Testifying's Warm Work: Reverend Ralph Abernathy mops his brow while testifying before the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs in Washington. Abernathy, head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, urged Congress “to provide adequate food programs for those who need them.” He told the Committee that the poor people’s demand for food programs would require “only the elimination of the ABM and the SAGE bomber defense system” or the farm subsidy program which, he added, gives millions of dollars to farmers not to grow food.

Ralph Abernathy (1926-1990) was a Baptist minister who, with Martin Luther King, Jr., organized the historic Montgomery Bus Boycotts. Abernathy co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and was a major Civil Rights figure, serving as close adviser to King and later assuming SCLC Presidency.

On verso: typewritten title, date stamps and newspaper caption with date stamp affixed.

Wire photographs were originally transmitted over phonelines, then later, by satellite. They were first used in the early 1920s. Associated Press became a leader with this. After pigment touch-ups, etc., the print is put into a drum (like a drum scanner). The image gets converted into audio tones that are transmitted. The tones are received and beamed onto photo-sensitive paper. Wire photographs are copies without originals---they are hybrid, transmitted objects. (Britt Salvesen, Curator and Department Head, Photography Department, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, March 30-31, 2022)

This object has the following keywords:

• Civil Rights Movements
• Food aid
• Injustice
• Poverty
• Racial Discrimination
• Reverend Ralph Abernathy
• Reverend Ralph Abernathy
• Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs
• Southern Christian Leadership Conference
• Testimony
• Washington DC

• Image Dimensions: 8 1/2 x 7 1/16 in. (21.59 x 17.94 cm) Measured by Hudson, Karen
• Sheet Dimensions: 8 3/4 x 7 3/8 in. (22.23 x 18.73 cm) Measured by Hudson, Karen