Remembering the life and work of Moneta Sleet Jr.

Justice Henderson is the 2023-2025 Romare Bearden Graduate Museum Fellow at the Saint Louis Art Museum.

The Saint Louis Art Museum’s collection includes 101 photographs by Ebony Magazine’s Pulitzer Prize winning photographer Moneta Sleet Jr. For more than 50 years, the Museum has been honoring the artist, his memory, and his impact on U.S. history.

Moneta Sleet Jr. was born February 14, 1926, in Owensboro, Kentucky. He received his first box camera as a child and later joined a camera club in high school. He went to Kentucky State College where he worked with the dean to foster his interest in the medium by photographing on-campus events and students.

From 1944 to 1946, he served in an all-Black unit, the 93rd Engineers, during World War II. After his service, he used the G.I. Bill to complete his undergraduate degree. He moved to New York where he completed a course at the School of Modern Photography, earned a master’s degree in journalism from New York University, and married Juanita Harris. He first worked as a sports journalist for The Amsterdam News. Although he had an interest in writing, he later worked for Our World to focus on photography.

In 1955, Our World went out of business, and Sleet was offered a position at Ebony, then a new picture magazine that was a part of Johnson Publishing Company. He worked for Ebony for 41 years and recorded major events such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1956 and the March on Washington in 1963. Sleet is known for his images of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Selma March, but he also made portraits of famous figures including Dizzy Gillespie, Rosa Parks, and Miles Davis. Sleet became the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize in Feature Photography in 1969 for his image of Coretta Scott King at her husband’s funeral.

His photograph of Coretta and Bernice, the Kings’ daughter, generated such national resonance that in the year following Sleet’s award, the Alpha Kappa Alphas Sorority Incorporated Gamma Omega Chapter urged the Saint Louis Art Museum to host his first retrospective, Moneta Sleet: Photographer. The 1970 show featured more than 100 of his photographs. His selection of images, decisions about display, and ability to develop a story reflected his artistic agency that was unique in comparison to his experiences at Ebony and allowed him to tell his own visual narrative. After the exhibition, a selection of the artworks were displayed at St. Louis public schools. After the tour ended, Sleet’s photographs were returned and stored in the Museum.

In 1991, upon the Museum’s request, Johnson Publishing Company gifted the works to SLAM.  Now part of the permanent collection, the photographs were featured in the 1993 exhibition My Point of View: Photographs by Moneta Sleet Jr. and toured to other institutions including the Toledo Museum of Art and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

Sleet marched alongside the people he photographed, which captivated audiences and communicated a sense of honesty in his approach to depicting the Black experience during the 1950s and 1960s. From his color photography to his black and white images, Sleet’s passion for the medium and concern for social justice was integral to his practice and contributed to setting the foundation for African American historical and collective memory.

Since 1970, the Saint Louis Art Museum has hosted numerous events and conducted research that reflects his work. Every year since 2002, the Museum has hosted an annual Martin Luther King Jr. program, celebrating Black American culture and highlighting Sleet’s photographs. To learn more about his work, please view Sleet’s photographs on SLAM’s website, visit the Richardson Memorial Library, or email the Print Study Room at paper@slam.org to schedule an in-person appointment to view his photographs.