These striking color photos of the Long Hot Summer riots show the full spectrum of the violence

In 1967, newspapers only ran black-and-white pictures

The riots of 1967 are a black-and-white story in our minds. In the most common photos from the time, the fires, the blood, and the faces are all in gray scale. That’s because until fairly recently newspapers only ran black-and-white photos. The New York Times, for instance, didn’t introduce color pictures until 1993. So, that is the way we remember and learn about the past. Looking back from the 21st century, such photographs often have the peculiar effect of compartmentalizing history as something distant and settled.

But the Long Hot Summer happened in full spectrum.

The riots in Newark and Detroit, in particular, attracted international media attention, including that of the big picture magazines. Stunning color images of the conflicts and their aftermath created for Life by photojournalists like Lee Balterman and Declan Haun would be seen days after the news first broke in the black-and-white dailies. But while they may have appeared after the fact, color pictures would lend deeper context to the story for millions of readers. They carried an impact that black-and-white could no longer deliver — a visual impact not unilke the saturated hellscapes photographers like Larry Burrows and Horst Faas were bringing back from Vietnam. If the story of that summer was superficially one of embattled black Americans raging against the white status quo, it is these color images which deliver a more complicated, nuanced representation of the violence.

These striking color photos of the Long Hot Summer riots show the full spectrum of the violence was originally published in Timeline on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.