OCCUPIED CHICAGO- That sea of light blue helmets protecting the NATO summit in Chicago last weekend may be a novel visual to those accustomed to police state armor black, but that’s because most 60s era news images were black & white. Color photos from Life Magazine remind us that light blue was the team color of the Alabama state troopers who brutalized the Civil Rights marchers trying to march from Selma to Montgomery.
Birds Egg Blue v Black, police brutality colors from Selma ’65 to Chicago 2012
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Why, it’s the price of freedom. LIFE didn’t question it in 1965, its readers know no better today. You have to destroy a village to free it. You have to cripple an enemy child before you can take him fishing.
In Vietnam in 1965, our photographers were allowed to depict US wounded. Six years into the conflict, the antiwar movement was still nascent, US GI casualties passed 2,000 (by 1966 they would quadruple), and America’s worst atrocities in Southeast Asia were yet to come. This Life Magazine cover story is titled “DEEPER INTO THE VIETNAM WAR.”
There it is in closeup. The arms bound at the elbows, the hands pinned, pressure applied to the stomach, a gun held to the poor Cuban’s head, a funnel put into his mouth, and water poured from a bucket marked “U.S. ARMY.”