Today the US celebrates Martin Luther King Day. The Roger-Viollet agency pays tribute to the great man with this report by Matt Heron, an American civil rights defender.

Matt Herron is a politically engaged American photographer. Registered as a conscientious objector during the Korean War, he joined the civil rights movement at the beginning of the 1960s, moving to Mississipi in 1963 to take part in demonstrations. Influenced by documentary photographers like Dorothea Lange, he worked for Life and Look magazines while remaining active in various militant groups. In 1965, he was awarded the World Press photo prize for his picture of a Mississippi policeman striking a five-year-old child. His photographs are part of the permanent collections of the George Eastman House, the Smithsonian, and the Schomburg Centre for Research in Black Culture.

Dominique Lecourt, Responsable éditorial Roger-Viollet