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Relive the Million Man March in Stunning Black-and-White Photos

20 years later, Roderick Terry's somber images remember the urgency of the Million Man March.
Roderick Terry, Public Enemy / All images courtesy of the artist

Days before the historic Million Man March, Roderick Terry, then a 30-year-old prosecutor working for Washington D.C.’s Office of the Corporation Counsel, decided he wanted to photograph the historic event and went out and bought an Olympus camera. On the day of the march, October 16, 1995, according to Slate, more than a million African American men, women, and children gathered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., and Terry raced up and down the Mall snapping hundreds of photographs on film of their faces and homemade signs. Twenty years later, Terry’s photographs of the black males who descended onto the nation’s capital make up a new exhibition entitled, One Million Strong, at The Sol Studio gallery.

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Roderick Terry, I am a man

Roderick Terry, Indict Fuhrman

“At the time there was a lot of fear around the march, a lot of people were saying the march was racist and that it would create violence, and the thing that was unsettling about that is that in the nation’s capital we have large protest like this all the time and no one had ever talked about mass arrest,” explains Terry, who also wrote a book about the march, Brother’s Keeper: Words of Inspiration for African American Men. “I decided to document the march myself because I wanted to isolate the truth from all of these preconceived notions about black men. My strategy was to really focus on the faces because I wanted to capture the true feelings and emotions of the participants,” he continues. “I also focused on the homemade signs and banners as a way to convey the true meaning and message of the march, where you could see the jubilation, pain, suffering, and strength of all these men.”

Roderick Terry, Fruit of Islam

The Million Man March was organized by The National African American Leadership Summit in conjunction with Nation of Islam and smaller black organizations, and headed by Dr. Benjamin Chavis Jr. and minister Louis Farrakhan. It represented the first large-scale gathering of African Americans in this country since the 1963 March On Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Although nearly three decades apart, the demands—for greater political and economic participation, fair law enforcement practices and honest depictions of black life in mainstream America—of the protesters in both marches echo those of the current Black Lives Matter movement.

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Roderick Terry, By Any Means Necessary

The limited success of past marches and the hope of the current movement can be seen in Terry’s candid black-and-white photographs of boys and men holding signs that read, “Indict Fuhrman for perjury.” Mark Fuhrman was the police officer in the O.J. Simpson trial largely believed by the black community to have lied on the stand. “I am a black gay man, I am a black man, I am a man,” and “Brothers going to work it out,” describe the mood and reasons why they came from around the country. The photographs also represent a moment of unity among the diverse groups of people that make up the black community. There are no women pictured in the foreground of Terry photographs, but in solidarity they, too, stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial against the stereotypes that have long plagued black men, boys, and the black community at large.

Roderick Terry, Sea of Blackness

“The march showed the collective potential of black men—our love, our strength, and our humanity. It’s important to show those things every opportunity we get,” Terry tells The Creators Project. “Artists have a responsibility to resist negative stereotypes whenever we can,” he adds. “I tried to tell the unvarnished truth about the situation I was covering.”

Roderick Terry, Seriousness of Purpose

One Million Strong continues through November 15 at The Sol Gallery. For more information click here.

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