“Participating in the Million Man March remains one of the greatest milestones of my life,” said Pine Bluff native Roderick “Rod” Terry, Million Man March photographer. “As I shared in the series, it was a spiritual awakening of the highest order. For those of us who were there, it was a sacred moment that continues to resonate in our hearts and minds.”
Perhaps it was a lifetime of happenstance or intuition that led Terry outside on a crisp fall morning in 1995 to document the Million Man March. At that time, Terry served as a prosecutor in the attorney general’s office in Washington, D.C. But also, he was a self-taught photographer who had bought a new Canon camera, not yet tested, and several rolls of black and white film, believing it would better capture the historic feel of the day, in the days before the event.
Louis Farrakhan was behind the organization of the Million Man March that took place in and around the National Mall in Washington on Oct. 16, 1995. It was a controversial event, and police had braced for unrest and were prepared to make mass arrests.
“That disturbed me,” Terry said, explaining that was part of why he decided to document the march.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
“I had a deep sense that it was going to be an incredible moment,” said Terry, who was 30 at the time.
Perhaps as many as 1.1 million Black men from around the nation answered Farrakhan’s call, including the future President Barack Obama, Civil Rights activist Rosa Parks and philosopher and political activist Cornel West. Maya Angelou delivered what was described as a phenomenal poem that day.
Terry wasn’t disappointed.
“There was an overwhelming sense of peace and calm, which provided the perfect backdrop for reconciliation and atonement. We came in peace. We left in peace,” he said.
He returned home that evening with some of the decade’s most iconic images.
The following year, many were published in Terry and Cliff Giles’s book “One Million Strong: A Photographic Tribute of the Million Man March & Affirmations for the African-American Male.”
It received the 1997 New York Public Library System award for best book.
Terry’s photographs have also been featured in publications such as the Paris Review, Slate Magazine, Vice, Washington Post and Baltimore Sun.
In 2014, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) acquired 55 photographs from Terry’s series for its permanent photography collection.
