Civil rights photography icon visits USCA

South Carolina native and civil rights photographer Cecil J. Williams gave a lecture this Sunday in the Etherridge Center about his work to digitally preserve film negatives documenting the civil rights movement in South Carolina and the presidency of John F. Kennedy at an event titled “Unforgettable: Celebrating a Time of Life, Hope, and Bravery.”

Williams began capturing desegregation efforts when he was a young man in the 1950s and has an extensive personal collection of film negatives from his time documenting the civil rights movement. 

Williams recently invented the FilmToaster, which is a device that can be used to capture film negatives into a digital format in a comfortable environment. Students at Claflin University have been working to digitize Williams’ personal collection of around 800,000 photo negatives using the FilmToaster.

Williams was able to license the rights of the FilmToaster to Adobe and recently opened a photography and history museum in Orangeburg called “The South Carolina Events that Changed America.”