Exhibit of contact sheets by five photographers opens October 26 at the Smith Robertson Museum and Cultural Center, in Jackson 

JACKSON, Miss. — A new exhibit at the Smith Robertson Museum and Cultural Center brings together the work of five photographers who documented the civil rights movement in Mississippi between 1963 and 1966: Bob Fitch, Matt Herron, Jim Marshall, Jim Peppler and Tamio Wakayama. Some were journalists; some were members of the movement itself. Sixty years later, the exhibit asks the public for help naming the people in the photographs. 

PROOF POSITIVE opens October 26 and runs through December 31, 2026, at the Smith Robertson Museum and Cultural Center, 528 Bloom St., Jackson. Most of the 51 works on view are enlarged contact sheets, reproduced from the originals, with the photographers’ grease-pencil marks and annotations included. The chosen frames from the contact sheets went to magazines and newspapers, and some later appeared in history books. The rest stayed in boxes. Many of the people in those frames have never been named. 

Visitors to the exhibit are invited to help change that. Cards for each of the 51 works are available in the gallery. If a visitor to the exhibit recognizes someone in one of the frames, they can mark the person they recognize, write down what they know and leave the card behind. Every image can also be viewed online at alivingarchive.org/jackson26. Information that visitors share is verified and added to each photo’s record, and prints are returned to the families and communities pictured. 

“These sheets show everyone the camera saw, not just the frame that got printed,” said Michael DiMaggio, co-director of Proximity Partners, one of the exhibit organizers. “The people in the frames next to the famous ones are the ones nobody ever asked about. Jackson is where we can start the process of finding out who they are.” 

PROOF POSITIVE is the Mississippi launch of the Living Archive project, which aims to bring civil rights-era photographs back to the people and communities that made the photographs meaningful in the first place. The exhibit is sponsored by the National Parks Conservation Association, as part of its broader effort to strengthen collaboration among community organizations, educators, historians, preservation advocates, and civil rights sites to ensure the stories captured in these photographs remain visible, relevant, and accessible. 

“Too often, the story of the civil rights movement is told from a national perspective, overlooking the local communities and residents who drove the movement forward,” said Mechelle Chane, of Alligator, Miss., and the NPCA’s Civil Rights Fellow for the Southeast Region. “PROOF POSITIVE brings those stories home, allowing people to see their families, neighbors, and communities reflected in history and recognized for the role they played in shaping America. It reminds us that Mississippi citizens were not simply witnesses to history; they were the makers of history.” 

The exhibit is presented in partnership with the Veterans of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement, the ACLU of Mississippi, and the Mississippi Humanities Council. Photographs are courtesy of the Estate of Matt Herron, the Estate of Tamio Wakayama, Jim Marshall 

Photography LLC, Stanford University Libraries and the Alabama Department of Archives and History. 

For more information, visit proximitypartnership.com/proof-positive 

Exhibit details 

• Dates: Oct. 26 – Dec. 31, 2026
• Location: Smith Robertson Museum, 528 Bloom St., Jackson, MS 39202
• Hours and admission: Monday-Friday, 9am to 5pm; Saturday, 10am-1pm; admission ($7 adults 18-59; $5 seniors 60 plus; $4 students 4-17; under 4 FREE)
• Online: proximitypartnership.com/proof-positive

About Proximity Partners 

Proximity Partners is a nonprofit that identifies, preserves and finds homes for historically significant photographs and records, and makes them available to researchers, educators and the public. For more information, visit proximitypartnership.com. 

About the National Parks Conservation Association 

Since 1919, the nonpartisan National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) has been the leading voice in safeguarding our national parks. NPCA and its more than 1.6 million members and supporters work together to protect and preserve our nation’s most iconic and inspirational places for future generations. For more information, visit www.npca.org. 

Images available on request.