I wish I was back on vacation. I had a great time! I did NOT take a lot of pictures because I spent most of my vacation in sweats and no makeup. MOST. I don’t need to put on brows if I’m not leavin’ the house you guys. Which, YOU ARE WELCOME. We’ve taken lots of photos over the years where I look like a PERSON and I’m in PUBLIC and I’m wearing makeup. I was going to add that I was acting like a normal person only… have we met?
THEN I thought to myself (WTF AM I GONNA WRITE THIS FACT ON?!): MAYBE I HAVE A PHOTO OF ME ACTING LIKE A NORMAL PERSON WITH PEOPLE. And I did! But. WHERE IS THE FUN IN THAT AND ALSO HOW THE FREAKINGFUCK CAN I TIE IT INTO A BHFOTD?
So here’s a picture of me giving Zero Fux in front of the police. This is 100% the level of NotGivingAFuckness that I aspire to daily, but ESPECIALLY this month:
And if you’re wondering HOW in all the world I’m about to turn this into a fact, well. Today while I was doing stuff, I ran across this photo that gave me the same energy. Like to see it? Here it go:
[This photo, taken by Rendell Harper, is a picture of Cecil Williams coming back from a trip in 1956 photographing South Carolina’s segregated beaches for Jet Magazine. They stopped at a (closed) filling station, and Cecil grabs a drink from the “white only” water fountain.]
Cecil J Williams is an American photographer, publisher, author AND inventor (!!!) who is best known for (the above photo. And) his photography documenting the civil rights movement in South Carolina in the 1950’s.
When Cecil was 9, his brother passed down his camera and he was the picture taking-est child from that moment on. At 11, he photographed his first wedding and at 12, he was asked to take photos of churches of Clarendon County – which happened to hold the families of the DeLaine and the Pearson families from the Briggs vs. Elliott petition (one of the five cases that was combined into Brown vs. Board of Education). At the age of 14, he was one of 25 photographers around the world freelancing for JET magazine. JET caught wind of the movement growing in Orangeburg, they needed an onsite correspondent for constant updates, and someone to be there all the time documenting the events for them. The only time Williams made the cover of JET was during the 1969 Charleston hospital workers’ strike, and his picture of Coretta Scott King speaking at the protest.
In 1960, Williams graduated from Claflin University with a degree in Art. Although better known for photography, Williams’ painting, art, graphics, and architectural renderings, represent proficiency, especially among minimalists. Because of his race, he was barred from attending Clemson University in his state to study architecture, he drew plans for several residences; one of which was featured in the June 1977 issue of Ebony; Space Age Home.
And since he couldn’t be a student at Clemson, he documented Harvey Gantt’s desegregation of Clemson University in 1963. HE ALSO documented the 1969 Charleston hospital workers’ strike and the 1968 Orangeburg Massacre. The massacre involved the South Carolina Highway Patrol shooting and killing three African American males and injuring 27 other South Carolina State University students. AND He worked as the official photographer for the South Carolina branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, South Carolina State University, Claflin University and National Conference of Black Mayors, Inc. for more than 20 years, beginning in the 1960s. His work has been exhibited at many institutions and museums, such as Claflin University, University of South Carolina, Columbia Museum of Art, Clemson University, Columbia College, Furman University, Rice Museum in Georgetown, South Carolina State University, Museum of the New South in Charlotte.
In 2015, he invented the FilmToaster, a camera scanning platform and system and digitizes film negatives faster than other methods.
He CURRENTLY owns a portrait studio, event, wedding photography business based in Orangeburg, South Carolina. He serves as the director of Historic Preservation at Claflin University. He is a Getty Images contributor and photographer. He also tours the nation giving presentations at conferences, events and institutions about his work during the civil rights movement. He is 82 and I am tired just copying all this sh*t he did.
AND LAST SUMMER, Williams opened the Cecil Williams Civil Rights Museum to house hundreds of images and artifacts from the civil rights movement. The Cecil Williams Civil Rights Museum looks like an ultra-modern day home which Williams designed himself in 1983-36 years before he made it into his own museum. The theme for his museum is “The South Carolina Events that Changed America”. The museum will also double as the neighborhood community center.
Hope it has a water fountain. It gets hot in the South Carolina.
Yeah I said it 