If you’re under the impression that the great outdoors is a bastion of racial harmony, Dudley Edmondson would like to disabuse you of that notion. Edmondson, a longtime wildlife photographer and filmmaker who lives in Duluth, Minnesota, says he gets some, uh, interesting reactions to his outdoor pursuits because he’s black.
While Edmondson was taking pictures of wildflowers in his own neighborhood a few years ago, an elderly white woman came up to him, demanded that he hand over his film, and then called the police, convinced that he was casing houses. “You don’t look like any nature photographer I’ve ever seen,” he remembers her saying.
Weeks later, Edmondson was taking pictures of different species of flowers along the highway, lying down to get close-ups, when a state trooper rolled up and said he had gotten a report of a drunk black man on the ground. The trooper looked a little embarrassed when he learned the real story.
Article submitted by, CaptainCommonsense.