Life in Pictures

Executive for Rich’s Department Store Atlanta for Atlanta

Magazine.

Interesting thing is in this photo, the store detectives are watching this person in background for shoplifting.

The pair’s pre-Hollywood work in the 1960s took a different path. Krantz accompanied his mentor to south Georgia for the United States Information Agency, where they photographed young civil rights workers being trained to face the crackle and spark, verbal and physical abuse they would face in the segregated South.

“It changed my life,” Krantz says.

“Bill and Dr. King took a liking to each other, and Bill volunteered our services to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. That included all of us.”

Krantz dined twice at the King home in Atlanta. And he would walk with the famous and the everyday to King’s earthly resting place.

It was a small slice of Krantz’s remarkable career. But it was nonetheless important. The memories of “Whites Only” water fountains are burned in his memory.

“Growing up in Atlanta, it was very segregated like Birmingham. (The work) changed me.”

He remembers one meal, when he asked King why he tried so hard to achieve racial equality, when eventually it was going to happen.

“He said, ‘Larry, I would like to see it in my time and not in my grandchildren’s time.’ That I remember.”

Krantz has lived to see King’s dream move toward