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Kouns (John A.) Collection
TBC.JAK
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Contributing Institution:
Special Collections & Archives
Title: John A. Kouns Collection
Creator:
Kouns, John Alexander (1929-2019)
Identifier/Call Number: TBC.JAK
Physical Description:
82.97 linear feet
Physical Description:
200 Gigabytes
Date (inclusive): 1884-2019
Date (bulk): 1958-2000
Abstract: The John A. Kouns
Collection is the life work of social justice photographer John Alexander Kouns. The
collection documents the Farmworkers Movement in California and the Civil Rights Movement
nationally. It also consists of images from peace and protest movements as well as the
senior commmunity in the San Francisco Bay Area and North Bay. A small portion of the
collection contains personal materials that date from 1884, as well as freelance industrial
and sports photography. A majority of the collection consists of photographic prints,
negatives, slides, clippings, ephemera, and audiovisual materials with bulk dates spanning
the 1950s to the 2000s.
Language of Material:
English, Spanish; Castilian.
John Alexander Kouns was a professional photographer who centered much of his work around
social justice movements like the United Farm Workers and Civil Rights Movements. He was
born to Lucille and Augustus Honshall Kouns in Alameda, California in 1929. Kouns grew up in
the Santa Clara Valley, where he picked prunes at the age of twelve and became a member of
the United Steelworkers Union at the age of sixteen. After reading Richard Wright's novel
Native Son, Kouns joined the NAACP at the age of fifteen. He
attended San Jose State College for two years studying physical education and photography
until he was drafted into the navy in 1951. Kouns trained in aerial photography at the Naval
School in Pensacola, Florida. Of segregation in the South, he said, "[it was] surreal,
unjust, and inhumane," and it sparked a life-long interest in documenting and supporting
social justice movements. He served a 2-year tour of duty during the Korean War taking
aerial photography in Japan. After the war, he completed his degree in Physical Education at
San Jose State in 1955.
He returned to the South to document segregation in 1956, but soon thereafter moved to New
York to build his skills as a photographer. He studied at the New York Institute of
Photography under photographer Harold Feinstein and attended workshops where he met and was
influenced by
LIFE Magazine photographer Eugene Smith. Kouns
returned to San Francisco in 1958 and started working for United Press International (UPI),
including an assignment for the 1960 Winter Olympics. After leaving UPI, Kouns started what
he called "Social Work Photography," helping hearing impaired and physical disability
agencies create PR materials, while he earned a living from industrial and freelance
photography. Although an industrial photographer by vocation, he was a documentary
photographer by personal commitment.
In 1961, after a failed attempt to drive buses for the Freedom Riders, Kouns began working
for the California Migrant Ministry photographing the daily life of residents at the Linnell
Farm Labor Camp in Visalia, California. It was during this time that he began to learn more
about the Farmworkers Movement. He would return again to document the movement in 1966.
Kouns' first major civil rights event he photographed was the 1963 March on Washington for
Jobs and Freedom. Later that same year in Alabama, he documented the 16th Street Baptist
Church bombing in Birmingham, and Freedom Day voter registration in Selma. In 1965, he
visited Selma again to document the March from Selma to Montgomery. Kouns regularly
exhibited the powerful images of this period to help friends of the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) raise funds and to
increase awareness about the struggles faced by activists in the Civil Rights Movement.
Kouns had portable shows in which he would display images on top of and in the back of an
old station wagon.
Kouns later used a similar format to share images of farmworkers, calling it "Guerrilla
Camera," with pop-up exhibits at grocery stores, schools, union halls, and festivals. He
started documenting the United Farm Workers movement in 1966, at the hearing of the Senate
Subcommittee on Migratory Labor held in Delano. While there, he captured the beginning of
Senator Robert F. Kennedy's support of the movement. Kouns joined the Agricultural Workers
Organizing Committee (AWOC), the picket lines, as well as the 1966 March from Delano to
Sacramento, taking pictures along the way. Kouns said that the images he took as part of the
fifty "Originales" who walked the pilgrimage to Sacramento were the foundation for his
"Guerilla Camera" exhibits.
Kouns continued to document activism in the San Francisco Bay Area during the sixties and
seventies at peace, anti-war, civil rights, anti-capital punishment, and police brutality
protests. He documented protests at San Francisco and around the Black Power Movement in
Oakland. Kouns also photographed community empowerment programs in Oakland like the Black
Panther Breakfast Program, Job Development Program, Oakland Free Store, Kennedy Tract child
enrichment program, and tenants' unions and neighborhood stabilization events.
In addition to his portable shows, other exhibits of Kouns' civil rights and farmworkers
photography include the following: Focus Gallery in Los Angeles in 1985; Marguerita C.
Johnson Senior Center in Marin in 1992; The Latino Museum of History, Art and Culture in Los
Angeles in 2000, titled "An American Leader – Cesar E. Chavez"; College of Marin in 2005,
titled "Black and White Together"; California State University, Northridge, in 2008, titled
"Camera and Community"; Agora Gallery and City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco; San Jose
First Unitarian Church; and Laney College in Oakland.
Kouns retired as a professional photographer in the 1990s but stayed active in social
justice work at home in the North Bay and the Bay Area. He became involved in local senior
activist and social justice groups like the Gray Panthers and other community organizations,
and taught photography to seniors at Marin City Senior Center, San Francisco Senior Center,
and Laguna Honda Hospital in San Francisco. He also regularly volunteered at the College of
Marin's Emeritus program.
He married Anne Baele in 1994 and they lived in Sausalito, CA. He died in 2019.
The
John A. Kouns Collection consists of photographic
materials, papers, ephemera, and audiovisual materials that reflect Kouns' involvement in
documenting social justice movements. It largely includes photographic prints, negatives,
contact sheets, slides, newspapers, clippings, periodicals, and ephemera. Kouns' photographs
reflect prominent and lesser-known people from the Civil Rights and Farmworkers Movements in
California and the South from the 1960s through the 1990s, as well as other social justice
movements in the San Francisco Bay Area from the 1960s to the 1990s. Kouns' work also
documents the activism and community involvement of fellow senior citizens during the 1990s
through the early 2000s in the Bay Area, Marin, and Mill Valley. A majority of the images
are in black and white. The collection also contains family heirlooms, personal articles,
and professional materials that Kouns used, including cameras. The collection is arranged
into four series:
Civil Rights Movement (1936-2017),
Farmworkers Movement (1939-2016),
Peace Movement,
Protests, Seniors, and Northern California
(1928-2017), and
Personal, Freelance, and Photographic Equipment (1884-2019).
Occasionally Kouns grouped and labeled duplicate images inconsistently with contradictory
dates or places. These inconsistencies are kept intact on materials. Duplicates have been
retained in the same or similarly themed folders.
For all Negatives subseries, contact sheets, slides, and some prints are also present. Not
all rolls of negatives have matching contact sheets, and some contact sheets lack their
matching negatives. Some negatives were numerically ordered by Kouns. For the Prints
subseries, the same image may reappear in multiple folders due to varying print size or
potential curating done by Kouns to sort and arrange duplicated images differently for
various exhibits that took place over time. Varying numbers written by Kouns on the back of
prints might reflect this change in arrangement.
Some negatives and prints, especially in Series II, are marked with alphanumerical unique
identifiers at the top of preservation sheets or on the back of prints. The Tom and Ethel
Bradley Center created this identification system for internal reference and for use in
digital collections (see Existence and Location of Copies).
Series I,
Civil Rights Movement, documents Kouns involvement in
this movement and contains three subseries:
Photographic Prints
(1956-1969),
Photographic Negatives (1960-1975), and
Papers, Ephemera, and Audiovisual Materials (1936-2017). Subseries A
and B, Photographic Prints and Photographic Negatives, document several major civil rights
events including the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in Washington, D.C., and
several events in the South, especially in Alabama, including the 16th Street Baptist Church
Bombing in Birmingham, the Freedom Day voter registration in Selma, and the 1965 March from
Selma to Montgomery. They contain images from white supremacist protests in support of
school segregation in Alabama and Mississippi, the bombing of a Freedom School, segregation
in New Orleans, 1960s protests at San Francisco State University, and Black Power protests
in Oakland, including documentation of community empowerment resources like the Black
Panther Party's Breakfast Program. Also present are images created in San Francisco of the
1964 Auto Row Sit-Ins, the Fillmore neighborhood, and Matthew Johnson's funeral. Kouns
focused on documenting average people at major civil rights events hoping that the average
person viewing them would form a deeper connection to their stories, but he also
photographed significant leaders in the movement including Martin Luther King, Jr., as well
as James Forman of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) with writer James
Baldwin at Freedom Day in Selma, in 1963. Subseries A consists of prints of varying sizes,
and Subseries B consists of negatives, mostly 35mm in black-and-white, and also includes
contact sheets, slides, and a few prints. The majority of images were created between 1963
to 1969. Subseries C, Papers, Ephemera, and Audiovisual Materials, consists of newspapers,
clippings, periodicals, pamphlets, essays, captions, ephemera, fliers, song sheets,
newsletters, correspondence, posters, and a videocassette. Bulk dates are from the year 1963
to the 2010s.
Series II,
Farmworkers Movement, documents Kouns involvement in
this movement and contains three subseries:
Photographic Prints
(1960-2005),
Photographic Negatives (1960-2001), and
Papers, Ephemera, and Audiovisual Materials (1939-2016). Subseries A
and B, Photographic Prints and Photographic Negatives, document the Farmworkers Movement and
the Migrant Ministry at several locations in California as well as in Colorado and Florida.
The images depict events, such as Cesar Chavez's 1968 fast, the 1966 march (or pilgrimage)
from Delano to Sacramento, the 1966 Senate Subcommittee Hearing on Migratory Labor in
Delano, the 1973 UFWU Convention in Fresno, picketing, boycotts, grape strikes, other types
of demonstrations, meetings, mass, social gatherings, and dedication services. The images
depict specific locations, such as migrant farmworker camps, including Linnell Camp, as well
as La Paz, the UFW Health Clinic, and various locations in California that were sites of
demonstrations, such as Delano and the California State Capitol in Sacramento. The images
depict specific groups, such as the United Farm Workers (UFW), the United Farm Workers
Organizing Committee (UFWOC), El Teatro Campesino, the Agricultural Workers Organizing
Committee (AWOC), the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), and American Federation of
Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). At the camps, Kouns attempted to
capture the everyday life of the families of farmworkers, and images include a wedding of
camp residents at which Kouns was the official photographer for while on assignment for the
California Migrant Ministry. "Meetings" captures all kinds of social gatherings, as union
meetings and religious services often overlapped, as well as shared meals. Significant
personalities documented include Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Robert F. Kennedy, Luis
Valdez, Larry Itliong, and other labor leaders. Farmworkers, fieldworkers, demonstrators,
farm owners, supporters, spectators, police officers, children, the religious community, and
musicians are included. Some of the images are separated out as "Portraits" relating
specifically to each person. Subseries A consists of prints of varying sizes, and Subseries
B consists of negatives, mostly 35mm in black-and-white, and also includes contact sheets,
slides, and prints. The majority of images were created in the 1960s.Subseries C, Papers,
Ephemera, and Audiovisual Materials, consists of newspapers, clippings, periodicals, fliers,
farm song sheets, poems, newsletters, press releases, memorabilia, event programs, meeting
agendas, notes, captions, correspondence, booklets, posters, videocassettes, DVDs, an audio
reel, and an audiocassette related to the United Farm Workers and the Migrant Ministry in
California, Texas, Florida, and Colorado, immigration, and the life of Cesar Chavez. It also
contains a few magazines that Kouns collected in which some of his images were featured in
articles about the UFW, Cesar Chavez, and El Teatro Campesino. About half of this subseries
was loosely grouped by Kouns, and contents can vary in subject and format within folders.
Bulk dates are from the 1960s to the 2010s.
Series III,
Peace Movement, Protests, Seniors, and Northern
California,
reflects Kouns involvement in documenting peace and social justice
events and communities predominantly in this region. It contains three subseries:
Photographic Prints (1934-1999),
Photographic
Negatives
(1928-2004), and
Papers, Ephemera, and Audiovisual
Materials
(1941-2017). Subseries A and B, Photographic Prints and Photographic
Negatives, document protests, demonstrations, marches, and other activities in support of
peace, anti-war, free speech, workers' rights, and students' rights, and against the death
penalty in San Francisco, San Jose, Marin, Oakland, and other locations mostly in the San
Francisco Bay Area and the North Bay. Anti-war protests include those against the Vietnam
War, US military presence in the Middle East, and nuclear disarmament. The subseries
document the advocacy of senior citizens for their own rights and for social justice issues
as well as their engagement in social and learning activities. Kouns photographed senior
citizens while a member of senior citizen groups, such as the Manzanita Group and the Gray
Panthers. Some images capture events at senior centers, and some prints not created by Kouns
may be the work of his photography students at those centers. Other acts of social reform,
community events such as parades and weddings, and local church activities are also
documented. Materials titled with Selma S.J. refer to a group of Black teenagers from Selma,
Alabama who traveled to San Jose, California and were hosted by local pro-civil rights
families associated with the San Jose First Unitarian Church. Significant personalities
documented include Coretta Scott King, Muhammad Ali, Joan Baez, Martin Luther King, Jr., I.
F. Stone, Benjamin Spock, Cecil Williams, George Wallace, Reies Tijerina, Harry Edwards,
Gordon Parks, Richard Nixon, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Shirley Chisholm, and William Kunstler.
Subseries A consists of prints of varying sizes, and Subseries B consists of negatives,
mostly 35mm in black and white, and includes contact sheets, slides, and a few prints.
Subseries C, Papers, Ephemera, and Audiovisual Materials, contains newspaper clippings,
newspapers, periodicals, ephemera, correspondence, newsletters, posters, fliers, and a DVD
in line with the same themes he photographed in Subseries A and B in addition to San
Francisco politics and culture. Bulk dates for materials are from the 1960s to the
2010s.
Series IV,
Personal, Freelance, and Photographic Equipment,
documents Kouns' early photography, his freelance and sports photography, his personal and
family history, his equipment, and collected items on early twentieth century San Francisco.
Personal events documented include military, education, New York scenes during his residence
in the 1950s, portraits, and travels to locations such as Cuba and England with family and
friends. Freelance assignments include industrial sites, sports photography, public figures,
and cityscapes. The sports photography includes boxing with George Foreman, baseball with
Hank Aaron and Joe DiMaggio, and soccer. The series consists of photographic negatives,
photographic prints, contact sheets, slides, significant personal and family records,
personal memorabilia, clippings, newsletters, publications, correspondence, press ephemera,
exhibit records, cameras, photography resources, an audiocassette, a DVD, and an 8mm film
reel. The negatives are predominantly black-and-white 35mm as well as 120mm, 3x4, and 4x5,
and include glass negatives with images of motorcycles, marine scenes, commercial
photography, and mining. Photography not created by Kouns may be present, especially for
images created prior to the year 1944. Dates of materials span 1884 to 2019, with bulk dates
from the 1940s to the 1970s.
Collection folders are arranged alphabetically by title.
Content warning: This collection contains graphic images that document racism, police
brutality, and warfare.
Series I: Civil Rights Movement, 1936-2017
Subseries A: Photographic Prints, 1956-1969
Subseries B: Photographic Negatives, 1960-1975
Subseries C: Papers, Ephemera, and Audiovisual Materials, 1936-2017
Series II: Farmworkers Movement, 1939-2016
Subseries A: Photographic Prints, 1960-2005
Subseries B: Photographic Negatives, 1960-2001
Subseries C: Papers, Ephemera, and Audiovisual Materials, 1939-2016
Series III: Peace Movement, Protests, Seniors, and Northern California, 1928-2017
Subseries A: Photographic Prints, 1934-1999
Subseries B: Photographic Negatives, 1928-2004
Subseries C: Papers, Ephemera, and Audiovisual Materials, 1941-2017
Series IV: Personal, Freelance, and Photographic Equipment, 1884-2019
Existence and Location of Copies
Digital reproductions of selected images from this collection are available electronically
in the
Farmworker Movement Collection as a part of the Tom and Ethel Bradley Center Photographs project.
This collection is open for research use.
Copyright for unpublished materials authored or otherwise produced by the creator(s) of
this collection has been transferred to California State University, Northridge. Copyright
status for other materials is unknown. Transmission or reproduction of materials protected
by U.S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S.C.) beyond that allowed by fair use requires the
written permission of the copyright owners. Works not in the public domain cannot be
commercially exploited without permission of the copyright owners. Responsibility for any
use rests exclusively with the user.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
John A. Kouns, 2005, 2017; Anne Baele, 2019
For information about citing items in this collection consult the appropriate style
manual, or see the
Citing Archival Materials
guide.
Claire V. Gordon, 2021; Elizabeth Peattie and Bryan Gil, 2023
Other Information:
Support for the processing of the John A. Kouns Collection is part of the
Farmworker Movement Collection grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Photographs
Audiovisual materials
Ephemera
Documents