Wheaton Public Library to Host MLK Jr Exhibit

Wheaton Public Library (WPL) will host the exhibit, MLK’s Chicago Freedom Movement, featuring photographer Bernard Kleina’s rare and historic color photographs of Martin Luther King, Jr. The exhibit will be on display in WPL’s Arts & Culture Center during the month of January. All artwork is from the Elmhurst Art Museum's collection, Gifts of Bernard Kleina and Susan Keleher.

Mr. Kleina will give a presentation at WPL on Thursday, January 12 at 7:00 pm. In his presentation, The Road to Freedom, Mr. Kleina will discuss his experiences while he captured MLK’s Chicago visit and marches on film, and both the ugliness and beauty of the responses to the local struggle for fair and open housing, which continues today. He will review where our country was, and is now, in terms of justice and equality.

The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute said, “These photographs of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in Chicago in 1966, are some of the first color photographs that the world saw of Dr. King. Mr. Kleina captured one of the most violent missions Dr. King undertook and it wasn't in the Deep South.”

This presentation is in partnership with the City of Wheaton Community Relations Commission and Wheaton League of Women Voters. Registration to attend this in-person program is required at wheatonlibrary.org/calendar

For more information, visit wheatonlibrary.org/MLK