'It is necessary, while in darkness, to know that there is a light somewhere. To know that in oneself, waiting to be found, there is a light. What the light reveals is danger, and what it demands is faith.'
—James Baldwin in Nothing Personal (1964)
The present photograph of William Casby, a former slave from Algiers, Louisiana was taken in March 1963, just 3 months prior to President Kennedy’s historic speech that put into motion the civil rights legislation of 1964. Whereas Avedon’s earlier portraits were known for their movement, here we see the contrary – his subject frozen in time. Accompanied by the typically descriptive title that Avedon was known for and charged by the political environment in which it was taken, Casby’s static pose documents the still limited social equality of African-Americans one century following the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863.