Solving another Mystery


Call it a personal quirk. Call it crazy. Or, call it whatever you’d like. But I have always been curious about characters in the background of famous civil rights photographs. When I was editor of Emerge magazine, I assigned one of my reporters, Jimmie Briggs, to find out who was the guy wearing the white cap in the background as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Jimmie found out that it was Charles J. Jackson, a Jersey City, N.J. policeman [Emerge, September 1993]. Jackson, who bears a striking resemblance to the late Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, had volunteered to serve that day as a field marshal responsible for helping protect Dr. King.

Have you ever wondered who was that lone White man sitting on the bus with Rosa Parks when she finally desegregated the Montgomery bus system? The New York Times reported on December 9 that it was Nicholas C. Chriss, a reporter for United Press International (UPI), based in Atlanta. He died of an aneurysm at the age of 62 in 1990, with most people not knowing his identity. The photo was taken Dec. 21, 1956 after the U.S. Supreme Court had declared the city’s segregated bus system illegal.