Parting Shot: Photographer Opie Evans

by Avery Savage, photo provided by the Opie Evans Papers at The University of Akron Archives and Special Collections of University Libraries

Akronite Opie Evans always showed up to work in a white shirt and tie — even when working as a janitor for Firestone Tire and Rubber Co. When he saw a head of the company, he took a chance. “He went up to him and asked if he could get a better job,” says son Marvin Evans. They put him in the photography and motion picture department, and his love for photography grew.

Despite racial tensions at the time, he also worked as a cameraman at Loew’s Theatre. Pictured above at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., Evans became known for his ’60s Akron photographs of Black businesses, churches, residents, events and activism, including a civil rights march in solidarity with the history-making Selma, Alabama, march. He was an advocate of the Black community, through platforms including his The Akronite newspaper and magazine, a TV program, “Highlights in Brown,” on WAKR-TV and a WHKK radio show. He also started a construction business to build low-cost homes for Black people and served as an assistant to Akron Mayor John Ballard and on the council of civic unity. He was named NAACP’s man of the year. Evans died in 2000, and his photographs continue to tell stories of Akron’s Black community.