High's 'Road to Freedom' runs through basement

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Photographer Morton Broffman's photos made it into the High Museum's "Road to Freedom" show after his daughter-in-law told her sister's friend about the large collection of civil rights era pictures she and her husband had stored in their basement.

The High Museum is opening "Road to Freedom," the largest and most significant show of civil rights photography in at least 25 years. The exhibition, which opens June 7, features some 200 images from 45 photographers: amateurs, photojournalists, art photographers and volunteers working for civil rights groups. It will move to the Smithsonian Institution in November. -- Reporting by Jim Auchmutey

The photo used in the billboard shows the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife leading protesters as they reach the end of the 1965 voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery. It was taken by Morton Broffman and discovered in his son's basement.

Morton Broffman's wife was responsible for his career. He had never picked up a camera until after they were married. Patti Broffman also told the school at which Morton taught that he wouldn't be returning so he could pursue a career as a photographer.

Neal Broffman remembers his dad as a funny, outgoing man who loved Bach, jazz, Jefferson Airplane and the Democratic Party. He had a wiry physique, a mop of hair and a bushy mustache that advertised his sympathies with the counterculture and various protest movements.

Neal Broffman's basement in Collier Hills is stacked with boxes of his father's prints with handwritten labels such as "Alabama 1965."

Neal Broffman has his wife, Elisa Gambino, to thank for the photos being in the exhibit. The former CNN producer was cooking at a civic association event in Ansley Park. Knowing nothing of the planned civil rights exhibition, she mentioned the basement filled with photos to her sister's friend, a board member at the High.

One of curator Julian Cox's favorite shots shows a man lying down in exhaustion at the end of the Selma march. Another man sits beside him holding a furled U.S. flag. Trash litters the ground around them.

Morton Broffman used a Nikon F1 (right) to capture thousands of images from the civil rights era. Another camera in his bag was the newer Nikon F3 with a motor drive that was mainly used by newsphotographers in the 1980's.

"My father taught me how to develop pictures," Neal Broffman says. He keeps his darkroom set up the same Morton Broffman way did.

"I saw Martin Luther King's face come up so many times, I thought he must be a close family friend," Neal Broffman remembers.

Neal Broffman holds a family picture taken in 1971. The Broffman family donated 33 of Morton Broffman's vintage prints to the High in exchange for memberships and a dozen copies of the exhibition catalog.

"I think his work puts him on the same level with some of the great names we have in the exhibition," Julian Cox said of Morton Broffman. His photo of a woman playing her guitar during the Poor People's Campaign in 1968 demonstrates Cox's point.

The High Museum hired Neal Broffman to make a 23-minute companion film for the exhibition. He and curator Julian Cox traveled to several sites that figured in the civil rights movement and interviewed activists and photographers who were there.

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The High Museum is opening "Road to Freedom," the largest and most significant show of civil rights photography in at least 25 years. The exhibition, which opens June 7, features some 200 images from 45 photographers: amateurs, photojournalists, art photographers and volunteers working for civil rights groups. It will move to the Smithsonian Institution in November. -- Reporting by Jim Auchmutey

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