Charles Moore and the high school speech that led to a documentary about the civil rights photographer

Dan Love was a high school senior when Charles Moore, known for his photographs of the civil rights movement, spoke at his Pittsburgh school.

Normally flippant students suddenly paid attention, Love later recalled.

“At the end of the presentation, probably the worst-behaved kids went up and all asked for his autograph,” Love told the Durham, N.C., Herald-Sun in 2006.

Love, the son of a professional filmmaker, had already made two documentaries and decided on the spot to make Moore the subject of his third.

During the fall of Love’s freshman year at Duke University, father and son traveled to Alabama to shoot the film.

“Some fathers and sons have baseball games, and our kind of thing has been through film,” Love said in the 2006 interview.

“Charles Moore: I Fight With My Camera” was released in 2005.

The movie’s title is based on a phrase Moore once said when asked why he gave up boxing: “I just said, ‘I don’t fight with my fists anymore. I fight with my camera.’ It just came out of me.”

Moore died Thursday at 79. To read his obituary, click here.

-- Valerie J. Nelson