Gwen Swiger, Associate Editor Cleveland Daily Banner
Published Sunday, July 25, 2004 6:00 AM EDT
This past week, I was digging in some boxes stored in my closet. I had not had
an occasion to take the boxes off the shelf for a long time - probably several
years.
As I explored, I came upon some treasured photos. Although no one outside of my family would place much value on them, I do. All my family members were so young.
As excited as I was to find those old photos, I know I would have been much more excited if I had found photos with a broader historical significance.
That is just what a deputy in Montgomery, Ala., did this week. He was cleaning a basement storeroom, when he came upon some old mug shot books.
The mug shots were of early leaders in the civil rights movement - Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. Taken during the 1956 bus boycott in Montgomery, the photos are just a little piece of a movement that changed the way people are viewed in the United States.
Besides the more famous individuals arrested in the bus boycott, the mug shots provide a world of information about other members of the early civil rights movement.
It was not until the civil rights movement that the black citizens of the United States really moved forward to embrace the freedoms for which our forefathers had fought and died.
Historian Horace Huntley said the mug shots give "us a window to the past that we absolutely would not see otherwise."
The Montgomery officials plan to archive the mugs and share them with interested individuals.