Matt Herron ~ Civil Rights Photographer & Activist

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Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee - 1965
Selma, Alabama
photo by Matt Herron

I just found out that civil rights photographer and activist, Matt Herron, died last Friday. I met him in the eighties when the AIDS Quilt was being started. I created a panel for my brother, John, and he was photographing the panels as they came in. At the time I didn't know who he was.      

      

I never met him again but I later found out about his involvement and documentation of the political and social activism of the sixties and onward. He embarked on a year-and-a-half sailing voyage to Africa with his family and was chased by police during the civil rights struggle of the 1960s.

In 1975, in a fishing boat with Greenpeace, he got in the way of Russian whalers trying to harpoon their prey off the coast of California. The following year, they chartered a bigger, faster Canadian minesweeper and plunged deeper into the North Pacific to find the whaling fleets that now avoided them. (link below).   

During the 1980s, Herron became active with the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP), and served as president from 1993 to 1995, and as international director and as chairman of Media Photographers Copyright Agency, ASMP's online marketing system for electronic images.  

He was the Director of the photographic website, Takestock Photos, which is a unique collection of over 75,000 photographic images focused on only two subjects: The Civil Rights movement, including images of Martin Luther King Jr. and Cesar Chavez and the struggle of migrant farm workers; my aunt Lucy was involved with this movement as well (link below).       

In May of this year he had an exhibition, I'm Walkin' For My Freedom, that showed in the San Francisco Public Library. During the run of the exhibition he gave a talk (link below).    

In 2014, Herron spent a week gliding over the Nevada desert with his son. This activity was the cause of his death.      

     

     

       

Viewfinder links:       

     
Lucy Cadena-Jazzux ~ A woman out of time      
Cesar Chavez         

Matt Herron       

Martin Luther King Jr     
John Gilbert Simonson          

       

Net links:       

     
CBS News ~ Matt Herron Showcases Work In San Francisco            

Matthew Herron website      
January Magazine ~ GREENPEACE: How Ecologists, Journalists and Visionaries Changed the World   
Marin Independant Journal ~ Retrospective of civil rights-era images      

NBC ~ Herron Looks Back Through the Lens at Selma March  
Prezi ~ Matt Herron        

SF Chronicle ~ Matt Herron, famed civil rights photographer and activist    
SF Gate ~ Matt Herron show at UC Berkeley

Take Stock     
UC Santa Cruz ~ Reception & conversation with photographer Matt Herron      
World Press Photo ~ Matt Herron        

       

YouTube links:       

     
HooverPresLib ~ Civil Rights Under Three Hats: Photography of Matt Herron   

KPIX ~ Civil Rights Photographer Matt Herron Showcases Work In SF     

       

    

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Cesar Chavez articles/mentions

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Lucy Cadena-Jazzux, A woman out of time       
Matt Herron ~ Civil Rights Photographer & Activist       
       
       
       
       
       
Cesar Chavez - Sept. 15, 1974       
photo by Tim Graham       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       

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Lucy Cadena-Jazzux ~ A woman out of time

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When Lucy Cedena-Jazzux died I was struck harder than anyone I have lost. Perhaps it's because I lost her twice in my life.         

In the late forties, Lucy and I lived together with her mother, Matilda, Matilda's lover, Lucy's sister, Celia, Lucy's brother, Ben, and my mother (link below). In addition there were Lady, a German Shepard, and Weasle, of indeterminate origin with a tail that curled completely into a circle.    

Lady was a giant dog that easily outweighed me by who knows how many pounds. But she was the gentlest dog I have ever known in my life.   

Weasle was the tiniest and meanest dog I have EVER known; he would bark, growl, snap at and attack ANYone, including me.     

The flaw with Lady was that she was deathly afraid of the sound of fireworks; she would begin violently shaking and cower in a corner when the Fourth of July came around. Lucy was fantastic; she would put Lady in the bathtub with cold water, gently stroke and sooth her and tell her everything was fine and gently calm her down.    

When Weasle attacked someone, Lucy would firmly say, "Weasle, shut up!", and he would go and sulk in a corner somewhere. Lucy rescued me from Weasle many times. 

Every image of her from that period in my mind is of her in Levi's. Boys and girls both wore them but the girls would also wear dresses or skirts; I have only one memory of her in a long full skirt.  
      
Her movements were not exactly lurching but more a femininely athletic move from one position to another; I've never seen anyone move the same way.         

Lucy and I lost contact with each other in the late forties; when you're 7 or 8 years old you go where your parents go. Over the years I thought of her often with great love and wonderful memories of that time with her.     

Lucy and I reconnected 60 years later when her brother, Ben (link below), died. It was amazing! It was as if no time had passed from the last time I'd seen her all those decades ago. Actually, when I first looked at her, I saw the Lucy of the forties in her Levi's. During the years after, we talked and recounted what had happened in our lives then and all the years since we'd seen each other. It is one of the most wonderful moments of my life. It was magic!   

It wasn't until after she died that I discovered she was an activist and involved in the labor rights movements of the seventies, in particular the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) with Cesar Chavez), as well as Head Start (link below). During her memorial, photos from her life were on a monitor, they included some from the 40's and 50's and the memories of Lucy, Lady and Weasle crashed into my mind.      

I say crashed because at that moment I realized the work she had done during the years we didn't see each other were a direct out put from back then. Her tender care of Lady and her iron will over Weasle, of course, it couldn't have been any other way with Lucy.    

Viewfinder links:      

          

Lucy Cadena-Jazzux      
Cesar Chavez         
Bernard E. Simonson, Jr.              
Christine K. Simonson           

          

Net link:      

          

The Press Democrat ~ Lucy Cadena-Jazzux obit         

            

          

        

        

Styrous® ~ Sunday, July 29, 2018  
               

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Adiós mis amigos . . .

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