“The Price of Equality”, will open at the Tangipahoa African American Heritage Museum (TAAHM).

The 22 piece exhibit featuring the master photographer Chris McNair will remain through July 31.   Chris McNair has a long and illustrious career as a photographer, generally depicting personalities and events in the history of the Civil Rights Movement.  He was one of the first African Americans to serve in the Alabama Legislature since Reconstruction. McNair was born November 22, 1925, in Fordyce, Arkansas, the oldest of 12 children. Enduring tremendous hardships in order to secure an education, McNair walked four miles to school everyday. 
          
McNair found himself in a world defined by racism and populated by inconsistencies.  Chris McNair moved from Tupelo, Mississippi to Houston, Texas, and then to Birmingham, Alabama (where he has lived ever since).  McNair’s interest in photography developed while at Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University). 
            
At Tuskegee McNair became acquainted with well known photographer, P. H. Poke.  Prentice Herman Polk is one of the pioneers in African American photography.  Poke opened his first studio at Tuskegee in 1927, and McNair held him in high regard stating, "Polk was a good photographer.  Back in those days there were not a lot of good photographers," McNair said.  Polk lived to be 82 years old. 
          

The project closest to McNair's heart is maintaining a space in his studio dedicated to his daughter, Denise, who was one of the four girls killed in the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church on September 15, 1963.  The tragic loss left McNair devoted to making sure that the struggle during the Civil Rights movement be remembered.  Spike Lee's powerful documentary "Four Little Girls", gives an account of the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.  The bombing killed four Black girls: eleven-year-old Denise McNair, Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, and Carole Roberson, all fourteen years old.  The incident steered American's sleeping liberals into action, uncovering the horrible racism that existed in the midst of the American landscape.  Sometimes tragic events will test our mettle, our humanity and leave us reeling at the wrenching pain that permeates our very soul.  To have a child taken from you in the flowering of her youth is to know that pain.