Robert Houston (November 13, 1935 – April 26, 2021) was an American photographer born in East Baltimore.
[1][2] He documented the civil rights movement in the U.S., including Martin Luther King Jr.'s Poor People's Campaign and Resurrection City in Washington, D.C.[3][4] Days after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, Houston left his job to become a full-time documentary photographer.
After meeting the photographer Gordon Parks, he was hired by the Black Star photography agency.
Beginning in May 1968, he worked as a photojournalist for Life magazine, where he was assigned to photograph the Poor People's Campaign in Washington, D.C.[4] During the Campaign, Resurrection City was constructed as a tented community that held nearly 3,000 residents on the National Mall.
[5] Due to the news of the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, many of Houston's photographs of the Poor People's Campaign for Life were never published.