Images from the civil rights movement

In 1955, the photograph of Emmett Till’s mutilated body was for many African-Americans the visual equivalent of a knock-out punch. No mainstream newspaper or magazine published the photo, but the black press did. That single image played a powerful role in building the civil rights movement, we learn in Maurice Berger’s “For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights’’ (Yale University), being published April 20 to coincide with the opening of a touring exhibit co-presented by the Smithsonian. The book also looks beyond news headlines, analyzing Walt Disney’s “Song of the South,’’ Aunt Jemima, and the 1967 TV show “Julia,’’ in which racism was mainly a thing of the past.