Photograph of police and an injured boy, Joe Bass, in the Newark Riots

Source catalog description

This description refers to material held by Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Visual details below describe the original material.

A black and white photograph of a street scene at an intersection. There are two police cruisers and police wagon with officers armed with rifles standing in the street. On the sidewalk, an officer is standing in front of a “One Way” traffic sign, holding a rifle, and looking off to the left. On the driver’s side of the police wagon is a child lying in the street, severely injured, in a pool of blood. The child pictured is 12 year old Joe Bass, who had been caught in the crossfire as a police officer shot a man named Billy Furr. Bass was hit twice with stray bullets, once in the neck and once in the thigh. A different photograph of Joe Bass, also taken by LIFE staff photographer, Bud Lee, but from another angle, gained worldwide attention after its publication on the cover of LIFE magazine for the July 28, 1967 issue.

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