RANCHO CORDOVA, CA (MPG) - Fifty photographs taken by Danny Lyon from 1962 through 1964 constitute Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement, the first exhibit of 2022 at the Mills Station Arts & Culture Center.  In his junior year at the University of Chicago, Lyon decided to hitchhike down Route 66 with his Nikon.  He ended up at a church in Cairo, Illinois, where Senator John Lewis was speaking. “Lyon was so engaged in what (Lewis) was saying that he was almost mesmerized,” said Cheryl Gleason, MACC event coordinator and curator. Lyon began following John Lewis and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee of which Lewis was a founding member. Lyon eventually became SNCC’s official photographer. “We are now 60 plus years after these photographs were taken,” Gleason said, “and we are still fighting the same battle that Danny Lyon captured 62 years ago.”

Beth Charlton of Rancho Cordova visited the exhibit. She was a child in Ohio in the 1960s, and her parents couldn’t explain to her why blacks couldn’t drink out of the same water fountain that she drank from. “I don’t think that we have come as far as we need to,” Charlton said. “I don’t know if I will live long enough to see all that happen.”

Also visiting the exhibit, Dr. Genoria Lundy of Sacramento lived in New Orleans, Louisiana, in the 1960s. “We had to go in the colored section,” Lundy said. Especially in the smaller “hick towns,” she and her friends had to stay to the colored side wherever they went. “They don’t say anything today,” Lundy said, “but it’s still the same – violence . . . it’s not right. The blacks, the whites, it’s not supposed to matter, but they’re still coming at one another, and that’s not at all good.”

Local prizewinning photographer Eugene Davis Stevenson III, PhD, has his first solo show Emergence: An inspection of personal philosophy through photography, in the upstairs gallery from January 13-29.  He is featuring four of his projects, his favorite being “Cribs.”  Full-size 6-foot-tall portraits give the viewer an opportunity “to come up real close to someone and see every single detail of their face, get to know how they look, everything other than how they smell, which is a very intimate exercise.” These portraits are accompanied by a smaller photo of the home (or crib) they own. “I don’t disagree that the conditions are still unequal,” Stevenson said. “Black men are the last to own houses, but the exhibit is . . . about the positive, showing how some people have overcome these conditions to be just as successful as other individuals, or more.  You’ve just got to get past the place of saying, ‘It’s harder for me.’  It’s hard for everybody.”  Stevenson said instead of using race to stratify people, it’s better to try to see what someone has had to do to overcome hardship, then use those lessons to overcome, and “stop associating the hardship with the color.” Stevenson’s Artist Talk takes place at 6 p.m., Thursday, January 20.

Mosaic artist Celeste Budd and fabric artist Johyne Geran will display their artwork from February 3-19, showing “quilt codes,” based on the book Hidden in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad. Their Artist Talk will be at 6 p.m., Thursday, February 10. “Instead of it just being quilts, I’m doing it in glass beads and stained-glass mosaics,” Budd said. “I would love to encourage people to come out and learn a little bit more about quilt codes. If nothing else, come out for the artistry of looking at the quilts, and the glass and beads.” Geran used African fabric to make some of the quilt blocks from the book. “I decided to do it in honor of the African people that came to this country,” Geran said. “For me it’s very interesting that any one of the individual blocks can be made into a fabulous quilt.”

The Danny Lyon exhibit is at the MACC Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays from January 13 through February 19. Hours are 3-8 p.m., Thursdays and Fridays, and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Saturdays. Admission is free. The MACC is located at 10191 Mills Station Rd., Rancho Cordova. For more information, call Cheryl Gleason, 916-273-5712, or e-mail [email protected].