Museum to exhibit Latina’s civil rights photos

Mexican-American photographer Maria Varela was present at some of the most dramatic moments of the Civil Rights Movement, capturing images of voting rights demonstrations in Alabama and efforts to create Head Start programs in poor, rural areas.

As one of the few Latinas involved in the black Civil Rights Movement, historians say, her work has often been overlooked.

Now the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago is set to feature 28 images from the Albuquerque resident’s rarely seen photography of the movement at an exhibition called “Time to Get Ready: Fotographía Social.”

“You can tell she wasn’t just someone who dropped in and photographed what happened. She was part of what was happening,” said Cesareo Moreno, the museum’s visual arts director.

Moreno said the exhibit will cover Varela’s work from Mississippi marches and voting rights battles to photographs she took of Chicano activists fighting to get Spanish land grants recognized in New Mexico.

In 1963, the Chicagoraised Varela was recruited by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a key organization in the movement, to work in Selma, Alabama, for a voter literacy program. A local sheriff arrested its staff and broke up the program.

Varela was then reassigned to Mississippi where organizers told her to develop training materials.

After training with noted photographer Matt Herron in New Orleans, Varela grabbed a camera and built her own dark room in Mississippi since local drug stores likely would refuse to develop her film. She dressed in a skirt and a head scarf and tried to remain invisible while she took photos.

The images she captured were meant to be part of informative booklets passed out to farmers, town residents and parents who were working to resist segregation and poverty. She created pamphlets to train activists to build political campaigns and develop farming co-ops.

Her photos illustrated an autobiography of civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer.