Civil Rights Photographer Charles Moore Dead at 79

The photographer credited with helping make the civil rights struggle a national issue has died. Charles Moore, 79, a news photographer for the Montgomery Advertiser and Life between 1958 to 1965, often placed himself in harm's way to capture shocking images of police attacking protesters. He began covering the movement as the sole photographer when Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested in 1958.

Moore captured some of the most enduring images of the civil rights movement, and the national outrage they created helped speed up the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, a University of Florida journalism professor tells the Los Angeles Times. "He had the courage to stand up in the face of danger and let Americans know what was really happening, through his work," the professor says. "That is why he is an unsung hero."
(More Martin Luther King Jr. stories.)