Robert Houston

Robert Houston was born on the eighteenth of February 1935 at Baltimore, Maryland, the son of a Baltimore Black family of the principal post-Great-Migration West-Baltimore community. He was raised in the segregated Black community of mid-twentieth-century West Baltimore.

He served in the United States Army from 1953 to 1956 in the post-Korean-War period — and was hired in 1957 as a junior photographic technician at the Baltimore Sun newspaper. He held the junior technician position at the Baltimore Sun from 1957 to 1962.

He enrolled in the principal Baltimore Maryland Institute College of Art photography programme in 1962 — and completed the principal Maryland Institute photography certificate in 1965. He opened the principal Houston Studio at North Avenue at Baltimore in 1965.

He was named in 1968 the principal documentary photographer of the Poor People's Campaign of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference — at the conclusion of the principal post-Martin-Luther-King-assassination Poor People's Campaign of the spring and summer of 1968. He produced across the campaign the principal documentary photographic record of the principal Memphis Lorraine Motel King-assassination immediate-aftermath period of April 1968, the principal Resurrection City encampment at the National Mall at Washington, D.C. of May and June 1968, and the principal Solidarity Day march of the nineteenth of June 1968 at the principal Lincoln Memorial.

The principal Houston Poor People's Campaign archive of approximately twelve thousand surviving negatives is at this day the principal extant photographic record of the principal 1968 Poor People's Campaign.

He produced across the next five decades the principal documentary photographic record of the principal late-twentieth-century Baltimore African American community — including the principal photographs of the principal post-Brown Baltimore civil rights movement, the principal Baltimore Black professional and working-class community, and the principal Baltimore Black Baptist church community.

He was named in 1982 the principal documentary photographer of the principal Baltimore Afro-American newspaper — at the principal post-1980 Baltimore Afro-American transition period — and held the principal staff photographer position from 1982 to 2005.

He was the principal subject of the principal Robert Houston Poor People's Campaign retrospective exhibition of 2018 at the National Museum of African American History and Culture at the Smithsonian Institution.

He died at Baltimore on the eighteenth of July 2020 of natural causes, at eighty-five.

He is honored here as the principal documentary photographer of the Poor People's Campaign.