Elaine Tomlin was the official staff photographer for SCLC in the 1960s. She documented Black lives, history, and culture for decades, and covered all of SCLC's meetings, demonstrations, and conferences for over 30 years. She photographed the March on Washington, Selma, and the James Meredith March Against Fear, to name a few. Tomlin was one of the thirteen notable civil rights photographers invited to participate in the Smithsonian Institute's 1980 traveling photo exhibition "We'll Never Turn Back." She began her photo career at the University of Chicago's Hospital in the biological sciences department and taught photography at the Atlanta Institute of Photography. Her work was published in Jet, Ebony, and Life magazines, and had countless photographs published in Black-owned newspapers.