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On theme is a production of iHeartRadio and fair Weather Friends Media.
Take my bit.
Okay, say cheese cheez. Let me see mm hm, I like that. Try it again.
Okay, okay, how about this one. I don't think it's really capturing me, but you're literally right there though.
Me as in my essence what I want to say to the world through my likeness me.
Okay, So what do you want the picture to say?
I wanted to say, there she go, and she begin to it when she goes, you.
Know, black people be saying a whole lot and they'll be saying nothing.
But okay, I got it.
So let's try this again. See that's perfect. I'm Katie and I'm Eves.
In today's episode, Pixel power.
Photos are always saying something A thousand somethings. As a popular quote goes, and when photography and political movements mix, maybe those pictures talk. So today on our show, we're taking it back to the abolitionist movement and the anti apartheid movement, looking through the viewfinder at specific ways photography can be used for good and evil.
Act one, the most photographed man?
Who do you think is the most photographed man today?
So the first person that comes to mind for me is Barack Obama, even though he's not president anymore, So I guess the current president, So Joe Biden.
I guess you think photograph?
I don't because I feel like Obama had more photographs. You know what I mean? Right?
Who wants to look at him?
Nobody? But my thing is the White House.
They have official photographers, So I say that the most photograph because they're photographed on purpose. And obviously I'm thinking an A and American centric way. So I'm thinking about US federal government and I'm thinking about the office of the president. So my first guess is Obama, and then my second guess is just whoever the current president is, which is now Biden? Wait, who do you think is the most photographed person today?
See, I would sink like maybe Kim Kardashian.
But then I was like, because people are like always taking pictures, it literally could be just like a random kid in Ohio to get about the pictures of themselves, they take a million pictures of themselves. Like most photographed person in the world.
Yeah, I guess I also didn't include like self photography.
I wasn't include selfies.
Yeah.
In my thinking on this.
Could literally be anybody.
So we were really trying to find out who's the most narcissistic person in the world.
Well, you know, maybe most creative. Maybe they put no shoots m h okay, that's a very diplomatic way to put it. Yeah, with most folks carrying around a camera at all times, it might be hard to know who is the single most photographed person today, But that absolutely was not the case in the eighteen hundreds. In the nineteenth century, no American was photographed more than Frederick Douglas,
with more than one hundred and sixty known portraits. Douglas had more pictures taken of him during his lifetime than Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman.
And this was no accident.
Douglas, an escaped slave who became a renowned abolitionist, and author understood the power of photography and saw the revolutionary technology as an avenue to challenge racists, caricatures and stereotypes about black people that were abundant in.
American visual culture. Eves, can you describe this photo of Douglas.
So it's a black and white photo, and Douglas is kind of looking off into the side. He's dressed up in nice clothes. He looks very stern, his lips are kind of downturned. He's very seriously focused, and he looks like, you know, he's about business, basically.
About his beasis. Truly.
Yeah, And for anyone who has ever cracked open a US history book, the image Eve's described is floating in your head right now, partly because he took a lot
of his pictures like this. By posing for these portraits, Douglas presented the world with an image of a dignified, well dressed black man, a stark contrast to the degrading to pictures that were common, and he carefully curated this public image, ensuring he was always well groomed, always dressed formally, and always projecting an air a sophistication.
If you listen to our past episodes, Bona fide blackface or we might regret this episode later. You'll recall that American media often depicted black people as silly, simple folks, just their fault white folk's amusement.
But Douglas troubled that notion.
He once said he never wanted to look like a happy, amiable, fugitive slave.
He a statement, why are he bagging?
Why is he bagging on slaves like that they can be happy?
Well, I think.
The thing is like, no one really looked like that. Yeah, it was there putting out like nobody was looking like that. Yeah, but he was like, let me make sure I don't look like that. I ain't gonna smile. I'm not gonna crack a one smile. And it's shit funny.
It's just funny as an isolated sentiment to be like taking it out of context like that.
Yeah, his photos, they were confrontational. The stirred eyes that you mentioned, the unsmiling mouth, the playing background. A lot of his pictures ain't no little Doiley's in the back. He's like, keep your eyes on me, on my face, and he described it as the face of the fugitive slave.
Douglas was well aware of the importance of controlling his image and as a famous writer and orator. He used his photographs to gain subscribers for his abolitionist newspaper, The North Star, and he would also hand out pictures of himself along with his letters, speeches and essays.
He saw photography as quote the most democratic of the arts. In a lecture he delivered in Boston in eighteen sixty one, he said, what.
Was once the exclusive luxury of the rich and great is now within reach of all the humblest servant. Girl whose income is but a few shillings per week may now possess a more perfect likeness of herself the noble ladies and even royalty with all its precious treasures, could purchase fifty years ago.
Yeah, so basically just saying how photography really kind of even the playing field in his eyes is interesting to me. And the reason why photography got really accessible during this time is because the picture used to be printed on metal, and it used it switched to being printed on paper, and of course paper was like more abundant and easier
to print on. But I really thought it's interesting to call it the most democratic of the arts, as someone who used to be enslaved like slavery is like the very antithesis of democracy, you know, and so him seeing photography as like the antithesis in a way of slavery, and like he's able to put his image out there and really change people's minds based on his image, Like he like looked so serious and so dignified. People were like, he's lying. He wasn't even a slave before. People didn't
believe it because his image that he put out. He had the newspaper and he was going around writing these speeches, like giving these speeches. People were like, ain't no way because of the images that we see, you know, like the minstrel shows, like that's what a slave is.
So I was like, he ate that. He really ate that description. What did you think of it?
Well, I have a question for you, which is that I'm curious about your take on who his intended audience was for in his thinking around like presenting himself in this way. Was it for other black people to be like this is who you are, this is who you really are and you can see yourself this way.
Or was it for non black people? I think it was both.
So, like in the quote where he's talking about like the humble servant girl being able to see herself because like you know how they say the camera don't lie a little timpanals or something, but they gonna lie. It's gonna show you what you like really look like. And if you have people like always saying like you're subhuman, like you're not as good as me, like you're you know, an animal really, and then you look at this image and you're like, wait a minute, I'm not who they
said I was. And they also can see this black man who is very black, you know, like you know sometimes people be back in the days for saying they black, but they like, you know, one sixteenth black, but this man black, Okay, like ain't no question. So like they can see this black man and be like, oh, like he has this picture, he's like dressing these nice clothes, he's like giving all these lectures.
So I definitely think it was for black people.
But then also when people were wanting to know about abolition and you know, what should we do as a country, people were coming to him people, you know, as powerful as a president of the United States, he was advising Abraham Lincoln. When Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, he was like very well read, well written, well spoken, and well photographed. He had the most photographs out, so I
think it was twofold. And so, like you said, he had the North Star and that was a way to get the message out, and he was printing his picture in there every time, like hey, like this is an abolitions newspaper. These are our thoughts about anti slavery. This is what it would look like. This is what would happened going forward, like really laying out the cause, like the moral objections and just laying it out for people
to be able to read. And like you know, newspapers they just popping back then he puts up a newspaper. Now maybe people did even read it, but people's reading those newspapers listening to his speeches. He was handing out
little cars of his picture like yeah. Henry Lewis Gates called him like the social media influencer of his day, and I was like, that's really true, because he was using a relatively new technology to get his message out and like spread you know, his own propaganda, which was anti slavery.
And he does look serious in the photo, but it does also strike me as a very artistically composed photo as well. This one that I'm looking at and described
earlier of him looking off into the side. There's just something about it that seems pretty thoughtfully composed, and it makes me think about our previous episode in which we talked about James Vandersey and his death portraits and this being kind of like something that preceded that, Like, this is James Vandersey used his portraits to talk about death, and this is about life. This is about what kind of lives black people had in the truth and authenticity of.
What black life looked like.
And Frederick Douglass showed that through his photos without having to say it, because a statement of it being the most democratic of the arts is very telling when and there are so many other arts that Black people did express themselves through, a really big one of them being writing, and a lot of people didn't have access to that though, so a lot of people weren't able to read or weren't able to write back in that time.
Yeah, this photograph is like telling a story, even if
you're illiterate exactly. And going back to your question about if he was targeting black people or white people, he also was a big recruiter for the Union Army former slaves or I think maybe even they were still slaves, but yeah, to join the Union Army and fight the Confederacy did the Civil War, and he was able to use that like this for people who you know, might not have access to the North Star but can see his picture or like, oh, this man says we should
like join and fight, and like giving people the idea the abolition is possible, you know. So he was really like firing on all cylinders truly. But I think like a lot of scholars call him like the father of the Civil rights movement, and we see a lot of his tactics and movements current movements now. Like when you look back at the Civil Rights movement, a lot of
things you're looking at is pictures. Right, So on Bloody Sunday when John Lewis crossed that Edmund Pettis Bridge, people saw the images of the dogs getting sticked on people and the water hoses knocking people down, and that's put on TV and you know, you can write your letter from the Birmingham jail and stuff like that, but those images hit different. And I think Frederick Douglas was kind of one of the maybe not first, but one of the most prominent people to say, like the opress can
show these images and like change things. And you see that in the civil rights movement, see in the Black Lives Matter movement, And I think now even in like Palestine, we're getting like terrible images coming from Palestine. And the thing that's kind of different with Palestine is like you're seeing these images and we're like what the fuck? And then the powers at b are just like whatever.
You know, we're inundated with so many of them that it's become easier to be desensitized.
I don't think we're desensitized. I think the ruling class just doesn't give a fuck about Palestinians, right, And so it's like we're used to saying like, oh, we're seeing these horrible images and they're telling the truth. So things need to change because we've seen that going all the way back from abolition, But now with Paleside is like not happening.
So when I say we, I don't mean necessarily me and you and people who we know are pro Palestine. But I do think there is a general public outside of the ruling class that is in denial purposeful denial as well, because just think about all the people I mean holocaust deniers going to that, I mean everything, like
people who deny atrocities that happen in the world. People turn a blind eye to it a lot of the time and say, these things are happening, but are they really happening, like people who're saying they were like actors
in Sandy Hook. You know, just whenever atrocities come up, there are always regular people, including poor people, including people who are not part of the ruling class, who are like, you know, they see all of this in front of their face and like there's they use some sort of excuse to be like, yeah, it's not really happy happening. In many ways, Douglas was ahead of his time in recognizing the profound impact that photography could have on public perception and national consciousness.
His photos radiated dignity and authority, characteristics denied to those who had been enslaved, and his extensive photographic archive is a testament to the transformative power of the camera to humanize, educate, and inspire.
Next, we're traveling between Massachusetts and South Africa to hear about how two Polaroid employees contributed to the fall of apartheid. That's after the Break Act two, the Polaroid protest.
I wanted to include the Polaroid protest in this episode because one unlike Frederick Douglas, I hadn't known about it until recently. And that could just be a function of our US focus educational system, but it also could be because it gives a great blueprint for how we can affect change today when it comes to corporations participating in oppression.
Yeah, it's a powerful story that really highlights the transformative potential of worker led activism.
So let's get into it.
In nineteen seventy two, African American Polaroid employees Caroline Hunter and Ken Williams made a shocking discovery that Polaroid's products were being used by the South African government to create ID past books for black South Africans as part of the oppressive apartheid system. Here's Caroline Hunter describing how she and Ken Williams made that discovery.
It was really a fluke.
Ken and I were going out to lunch and as we passed through the workplace on our way out, we saw an ID badge MAYFA, South Africa. We looked at it and began to say to each other, we didn't know Polaroid was in South Africa.
In response to finding out that their employer's products were being used to oppress black South Africans, Caroline and Ken formed the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement, or the PRWM, and they issued three bold demands to Polaroid on October eighth, nineteen seventy One, that Polaroid announced a policy of complete disengagement from South Africa since all American companies doing business in South Africa reinforced that racist system and its government.
Two that Polaroid have its management meet with the entire company to discuss this policy and announce his position on apartheid publicly in the USA and in South Africa simultaneously. Three that if Polaroid company is sincereness opposition to apartheid, we call upon it to contribute the profits earned.
This was an unprecedented move At the time. It was the norm for corporations to uphold racist regimes through their products and for employees and customers to say nothing, but not the PRWM. The PRWN organized a protest of about two hundred people at polaroids headquarters at Cambridge, Massachusetts, bringing their message directly to the company, and after a Polaroid
refused to meet with at PRWM. They called for a worldwide boycott of Polaroid products by all Right On Thinking People on October twenty seventh and a fly release by the group. They explained their reasoning for the boycott.
Polaroid sells its ID two system to the South African government to make the notorious pastbook pictures Polaroid imprisons black people.
In just sixty seconds.
Here's Caroline Hunter again explaining that ethos behind their fight for black South Africans.
We really had some sense that no one's free unless everybody's free, and that we had some relationship to black people everywhere, and as workers, we had a right to say what happened to our labor. So we started off just asking the question, what is Polaroid doing in South Africa.
In response to the prwm's question asking and demand making, Polaroid sent a delegation to South Africa and announced the Polaroid Experiment. In the experiment, Polaroid would ban sales to the government, raised wages, and increased job training for black workers.
But PRWM saw the Polaroid experiment for what it was, a disingenuous attempt to continue profiting from apartheid. And quel discent among workers. Caroline Hunter and Ken Williams also testified before the United Nations Special Committee on Apartheid advocating for a boycott of Polaroid. This puts significant pressure on Polaroid to respond to the worker's demands.
Caroline Hunter and Kim Williams were fired from Polaroid for their activism, but.
The PRWM continued and after seven years of protest, Polaroid finally withdrew from South Africa in nineteen seventy seven, ending its business ties with the apartheid regime. The Polaroid workers activism is seen as pioneering in the corporate divestment movement against apartheid After the break, how we can use the Polaroid protests as a blueprint for movement work today?
You mentioned earlier that you saw this protest as like a blueprint for how we can affect change today.
What exactly do you mean by that?
I think in a capitalistic society, protests that come for your oppressor's capital are more effective than the ones that appeal to their morals because they simply don't have any I found this leaflet that the African Research Group put out about the Polaroid protests as they were going on in the seventies, and I think they explained best. Arg thinks that the brave action taken by these workers is the most important movement now going on in the US
about South Africa. The workers are making demands that strike at the economic roots of apartheid, rather than bemoaning the inhuman conditions that the system inflicts. They are revolutionary black workers struggling against imperialist oppression and winning their own liberation. It goes on to say Polaroid is an ideal target. It is a well known LIB company which disguises its support for South Africa in pseudo humanistic rhetoric. It knows that a victory against them will hurt not only them,
but other US and peeriless companies as well. Defeating Polaroid provides an important starting point an example for similar struggles against other companies. It undermines their mystifying ideology and strikes a blow at their economic well being. Polaroid is only the beginning, and I wanted to include this because storytelling is kind of like a neutral tool. It could be
used for good, it could be used for evil. So in the case of South Africa, Polaroid was using photography for evil, like the story that they were telling about black South Africans, or that they were a criminal, they were second class citizens, if citizens at all, you know, that they deserve to be monitored and like really restricting
their freedom of movement. And then the story that Caroline and Ken got from that when they just happened to see that picture, which I'm so glad they did imagine if they are head were like turn and that the other way, like this protest might not even happen or might have happened years later, but they saw that and like took that information that like Polaroid is like telling the story about black people in South Africa that simply isn't true.
And we're going to stand up for.
Fellow black people around the world, whether we like know them personally or not, whether we have familial ties to them or not, because this story just isn't true and it's such the antithesis of what Frederick Douglass was doing with his picture. He was using it to say, like this is who black people are, kind of like showing our humanity in South Africa was doing the exact opposite, like stripping black people's humanity away from them. With these pastbook pictures.
And it's also telling that these pastbook photos were photos taken in the midst of like direct action that was happening or anything like that, and like movement in the streets. They were just photos of people. They were portraits, just like the pictures of Frederick Douglass were. So thinking about that neutrality, it's like you see a person in a photo, but what's the context? What is it a part of
one thing? See the setting for Frederick Douglas's photos isn't an anti slavery newspaper, and then this isn't a pastbook that is used to directly harm South Africans, to directly commit violence upon black people, and to restrict their movement, to disenfranchise them, to do so many of these other
terrible things to black people on South Africans. So in the quote that you just read where it was talking about how Polaroid is an ideal target because it's a liberal company, also hits really hard to thinking about that in terms of this social media age where there are so many corporations that have this hashtag to cling onto that is like pro black or it's pro LGBTQ, or it's body positive you know, there are so many things that they can latch onto that look really good in
their commercials. They have really good marketing tactics about it, and they cling on to those things and rightfully so. And that quote you just read, they bring that up and how they are a great target because of that, because they profess to believe in certain things, they profess to support certain things.
But look at.
This actual legwork that Caroline and Ken have done and that people today in movements and protests are doing to see what the numbers behind the pseudo actions are, like tracing the lines from one thing to the next.
And yeah, it's also.
Very perscian, Yeah, because I can imagine like Polaroid during that time, it's like seems like very family friendly company, like oh you get your pictures in sixty seconds, but like their the paper and their archives heads like your Polari imprisons black people in just sixty seconds. So, like you said, it does depend on the context, but like in this context, it really reminded me of was like your booking picture or your mugshot.
You know, look at this criminal.
We have tabs on you, we have our eyes on you, and like Polaroid being sell into that, and let's not forget their polaroid experiment because companies will do that too. The way they're talking about we're gonna raise wages for the black workers in the United States.
The Oki dog, the fucking Okay dog.
And I'm glad they did for that because I feel like niggas be falling for that, like oh word, we get two weeks vacation. So yeah, like really being principled and just standing up for black people across the diaspora. And it's like talking about palisine, I get kind of frustrated, like you know, it's like, definitely boycott these companies. But then people are saying, like the people who work there can't do anything about it, like they have to have
a job. I'm like, I truly do not believe that's true. Like you can disrupt your company from the inside, and like they might fire you like they did Caroline and Can.
With the quickness, but they can't fire everybody.
Ain't no company then, So I think there is stuff that you can do in the inside and the outside. So that's what I mean when I said the blueprint too, like get on these companies' asses.
So yes, let's talk about their appt use of that slogan of the Polaroid in sixty seconds because so many people would have been familiar with that slogan at the time, and so it's something that people were hearing a lot who were probably fans of Polaroid or just didn't know anything about their political stances or who they were sending
money to. So for them to add the word in prisons, I think it's a very effective way of them using rhetoric to have like a really emotional response, because that's what slogans do. They do something that becomes an earworm for you, something that's going to stay stuck in your head, and it's going to evoke an emotional response, so you
have some sort of weird connection to a corporation. So for them to add the word in prisons I think was a very effective way for them using Polaroid's own terminology against them.
Yeah, and another thing I found in the archive was they were encouraging everybody to create leaflets pamphlets about what was going on. It wasn't just like, oh, this is our thing, y'all, don't say nothing. It was like, anybody who knows anything about what Polaroids doing put this out there. Spread it wide, and you know we talk often about like just creating your own media. It's like they're not gonna be talking about this on sixty minutes.
They just not.
They might later on once you start the grassroots, but the information isn't going to come from the top down. And so when you're like on the ground and just putting out this information, everybody's like working together using their slogans against them.
It's really effective.
And as we saw, you know, it took years, but it did make a huge change. And that was like, as the quote said, Polarid is just the beginning. Our Polarid is only the beginning. Like they were coming for other companies next too. So shout out to Caroline and Ken and the whole group really, because you know, I think we like to like shout out the leaders, but it takes the whole Polaroid Revolutionary Workers movement to make
it happen. And now it is time for roll credits the segment or we give credit to a person, place, or thing that we've encountered during the week eves, Who or what would you like to give credit to.
I would like to give credit to good hosts. I really like hosting, but I also really like being a guest as well, So it's nice when people are gracious enough to like open up their home and have people over and provide food and like set up activities for them.
That's why I want to give credit to.
Today, Okay, good hosts.
I would like to give credit to my guardian angels. They had their hands on me, and sometimes you've be thinking something happens and you're like, oh, that's just a coincidence, but you're like, nah, they was looking out.
So thank you.
So everyone, we have an announcement about our show.
Next week.
We will be coming back with a brand new episode, but we will be taking a short break throughout the month of May, so you won't get any new episodes until June sixth, But you can listen to all of our previous episode. Any of them that you haven't heard, you can listen to them. If there are any that you want to listen to again, you can listen to them, and you can keep up with us on social media at on Theme Show. You can also go to our
website on Theme dot Show. But stay subscribed because we have so many more cool episodes coming up when we come back in June. And what are some of those episodes going to be about Katie.
You'll be hearing from arkivist talking about the hilarious stories they found in the archive. We'll hear from a children's lit expert about the lessons we pass on to our kids through literature.
You'll also get to learn a little bit about the Black Muses who are part of visual arts history. And you'll get an episode about Kronk Music and Snap Music. So make sure you stay subscribed. See you next week. See Ya on Theme is a production of iHeartRadio and Fairweather Friends Media. This episode was written by Eves Jeffco and Katie Mitchell, was edited and produced by Tari Harrison.
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