Robert (Bob) Fitch is a photographer, writer, folk musician and peace activist best known for his photography of the civil rights movement and the organization of the united farm workers union. An ordained minister, who became "tired of words and disillusioned by the hypocrisy of the church,", Bob received his Master of Arts from the Pacific School of Religion in 1965.

Bob Fitch began his photography and writing career in the mid-1960s as a photographer for San Francisco’s fledgling Glide (Foundation) Press. Initially trained to be an engineer and then a Protestant minister, he says, “Photojournalism seduced me. It is a compelling combination of visual aesthetics, potent communication and story telling. It is a way to effectively support the organizing for social justice that is transforming our lives and future.”

Shortly after working for Glide, Bob ventured south at age 24 to join the staff of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference SCLC, of which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was president.

As staff photographer, Bob traveled throughout Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia, documenting the grassroots organizing efforts of the SCLC (and other groups of the Civic Rights Movement), capturing local community organizing, violence against Afro American citizens, numerous demonstrations, voter registration and Afro American political campaigns.

Bob worked for SCLC until just before King's assassination in 1968. His stories and pictures appeared initially in the northern Afro-American press, which could neither afford nor risk sending their own staff into the South. The mainstream press at the time, which catered predominantly to a white leadership, rarely published Bob’s work; however, his photographs did appear regularly in the Afro-American, the Pittsburgh Courier, the Amsterdam News, the Chicago Daily Defender, and Jet.

Bob photographed not only the dramatic moments and the leaders of the civil rights movement, but ordinary people and events as well.

“Those communities, workers and their families,” says Fitch, “are still my heroes.”

Many of his best images document the courageous contribution made to the Civil Rights movement by the men, women, and children who organized the cause for freedom in their local communities.

As a tall, well built man, Bob did not hesitate to bring his cameras and his skills aggressively into the center of violent situations. With his wits about him, Bob learned not only how to survive these confrontations, but also how to get his film out, intact and full of information.

"[I learned] that photography is a whole body act," he wrote, "I need all my senses, all my reflexes, all my muscles, all my gray matter functioning very well and in concert."

Bob is also recognized for his extensive documentation of numerous peace and social justice activities in the 1960 and 70s including Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker houses of hospitality, the first congressional campaign of Congressman Ron Dellums, the war resistance activities of Fathers Dan and Phillip Berrigan and the Draft Resistance work of David and Joan Baez-Harris.

After photographing King's funeral, Bob returned home to California and began to apply lessons learned in the South to the forces of social change that was rapidly coalescing along the West Coast. By 1970, he was working closely with the United Farm Workers and for nearly seven years he criss-crossed California's agricultural areas documenting farm workers, their families, their lives, their work and their organizing struggles. Bob accompanied Cesar Chavez on an important organizing trip to Canada and the East Coast, and when the confrontation between growers and farm workers began to turn ugly, he was there using lessons learned to capture dramatic images of police violence, Teamster thugs, and UFW funerals.

For seven years Bob documented the organizing efforts of Cesar Chavez and United Farm Workers Union. The Chavez stamp issued by the U.S. Post office in 2002 is a rendering of one of Bob’s photos.

“The stamp is an honor, but also a disappointment,” says Fitch. “The stamp rendering replaces the original background, a vivid red and black United Farm worker Union huelga flag, with an agricultural field. I guess the US Post Office is not yet ready to put a union label on a stamp.”

Bob’s photographs have been featured in two Smithsonian traveling exhibits. They are reproduced globally in print, film and electronic media. He is currently represented by Black Star (NYC) and Take Stock (Santa Rosa, CA; farm worker images only).

Throughout the 80s and 90s Bob immersed himself in variety of human services programs. He was photographing less, but continued to actively “use any media necessary” to support organizing efforts. For nearly two decades Bob worked for the state of California Dept. of Housing and Community Development where he developed low-income housing and started the state’s award winning Homeless Shelter Grant program. As a state employee, he was a SEIU 1000 steward and union reform activist.

During the last fifteen years Bob’s aesthetic pursuits have expanded to music. He is an accomplished folk musician, songwriter and rally song leader. He has organized numerous family song circles. For a decade he sang with the Sacramento Labor Chorus contributing baritone vigor and clever rally song lyrics to innumerable Sacramento capitol steps rallies.

After leaving state service, Bob traversed the West Coast for three years finally settling in Santa Cruz, CA where he works for the Resource Center for Nonviolence (RCNV), a 30-year-old community-based non-profit that supports various local and national peace and social justice programs. Bob was Co-Chair of the successful Santa Cruz County Living Wage Campaign organizer and for the Coordinator for the Alternatives to the Draft and California Mid-Coast GI Rights counseling programs.

Bob also reinvigorated his interest in photojournalism by documenting local peace & justice actions and special projects in Vietnam (Friendship Village), Brazil (alcohol fuel), Sri Lanka (International Peaceforce) and most recently the 241 mile Guerrero Azteca Tijuana-to-San Francisco march with Fernando Suarez del Solar, Camillo Mejia and Pablo Paredez.

In June 2006 Bob moved to Watsonville, California. Although no longer on the staff of RCNV, he is a volunteer organizer and counselor for the RCNV GI Rights counseling program and continues to photograph for the RCNV and for other organized labor, peace & justice campaigns.