Flip Schulke
Flip Schulke (1930–2008, born Saint Paul, Minnesota) was a photojournalist whose decades of coverage of the American civil rights movement produced some of the most powerful documentary photographs of the twentieth century. A freelance photographer affiliated with the Black Star Agency and a regular contributor to Life magazine, Schulke began covering the emerging civil rights movement in the South as early as 1956, developing a personal friendship with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that gave him singular access to the movement’s inner circle across its defining years.
His images of the Birmingham campaign, the March on Washington, and the daily lives of civil rights activists shaped public opinion at a critical moment in American history. His role in the movement was chronicled in The Race Beat, the Pulitzer Prize-winning history of journalists covering civil rights. Beyond his civil rights work, Schulke produced celebrated images of John F. Kennedy, Muhammad Ali, and the early astronauts of the American space program, and was a pioneer in underwater photography, diving extensively with Jacques Cousteau.
His archive of over 300,000 photographs is housed at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin. His personal collection of 11,000 photographs of Dr. King and his family is the largest in the world.