[Annotated Vernacular Photograph Album Documenting the 1967 National Conference on New Politics, With Five Unpublished Images of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and H. Rap Brown in New Orleans During His Weapons Trial]

[Chicago and New Orleans]: September, 1967. [21] leaves, illustrated with ninety-nine photographs, mostly black-and-white but some in color. All ninety-nine images with a printed caption in the margin reading, "Sep 67."Square folio. Contemporary red leatherette, stamped in gilt on front cover, string tied. Minor wear, some images loose. Very good. An important photographic record of a notable moment in the interplay between the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Power Movement, and 1960s white liberalism, documenting the 1967 National Conference on New Politics (NCNP) in Chicago. Simon Hall, in his 2003 article in Journal of American Studies entitled "On the Trail of the Panther: Black Power and the 1967 Convention of the National Conference for New Politics," described the event as "one of the most ambitious attempts to forge a broad political alliance of antiwar organizations, New Left insurgents, and the radical wing of the Civil Rights Movement in 1960s America." The album is captioned on the inside front cover: "The National Conference on New Politics Aug. 31 - Sept. 4, 1967 Palmer House, Chicago." Seventy-five images document the conference, many captioned on the album leaves, identifying speakers, attendees, and settings, or providing commentary.

Chief among the delegates to the conference was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who delivered the keynote address on the first night. The title of the speech was "The Three Evils of Society," which King defined as “the sickness of racism, excessive materialism, and militarism.” The present album includes five candid shots of King from that night. These include four shots of King at the microphones during his keynote address, three with captions that read "There are no communists at this conference," "I am not a member of 60 communist fronts," and "We do not believe in violence but rather civil disobedience on a vaster scale than ever before," respectively. The fourth photograph of King shows him sitting with Ralph Abernathy and Michael Wood, this image captioned, "Center: Michael Wood of the Nat'l Student Assn who blew the whistle on the CIA."

In addition to the photographs of Dr. King, the album includes dozens of candid shots of conference participants that reads like a who's-who of civil rights and Black Power activists of the moment, including members of SCLC, SNCC, CORE, and the Black Panthers. These portraits memorialize the conference participation of Julian Bond, Dick Gregory, Ralph Abernathy (one of which catches him sleeping during King's speech and is humorously captioned, "The alert audience of ML King"), Hunter Pitts "Jack" O'Dell, Floyd McKissick, James Foreman, Lois Allen, Vietnam War protester Private Ronald Lockman, and a woman from the "Miss[issippi] Freedom Demo[cratic] Party" who appears to be Victoria Jackson Gray Adams.

The album also pictures white members of the New Left or sympathetic supporters of the civil rights movement, such as Dr. Benjamin Spock, Dr. Donna Allen (Women's Strike for Peace), Simon Casady (influential California Democrat), William Pepper (Executive Secretary of NCNP), Clark Kissinger (National Secretary of the Students for a Democratic Society), and Robert Scheer (publisher of the radical Ramparts magazine). The album also includes some shots of other unnamed notables and additional attendees, views from the main conference floor, a display of posters featuring "Heroes of the National Liberation Movement" such as Che Guevara, Malcolm X, and Stokely Carmichael, and book displays by vendors such as the Progressive Labor Party, Marxist publisher Lou Diskin, CADRE (Chicago Area Draft Resistors), and the Student Mobilization Committee.

An additional twenty-four color images picture H. Rap Brown (Jamil Abdulla al-Amin) and various scenes in New Orleans during Brown's trial for weapons charges in September 1967. Brown was a fiery activist who was that time serving as the fifth chairman of SNCC, a post he held from May 1967 to June 1968. Incongruously, Brown was a controversial head of SNCC for his constant calls for violent political action, and even served a dual role as the head of SNCC and as Minister of Justice for the Black Panther Party in 1968. The first page of images featuring Brown in the present album is captioned: "Rap Brown in New Orleans. Arraigned on carrying a weapon in interstate while under criminal indictment in Maryland for inciting to riot & arson" (referring to the riot in Cambridge, Maryland earlier that summer). Seventeen of these images show Brown and his lawyers talking to reporters outside the courthouse, then continuing to do so as Brown walks down the street and gets into a car. Seven of the images show various street scenes around New Orleans. Brown's trial was going on at the same time as the National Conference in Chicago. As such, a handful of the latter images show James Foreman of SNCC who, according to the manuscript caption, "spoke for H. Rap Brown" at the conference. At the time, Foreman was the International Affairs Director for SNCC.

The conference was an odd combination of white liberals, Civil Rights legends, and Black Power advocates which, according to a contemporary source "brought black militants and much of the white left into occasional dialogue and frequent chaos." A retrospective "This Week in History" piece in the Chicago Sun Times in 2021 set the scene of the conference and detailed Dr. King's keynote speech: "A haven for liberal politicians and supporters, the National Conference for New Politics took place over Labor Day weekend in 1967. The Chicago Sun-Times extensively covered the conference where politicos, activists and anti-war advocates mixed and mingled to excite their base and prepare for the upcoming election season. The highlight of the convention came on Aug. 31 when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. took to the stage to deliver the keynote address to 4,000 people at the Chicago Coliseum. 'The promise of a Great Society has been shipwrecked off the coast of Asia on the dreadful pinnacle of Vietnam,' he told conference-goers. The war, he said, 'has torn up the Geneva agreement, seriously impaired the United Nations, exacerbated the hatreds between continents and worse still between races: it has frustrated our development at home....If the will of the people continues to be unheeded, all men of good will must create a situation in which the 1967-68 elections are made a referendum on the war,' he said. 'The American people must have an opportunity to vote into oblivion those who cannot detach themselves from militarism.' King’s speech touched on more than the Vietnam War. He called for a national employment agency, noting that capitalism 'was built on the exploitation and suffering of Black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor -- both Black and white -- both here and abroad.' The activist referred to racism as 'that corrosive evil that will bring down the curtain on Western civilization.' King received a standing ovation after his speech.