Bill Hudson (photographer)

Bill Hudson (August 20, 1932 – June 24, 2010) was an American photojournalist for the Associated Press who was best known for his photographs taken in the Southern United States during the Civil Rights Movement.

The depictions of police brutality against peaceful protesters that were seen in his widely published photographs helped push public support towards the goals of the civil rights movement.

[1] He was hired by the Memphis, Tennessee bureau of the Associated Press in 1962 and covered many widely reported events of the civil rights era, including protests — and the often-violent responses of the police — during the Birmingham campaign and in the Selma to Montgomery marches.

His wife recounted that Hudson had been the target of bricks and rocks thrown at him by those who did not want him to photograph the African-American protests and the encounters they had with the police.

[2] He took a photo on May 3, 1963, of Walter Gadsden, an African-American bystander who had been grabbed by a sunglasses-wearing police officer, while a German Shepherd lunged at his chest.

A black-and-white photograph of a black male teenager being held by his sweater by a Birmingham policeman and being charged by the officer's leashed German Shepherd while another police officer with a dog and a crowd of black bystanders in the background look on
Bill Hudson's image of Parker High School student Walter Gadsden being attacked by dogs was published in The New York Times on May 4, 1963.