Let Us March On: Lee Friedlander and the Prayer and Pilgrimage for Freedom

Exhibition Website

Jan 13 2017 - Jul 9 2017

This exhibition presents photographer Lee Friedlander’s images of the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, a critical yet generally neglected moment in American civil rights history. On May 17, 1957—the third anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka, which outlawed segregation in public schools—thousands of activists, including many leaders from religious, social, educational, labor, and political spheres, united in front of the Lincoln Memorial, in Washington, D.C. At this first large-scale gathering on the National Mall, an event that was a forerunner of the 1963 March on Washington at which Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his famed “I Have a Dream” speech, protestors called on federal authorities to enforce desegregation, support voting rights, and combat racial violence. Friedlander photographed many of the illustrious figures who attended or spoke at the march, such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Ella Baker, Mahalia Jackson, and Harry Belafonte, and he wove among the demonstrators on the ground to capture the energy and expressions of the day. In commemoration of the sixtieth anniversary of the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, the Gallery exhibits this set of images publicly for the first time.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.

The exhibition will be hosted by the National Civil Rights Museum, Memphis TN, from September 11 through December 17, 2017.


  • Photography
  • American
  • 20th Century
  • History
  • Lee Friedlander

Exhibition Venues & Dates