“The Seventies was a tumultuous time,” Black said. “There was lots of tension as the civil rights movement was reaching its apex. The political structure had turned a blind eye on the black community. The housing situation had gotten bad, and gangs started to take off. And there was a real transition when Mayor Daley died. City Hall just went up for grabs.”

Black said he was hired in part because civil rights organizations put pressure on the owners of newspapers to better understand the African-American community.

Black felt obstacles, particularly from editors unwilling to give him prime assignments. “Those barriers were not overt,” he said. “It was an attitudinal thing that you could feel.”

The Sun-Times, Black said, had activist staff members who were committed to using the camera to right social wrong during the Sixties. He followed their lead.

“I was determined to use my activism to tell stories from the black community that were different from what white people were used to seeing.”