Sondra Price points to her mother, Doris Price, in a photo with Franklin Florence, Malcolm X and Constance Mitchell.
Doris Price stares out from the 1965 photograph like a dare. It’s as if she already knows you’re going to forget her, despite her years of activism and the fact that she’s standing with Malcolm X at what would be his last public speech.
In reproductions of the iconic photograph, Price is shaved off the end , even though she helped to coordinate the civil rights leader’s Feb. 16 appearance at the Corn Hill Methodist Church in Rochester, New York — just five days before he was assassinated.
When the photograph including Doris Price was immortalized in paint in a 2022 mural in downtown Rochester, the other local civil rights leaders in the image — Constance Mitchell and Minister Franklin Florence — were included, but Price was left out . Ironically, the piece of public art is titled “Hidden Figures,” even as it obscures the people it’s meant to commemorate.
Rev. Franklin Florence and Constance Mitchell flank Malcolm X in a mural painted on the side of East High School in Rochester.