Every photograph tells a story
A never-published news photo from nearly 60 years ago offers a new way of seeing history: it shows four Black students from Lansing Sexton High School as they were covering a George Wallace rally on the Capitol Lawn and has sparked new conversations.
The photo speaks to a tumultuous time in Michigan history and was recently rediscovered, offering a window into the too-neglected story of Lansing’s first Black newspaper and its founder Ernie Boone.
The Historical Society of Greater Lansing is hosting one of the students in the photo, noted journalist Terry Johnson, at 11 a.m. Friday (July 31) at the Rogers Carrier House (528 N. Capitol) for a conversation starting with that George Wallace rally and including Boone’s legacy.
Johnson is a 1970 Sexton graduate and a Michigan State University journalism graduate; the conversation will be moderated by Margo Scott, a real estate executive originally from Lansing, who recently relocated to the area.
Their talk will start with the Wallace rally and how the times helped to shape young people like Johnson.
Wallace was drawing huge crowds in cities across Michigan in 1968 when he ran as an Independent and came to the Capitol grounds. In 1972, Wallace would win the Democratic primary in Michigan.
During his time in Lansing, Johnson was among a group of students who was arrested in 1971 for a sit-in at Sexton High School along with Ernie Boone, local Black activist and founder of the Westside News, Lansing’s Black newspaper in the seventies.
Boone will be joining Johnson and Scott for the discussion about the Black Power movement in Lansing during the sixties and seventies.
Johnson went on to work for several notable media outlets including United Press International, Jet Magazine, Newsweek Magazine and The Village Voice in addition to two daily newspapers in Philadelphia. Johnson was one of a group of Sexton students and MSU journalism students who worked on the ground-breaking Westside News with Boone.
Johnson also was one of the MSU Black student journalists who worked on the Grapevine Journal, the first Black student newspaper on MSU campus. The MSU Special Collections office recently received funding to digitize the newspaper’s archives.
In his recent book “Forever in the Past” MSU Professor Pero G. Dagbovie wrote extensively about the impact of the newspaper.
The photo that helped to relaunch the conversation was rediscovered by Kenneth Turner, a classmates of Johnson.
Turner was recently viewing a collection of 150 photographs of demonstrations spanning 150 years on the Capitol Lawn, it’s an ongoing exhibit celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
Turner saw the photograph of a 1968 George Wallace Rally on the Capitol Lawn.
The photograph shows four young Black men at the rally and one being detained by the
Ingham County Sheriff Department. Turner immediately said, “I know them-they were my classmates.”
He immediately texted Johnson and the conversation led to the rediscovery of history and connections.
The photographs of the Wallace rally were taken by Jay Cassidy, a student photographer for the University of Michigan Daily, the campus newspaper.
Research indicates the photos were never published.
Cassidy went on to a very successful career in Hollywood as a major movie film editor. He edited scores of movies including Sean Penn’s movies.
The photographic exhibition is sponsored in part by a grant from the MI250 celebration
and showcases 150 years of freedom of assembly on the Capitol Lawn.
