Robert E. "Bob" Fletcher, photographer, film maker, writer and educator. Born in 1938 in Detroit, Michigan, Fletcher majored in History and English at Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee and Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan. In 1963 Fletcher became active in the civil rights movement, taking photographs for and administering the National Student Association's Detroit Tutorial Program. After moving to New York City he worked at the Harlem Education Project and set up a photographic workshop.
In the summer of 1964 Fletcher became a Freedom School teacher in Mississippi and joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) staff as a photographer and documented the Civil Rights Movement throughout the South, between 1964 and 1968. After returning to New York in 1969, Fletcher set up a photography workshop at the Henry Street Settlement, and taught photography at Antioch College and Brooklyn College Film Studio.
Fletcher has also done photographic work for films which include "The Wiz"; the "Freddi Prinz Story"; he co-directed "A Luta Continua" ("The Struggle Continues"), 1971, and was cinematographer for "O Povo Organizado" ("The People Organized"), 1975. Fletcher's work has appeared in such publications as "Jet", "Ebony", "Ms.", "Redbook" and "Life". His exhibitions include "Us" (1965), "Now" (1968), and a travelling exhibition of his Cuban trip by the Van Der Zee Institute (1968). Fletcher worked as a cinematographer for the PBS television programs "Black Journal" and "Enterface". In 1980 his work appeared in the Smithsonian Institute/Howard University photographic exhibition "We'll Never Turn Back, a component of "Voices of the Civil Rights Movement: A National Working Conference on Civil Rights Movement Culture.".
From the guide to the Robert Fletcher Civil rights collection, 1962-1967, (The New York Public Library. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division.)
