Eli Reed John Crump. Washington D.C., USA. 1992.
"In 1992, John Crump, then the executive director of the D.C.-based National Bar Association, was attending the group's 67th annual conference at a hotel
(...) in St. Louis. The conference drew about 600 black lawyers from all over the country. At some point, the NBA president-elect, Paulette Brown, had a celebration in her suite, which got a bit noisy. But instead of asking everyone to quiet down, the assistant manager of the hotel at the time immediately called the cops. The police came and left early. But when the facts came out, it was clear there was no reason for the cops to have been called in the first place; the hotel was accustomed to handling noise complaints on their own and had always done so in the past.
I took this photograph shortly after the hotel fiasco. The location is symbolic: As the president who issued the end of slavery, Lincoln's memorial was a meeting ground throughout the civil rights movement and continues to be a symbol of national unity for all races. Crump stands dignified in front of Lincoln's statue, which recalls the virtues of America: 'land of the free, home of the brave.'"
- Eli Reed © Eli Reed | Magnum Photos
