Photography by William S. Dotson and Maurice W. Strider

Exhibition Dates TBD

Major support for this exhibition is provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

The University of Kentucky Art Museum is organizing the first museum exhibition of photographs by William S. Dotson and Maurice W. Strider for Fall 2029. During the Civil Rights Movement in Lexington, Kentucky, the two photographers competed to see who might create the best record of the African American community at this crucial moment. Strider learned a social function for art from Aaron Douglass and other professors at Fisk University, where Strider studied before returning to his hometown Lexington, Kentucky in 1934 to teach art at Dunbar High School. William S. Dotson graduated from the local HBCU, Kentucky State University, before moving to Lexington in 1938. Dotson became president of the local chapter of the NAACP and was involved with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Dotson learned to be a photographer as part of his work for the Domestic Life and Accident Insurance Company, and he used his skills to advocate for civil rights, photographing local protests as well as the 1963 March on Washington and other national gatherings. Strider and Dotson took photographs for families in Lexington as well as serving as staff photographers for the Louisville Defender and Pittsburgh Courier. Our exhibition of their work will focus on the role of photography in advancing civil and human rights, especially in the mid-twentieth century in Lexington, Kentucky.

Image credit: William S. Dotson, [Group of African Americans sitting at a table including William Henry Fouse (1868-1944), Elizabeth Beatrice Cooke Fouse (1875-1952), Pastor of East Second Street Christian Church of Lexington, Kentucky Elder R.L. Saunders, and Emma W. Saunders], Sallie Price Family Papers 2005AV011, Box 4, Item 159, University of Kentucky Special Collections.