city has been well captured by the pictures taken by LIFE photographers over the decades.

Times Square was given its name on April 8, 1904, soon after the New York Times set up offices nearby. It developed into the glitziest spot in the city, thanks to its abundance of entertainment spots and neon billboards.

The photos here capture the excitement and the hubbub, the celebrations and the showplaces. One of the most jarring pictures in the collection is in fact a rare photo of Times Square looking quiet and serene, thanks to a taxi strike that left its boulevards nearly free of traffic. (The idea of Times Square without people later became the centerpiece of a nightmare sequence in the 2001 Tom Cruise movie Vanilla Sky.)

The collection includes two celebrity portraits. One is a natural for the location: playwright Moss Hart and his wife, actress Kitty Carlisle. The other is of Robert Redford at the time when his career was taking off thanks to his performance in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and the photo is memorable for the way the actor’s Western aesthetic contrasts with the gritty backdrop of Times Square in 1969.

One of the most famous photos in the history of LIFE magazine was shot in Times Square, on a day when the space erupted in spontaneous celebration. It was 1945, and Japan was about to surrender, bringing an end to World War II. One exuberant man was going from woman to woman, planting his lips on them (and he was far from the only one doing so) when LIFE’s Albert Eisenstadt took the picture known as “The Kiss.” The photo has had a problematic afterlife, as a woman claiming to be the nurse in the photo came forward to describe the kiss as terrifying from her perspective, but the image nonetheless captures the national mood at the long-awaited end of World War II.

The crowds that day indicate the particular hold of Times Square on the civic imagination. It’s the place where people magnetically streamed because something important had happened, and they wanted to share the experience with others.

This photo is from a staged essay from 1940 on the “White Collar Girl,” the subject of the best-selling novel Kitty Foyle that was later adapted into a movie; here Carol Lorell, who resembled the movie’s star, Ginger Rogers, portrayed a scene in which the White Collar Girl, alone amid the glitz of Times Square, had finished her workday and was unsure to do with the rest of her evening.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Times Square on Dec. 31, 1941.

Gordon Coster/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Times Square in New York City on New Year’s Eve, as 1941 turned to 1942.

Gordon Coster The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Military police in Times Square on New Year’s Eve, as 1941 turned to 1942.

Gordon Coster The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The motorcade of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt moved through Times Square, 1944.

William Vandivert/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A Times Square billboard for the Broadway show Mexican Hayride, 1944.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Times Square billboard, 1944.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Pigeons and loiterers (visitors) gathered in cement island in the middle of Broadway in Times Square, 1944.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Customers peered at the wares inside a small, brightly-lit Times Square watch shop, 1944.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Times Square, 1944.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A strolling blind musician played guitar and harmonica along Broadway at night in Times Square in 1944.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Times Square, 1944.

Andreas Feininger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Times Square, 1944.

Andreas Feininger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Servicemen made calls to faraway family and friends from booths at the GI phone center in Times Square, 1944.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Getty Images

Sailors looked for fun in a curfew-closed Times Square.

(Photo by Carl Mydans/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation)

V-J Day celebrations in Times Square, August 14, 1945.

William C. Shrout The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

V-J Day celebrations in Times Square, August 14, 1945.

William C. Shrout The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

V-J Day celebrations in Times Square, August 14, 1945.

William C. Shrout The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

V-J Day kiss, Times Square, Aug. 14, 1945.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Times Square was uncharacteristically quiet during a 1949 taxi strike.

Yale Joel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Traffic congestion on Broadway looking north from 45th Street in Times Square, 1954.

Andreas Feininger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Times Square, February 1954.

Andreas Feininger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The cast of ballet Fancy Free danced in the middle of Times Square, 1958.

Gordon Parks/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Playwright Moss Hart with his wife, actress Kitty Carlisle, in Times Square, 1959.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Robert Redford in Times Square, between meetings, 1969.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Robert Redford hailed a cab in Times Square. Just a few blocks away, at the Biltmore Theater on 47th Street, was where the actor got his first major notices as the star of Neil Simon’s 1963 Broadway play, Barefoot in the Park.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The stroke of midnight began a new year, new century and new millennium as people celebrated in Times Square on Jan. 1, 2000.

Ted Thai/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The post Times Square: The Ultimate Gathering Place appeared first on LIFE.

It was the kind of break most any songwriter in 1957 would have killed for: the chance to work with Leonard Bernstein on a Broadway-bound musical based on Romeo and Juliet. But Stephen Sondheim, who died on Nov. 26, 2021 at age 91, was never just any songwriter. When he was 25 years old, with the barest experience, only arm-twisting by his mentor, Oscar Hammerstein II, convinced him to accept the offer. “I didn’t want to do it,” Sondheim remembered later, but “[Oscar] said…this is the chance to work with real professionals…” And so, “I said okay. And that’s how I got the job.”

To describe Sondheim as a precocious talent would be stating the obvious. He completed his first full musical, By George, a comic take on high school, at 15 and enlisted Hammerstein, the father of a friend, to critique it. As a college undergrad, Sondheim adapted a George S. Kaufman play as a musical and completed four other musicals of his own. One of his earliest professional jobs was composing songs for Saturday Night, a work by twin screenwriters Julius and Philip Epstein of Casablanca fame. 

But for all of Sondheim’s success, as his career progressed, his work got darker, less commercial, and less popular with broad American audiences. Company, from 1970, about a womanizer, was told in out-of-chronological order. Pacific Overtures, from 1976, about the westernization of Japan, originally was presented in Kabuki style. And then there’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, from 1979, about revenge and cannibalism. His work was less like that of his musical theater contemporary, glitzmaster Andrew Lloyd Webber, than the poets Robert Lowell and John Berryman, wrote critic Adam Kirsch in the Wall Street Journal earlier in 2021. “Sondheim’s sense that we reveal ourselves in what we don’t say and do—that slips and silences can be as important as full-throated declarations—is another thing that he shares with writers of his generation,” wrote Kirsch. 

It’s unlikely Sondheim would have disagreed, at least when it came to the kind of writing that interested him. He had dismissed the lyrics of West Side Story favorites such as “I Feel Pretty” as embarrassing, and the lyrics of “Tonight,” the iconic fire escape duet between Tony and Mary, as artificial. In an interview on 60 Minutes in 2020, when West Side Story was being revived on Broadway, Sondheim told Bill Whitaker he wished he’d never written the line from “Tonight,” Today the world was just an address. It was too “fancy” for a tough-guy teen, Sondheim said. As for “I Feel Pretty,” the composer in a different interview complained that it, too, did not align with the character: “She’s a Puerto Rican street girl. She should speak in street poetry.” 

However he felt about the lines, they are part of one the most beloved shows in the history of Broadway, and of the rich and complex legacy of a true titan of the stage.

LIFE’s special tribute issue West Side Story: The Sharks, the Jets, a Romeo and Juliet, which chronicles the show’s journey from stage to screen, is available for purchase online.

Cover image by TCD/Prod.DB/Alamy

The post Stephen Sondheim: A Broadway Master’s `West Side’ Roots appeared first on LIFE.

A 1960s Coven

A feature article from the November 13^th, 1964 issue titled, “Real Witches At Work: English Pagans Keep an Old Cult Alive”, depicts a coven of both men and women. The below photograph from March of 1964 shows the coven dressed in everyday Sixties attire walking around a small fire with hands interlocked in the evergreen and stoney woods of Oxfordshire, England. The writer then goes into the history of the ritual and explains that rituals are an act of grounding for them to be fully immersed with nature, as stated in the quote below:

“In a thousand-year-old rite, the witches dance around a bonfire within the prehistoric Rollright stone circle that still stands in Oxfordshire. At the climax of the dance they leap over fire to stimulate the sun as the source of life.” 

Witches dancing in circles around a fire, March 1964

(Photo by Terence Spencer/Popperfoto via Getty Images)

Mrs. Ray Bone performing a healing ritual in her home.

(Photo by Terence Spencer/Popperfoto via Getty Images)

LIFE covered witches during this time in a non-menacing way. It showed them as everyday people who want to do good for themselves and others by using magic. Both these texts do this by placing the witch archetype into an image readers from the time could accept: as an everyday housewife who balanced her work and career to have a fully rounded life. The magazine also reflected the changing societal expectations for women during the era. A later article from the “The Feminine Eye” section in the February 17th, 1967 edition of LIFE shows how the image of the witch had transformed through mid-century media. The article quotes a LaVey Satanist stating that she does not want to be called a witch since the term has “…sort of the connotation of a cookie-lady now”.

By the 1960s, second-wave feminism gained popularity in the United States. Knowing that, it should be unsurprising that LIFE magazine would cover witches. From a twenty-first century perspective though, it seems like a radical act considering the many inherited biases surrounding witchcraft at the time. The articles also helped LIFE’s mass audience gain a better understanding of the religion and its practice. Throughout history the witch archetype went from something to be frightened of to being represented in a popular magazine by the likes of Ray Bone, who said: “Twentieth-century witches [are] happy in our knowledge; we are simple people with simple beliefs.” 

The post The “Ordinary” Witches of LIFE Magazine appeared first on LIFE.

Dandridge, who was fairly new to LIFE when he took that historic shot, is now 83 and lives in Los Angeles, where he settled after his second career as a television writer.

In a phone interview, the jocular Dandridge recalled the unlikely beginning to his photography career. He was a teenager in the U.S. Marines, playing in a barracks poker game at Camp Lejeune, when one of his opponents threw his Kodak Pony camera into the pot. Dandridge’s hand was a winning one indeed, especially after the soldier who had lost the camera taught Dandridge how to use it.

When Dandridge left the Marines at age 19, he returned to his home to New York City and began taking pictures, shooting model portfolios and birthday parties, and roaming the streets to add to his portfolio. As a young man who was “full of beans,” as Dandridge puts it, he wasn’t shy about asking for work, and it paid off: He wrote a letter to Jimmy Hoffa asking for access for a photo story, and ending up spending two-and-a-half weeks with him in Miami for Pageant magazine, being in the room when the labor leader was on the phone cursing out John Kennedy.

Dandridge persistently called LIFE magazine to pitch ideas, usually about a celebrity or politician coming to New York, and he was always turned down. But then one day the LIFE editor called Dandridge to see if he was available to shoot a story on racial conflict in Cambridge, Maryland in 1963; the protesters had agreed to give LIFE inside access, but only if they sent a Black photographer. Dandridge told the editor he would check to see if he was free—which he very much was. “I ran around the apartment for fifteen minutes yelling and screaming like an idiot, then called them back and told them I cleared the schedule,” he recalled, laughing.

The Cambridge assignment proved to be life-changing in two ways. One was that Dandridge did well enough that LIFE continued to give him more assignments. The other was that he developed a relationship with the protest leader, Gloria Richardson. She and Dandridge would eventually marry. “I was down there two or three times, and the center of action was Gloria’s house,’ he says. “She was a bright and courageous lady. It just happened that way.”

Later that year Dandridge took his famous photo of Sarah Collins—a shot he would never have gotten without a little bravado. Dandridge, in the company of Collins’ family, entered the Atlanta hospital where she was being treated, and on the way to her room he bluffed his way past hospital worker telling him to leave by explaining that he had the hospital administrator’s permission to take pictures (which he did not). That tactic worked until he reached Collins’ floor and a man answered Dandridge’s explanation by saying, “I’m the administrator!” Still, Dandridge got into Collins’ room. “I knocked or six or eight or ten pictures,” he says. “Then I got out before something bad happened.” He kept charging ahead that day despite resistance because, “What was I going to do, walk away from the picture?”

Another of Dandridge’s more memorable shots was a photo from the Harlem riots that ran as a spread over two pages in the July 31, 1941 issue of LIFE. The photo showed a young man who had been hit by a stray police bullet being taken to an ambulance by his friends. Dandridge recalls that he and a writer had been up in Harlem chasing the action all night when one of his legs went out. The writer propped him up against a telephone pole, and from the position he got the shot. After the photo ran, Dandridge was particularly pleased when he was at the office and legendary LIFE photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt asked him how he got the shot—which depended on Dandridge having his flash unit with him.

Dandridge is a jocular and engaging storyteller, and his eye for telling detail comes through in not just his pictures from his words. Talking about growing up poor in Harlem, he related how he and his mother for a time lived a single room, and could only use one shelf in a shared refrigerator in a common area. After his mother, who survived major bouts of tuberculosis, found steady work at the city’s Board of Health, the first thing she would do with each paycheck was to buy subway tokens to make sure she would be able to get to work. When Dandridge’s career took off, and she refused to believe that he could earn $2,500 for a week’s work when her annual salary was $5,000, he brought her a copy of his paycheck, and she kept that document until the day she died. “The thing I was happiest about with my career was how much it meant to mom,” Dandridge says.

In addition to shooting for LIFE, Dandridge worked for many other magazines, including Look, the Saturday Evening Post, and Playboy. His Playboy assignments included photographing an interview between Alex Haley and James Baldwin. That was a highlight for Dandridge, because he had worked as an assistant to James Baldwin in the days before his photography career took off (that job enabled him to upgrade to a new camera from the one he was as a Marine).

Dandridge’s photography helped pave the transition to his second career as a television writer. Dandridge had served as set photographer on a number of movies, including Jules Dassin’s Uptight and Elia Kazan’s The Arrangement. With LIFE ending its original run in 1972, and other magazine clients such as Look and The Saturday Evening Post going under, Dandridge became a fellow at the American Film Institute. His sold his first script in 1974 to the TV series Kung Fu—an episode titled Night of the Owls, Day of the Doves, about three prostitutes who inherit a hotel and try to go legit.

His television credits include episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man, The Incredible Hulk, St. Elsewhere, and he was on the writing staff of Generations, the first soap opera to feature an African-American family among its original characters.

As a man who documented so much racial struggle in the 1960s, Dandridge has found the events of recent times, with the police killings of George Floyd, Brionna Taylor and so many others, to be particularly heartbreaking. During the 1960s he had a real sense that he was witnessing the beginning of societal change in regard to race .

“It’s been sixty years and the same bullshit is still going on,” he says . “…In spite of the Obamas and the Thurgood Marshalls and the Ralph Bunches, even Malcolm X, all those people who spoke up—all of that, what has it added up to? It adds up to black people are still scared to be living in America. Sometimes I just want to cry.”

The one “pebble” of hope, he says, is the Derrick Chauvin verdict in the officer who killed George Floyd was found guilty, and the promise that cell phone cameras can help hold those who abuse their power accountable. It’s an interesting perspective from a man whose most famous photo, of Sarah Jean Collins in her hospital bed all those years ago, helped begin the accounting.

Sarah Jean Collins, 12, was blinded by dynamite explosion set off in basement of Birmingham church that killed her sister and three other girls as her Sunday school class was ending, 1963.

Photo by Frank Dandridge/The LIFE Images Collection via Shutterstock

Sarah Jean Collins, 12, in an Atlanta hospital after being blinded by dynamite explosion set off in basement of Birmingham church that killed her sister and three other girls as her Sunday school class was ending, 1963.

Photo by Frank Dandridge/The LIFE Images Collection via Shutterstock

A young man who was hit by a stray bullet fired by police to disperse crowds during the Harlem riots was carried to an ambulance by friends, 1964.

Photo by Frank Dandridge/The LIFE Images Collection via Shutterstock

Civil Rights marchers reached a police road block outside Selma, Alabama in March 1965, during a march coming two days after “Bloody Sunday.”

Frank Dandridge/]/The LIFE Images Collection via Shutterstock

Martin Luther King in Selma, Alabama in 1965, two days after the infamous “Bloody Sunday” march there.

Photo by Frank Dandridge/The LIFE Images Collection via Shutterstock

Martin Luther King and other civil rights activist began to pray as police blocked the street during a second attempt at a march in Selma, 1965.

Photo by Frank Dandridge/The LIFE Images Collection via Shutterstock

Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders watched President Lyndon B. Johnson speak on television, 1965.

Photo by Frank Dandridge/The LIFE Images Collection via Shutterstock

The Watts riots, 1965.

Photo by Frank Dandridge/The LIFE Images Collection via Shutterstock

Soldiers subdued a rioter in Watts, 1965.

Photo by Frank Dandridge/The LIFE Images Collection via Shutterstock

Police searched a man they saw running away from a clothing store during the 1967 riots in Newark before letting him go.

Photo by Frank Dandridge/The LIFE Images Collection via Shutterstock

A scene from the Newark riots, 1965.

Photo by Frank Dandridge/The LIFE Images Collection via Shutterstock

A sniper in position during the Newark riots, 1967.

Photo by Frank Dandridge/The LIFE Images Collection via Shutterstock

A police officer took cover on Springfield Avenue in Newark while looking for a sniper, 1967.

Photo by Frank Dandridge/The LIFE Images Collection via Shutterstock

Police hunted for a sniper on Springfield Avenue during the Newark riots, 1967.

Photo by Frank Dandridge/The LIFE Images Collection via Shutterstock

A man who had been shot in the side during the 1967 Newark riots died moments after this picture was taken; twenty-six people were killed during the riots.

Photo by Frank Dandridge/The LIFE Images Collection via Shutterstock

The post Race in the 1960s: The Photography of Frank Dandridge appeared first on LIFE.