And I Said No Lord

“And I Said No Lord is a remarkable book. It evokes the fear and hope that swirled around Freedom Summer in Mississippi, 1964, as seen by a 21-year old who was probably more courageous than he knew at the time. A door opened in Joel Katz’s world, and with the wonderful brashness of the young he stepped through it. The seismic shift that was taking place in the country then vibrates below the surface of these quiet photographs. They hold within them a tension that continues to this day. It is surprising and wonderful to find this new collection of words and images coming into the light. The book takes readers back to stand on the shifting ground of that historic time and leaves it to them to draw their own sightlines from then to the present. And I Said No Lord brings a deeper resonance and understanding to those who remember the startling rupture at the center of America that summer. For those who were not yet born, Katz’s book will help them grasp what it felt like to be present, to be a witness, and to be changed”

—Sean Kernan, coauthor of The Secret Books and author of Among Trees, and Sean Kernan: Photographs From Prison

 — -

“In And I Said No Lord, we venture with twenty-one-year-old Joel Katz (no relation), then a Yale undergraduate, into Mississippi during the fraught summer of 1964. His focus is not the horrific events of that violent season, though they hover always in the background. Rather, with notebook and camera, he sets out on a voyage of comprehension. With his extraordinary capacity for precise observation, he creates portraits from words as well as photographs. His art is respectful, often disturbing, always memorable, but never sentimental. We witness a self-reflective young man’s agonizing education through the contradictions of a culture based on racism, exploitation, and fantasy. This book is at once an utterly original work of social criticism and a compelling probe into one corner of the soul of America.”

—Michael B. Katz, Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania

 — -

“Joel Katz’s searing and stark photographs and poignant prose take us back to another time and place to make something he will not let us forget: 1964’s Freedom Summer and the Jim Crow South still cast in black and white. Katz looks at southern people and the places that mattered to them and captures their very soul. He does so with a rare ability to respect their dignity and integrity, without necessarily endorsing their purposes. And I Said No Lord is highly personal, which also makes it highly pertinent and potent, for it shows how one can find oneself by learning to know others. The genius and beauty of Katz’s book lies not only in what it reveals but also in what it demands. It cuts to the quick of one’s consciousness and conscience about matters of race, power, place, and moral obligation. It makes us see. It is a book, like Walker Evans’s images, that will stay with anyone who dares to seek the truth.”

—Randall M. Miller, author of “Dear Master”: Letters of a Slave Family

 — -