Story highlights
The photograph shows a woman standing in front of police
The image, shot by Jonathan Bachman, is already being called iconic
(CNN) —
Will this be the photograph that symbolizes this past week’s protests?
An image of what appears to be a woman’s peaceful resistance to police is garnering plenty of attention online.
Photos: Powerful images from a painful week
PHOTO:
Sue Ogrocki/AP
Long after the hurt has healed and the anger has dissipated, it's the powerful images that will stick with us from a painful week in America: the killings of five Dallas police officers as well as the fatal shootings of two black men by police in Louisiana and Minnesota.
Photos: Powerful images from a painful week
PHOTO:
JONATHAN BACHMAN/REUTERS/Newscom
A young woman stands frozen -- clad in a flowing dress, armed only with a cell phone -- in the middle of a street as a pair of police officers move to arrest her. She was one of hundreds of protesters who blocked a Baton Rouge roadway during anti-police brutality demonstrations. The symbolism of a single person's nonviolent resistance against a large, heavily armed opposition is being viewed by some as the photo that symbolizes the week's protests.
Photos: Powerful images from a painful week
PHOTO:
Ting Shen/The Dallas Morning News
Few other photos captured the sadness and grief of the shooting deaths of five Dallas officers as this photograph of a sobbing DART (Dallas Area Rapid Transit) police officer being comforted at the Baylor University Hospital.
Photos: Powerful images from a painful week
PHOTO:
Gerald Herbert/AP
The pain was just too much for Tawandra Carr to bear. Carr, who said she was best friends with Alton Sterling, cries when she and others gathered outside the Triple S convenience store where Sterling was killed by police, trying to make some sense of an incident that launched days of soul-searching in America.
Photos: Powerful images from a painful week
PHOTO:
Barbara Davidson/LA Times/Getty Images
Strength in numbers. All Lives Matter protesters come together for a group hug with Black Lives Matter activists in Dallas. All Lives Matter showed up to the Black Lives Matter
Photos: Powerful images from a painful week
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Kim L Muyaka/Facebook
Kim Muyaka -- head bowed, eyes closed, hands tightly entwined with those of an East Baton Rouge police officer -- prays that God would "cover this Police Officer ... and use his hands not to hurt or harm but to protect the citizens." Muyaka posted this now-viral photo to her Facebook page.
Photos: Powerful images from a painful week
PHOTO:
Rex Features/AP
"I'm Black and I Matter" is the simple message of this sign, held up during a Black Lives Matter protest in London. A number of marches and demonstrations have popped up in other countries in solidarity with the U.S. protest movement.
Photos: Powerful images from a painful week
PHOTO:
Aileen Devlin/AP
A woman rages against the machine. Sirica Bolling, fist raised defiantly, marches down a street in Newport News, Virginia, during a Black Lives Matter protest.
Photos: Powerful images from a painful week
PHOTO:
Eric Gay/AP
Bishop T.D. Jakes, hugs first responder during a service that included a memorial to the five officers killed in Dallas.
Photos: Powerful images from a painful week
PHOTO:
Gerald Herbert/AP
Hands of comfort extend to Cameron Sterling, the son of Alton Sterling, outside the convenience store where Alton Sterling was shot and killed by police.
Shot by Jonathan Bachman for Reuters, the photograph shows a black woman in profile, standing in the middle of the street as two police officers in riot gear seem to be preparing to arrest her in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
“Everyone was given proper instructions and a certain amount of time to clear the roadway. If they did not, then they were arrested,” said L’Jean McKneely, spokesman for the Baton Rouge Police Department.
People are already calling the photograph iconic on social media.
“Jeez. Just wow,” Bob De Jonge wrote on Twitter.
Protest symbol
The symbolism of a single person’s nonviolent resistance against a large, heavily armed opposition is reminiscent of a handful of other famous photographs, including Marc Riboud’s shot of a Vietnam war protester holding a flower in front of armed police, or the image of the lone protester confronting a tank in Tiananmen Square.
More recently, the Bachman shot calls to mind a photograph of activist Maria-Teresa “Tess” Asplund standing alone and confronting several hundred neo-Nazi marchers in Sweden, her fist firmly raised in protest.
Photos: Protests past and present
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JONATHAN BACHMAN/REUTERS/Newscom
Protester Ieshia Evans is detained by law enforcement officers near the police headquarters in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on Saturday, July 9. Evans was among dozens of people protesting the death of Alton Sterling, who was fatally shot by police just a few days earlier. Click through the gallery to see memorable images from other protests throughout history.
Photos: Protests past and present
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Keystone/Getty Images
On March 12, 1930, Indian nationalist leader Mahatma Gandhi led a nonviolent protest against the British Empire. The march protested the British tax on salt, a necessity of everyday life. Gandhi called for Indians to illegally make salt or buy it illegally. More nonviolent protests against the tax were mounted in large cities across India, and Gandhi's methods eventually led to India's independence.
Photos: Protests past and present
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Underwood Archives/Getty Images
Rosa Parks became an inspiration for the modern civil rights movement when she was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, on December 1, 1955, after refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a city bus. For 381 days, African-Americans boycotted public transportation to protest Parks' arrest and, in turn, segregation laws. The boycott led to a 1956 Supreme Court ruling desegregating public transportation in Montgomery. Soon after, Parks was photographed near the front of a bus in what became an enduring image of the civil rights movement.
Photos: Protests past and present
PHOTO:
Bill Hudson/ap
A 17-year-old civil rights demonstrator, defying an anti-parade ordinance in Birmingham, Alabama, is attacked by a police dog on May 3, 1963.
Photos: Protests past and present
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AFP/Getty Images/FILE
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. waves to supporters on the Mall in Washington during the March on Washington on August 28, 1963.
Photos: Protests past and present
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Marc Riboud/Magnum Photos
Jan Rose Kasmir stands in front of National Guard members outside the Pentagon during an anti-Vietnam War march on October 21, 1967.
Photos: Protests past and present
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Bruno Barbey/Magnum Photos
Students in Paris hurl projectiles at the police on Boulevard Saint-Germain during the uprisings of May 6, 1968.
Photos: Protests past and present
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Hiroji Kubota/Magnum Photos
Black Panther members protest in Chicago in 1968.
Photos: Protests past and present
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Dennis Stock/Magnum Photos
A pacifist demonstrates in Santa Monica, California, on June 15, 1968.
Photos: Protests past and present
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Bettmann/CORBIS
Tommie Smith and John Carlos, gold and bronze medalists in the 200-meter run at the 1968 Olympic Games, raise their fists in the Black Power salute on October 16, 1968, in Mexico City.
Photos: Protests past and present
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Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS
John Lennon and Yoko Ono give a press conference during their "bed-in" for peace at an Amsterdam hotel in March 1969.
Photos: Protests past and present
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John Filo/Getty Images/FILE
Mary Ann Vecchio kneels over the body of student Jeffrey Miller during an anti-war demonstration at Kent State University in Ohio on May 4, 1970.
Photos: Protests past and present
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Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos
Young Chinese demonstrators protest official corruption and urge democracy in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Photos: Protests past and present
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Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos
A man in Tiananmen Square stands in front of a column of T-59 tanks on June 4, 1989.
Photos: Protests past and present
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Wayne Tilcock/The Enterprise/AP/File
Police Lt. John Pike at the University of California, Davis, uses pepper spray to break up Occupy UC Davis protesters on the school's quad on November 18, 2011. This image sparked controversy amid the Occupy protests and fueled the flames for protesters. A judge ruled that the university must pay Pike $38,000 in workers' compensation for the depression and anxiety he suffered as a result of the backlash from the incident.
Photos: Protests past and present
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stringer/reuters/landov
Egyptian army soldiers arrest a female protester during clashes at Tahrir Square in Cairo on December 17, 2011. On January 25, people took to the streets in demonstrations against corruption and failing economic policies. From the beginning, the revolution in Egypt was propelled by the use of social media. The events in Egypt served as a flash point for journalists on the ground, too. For perhaps one of the first times, history itself has been recorded instantaneously, as reporters took to Twitter to share 140-character updates and personal stories from the protests.
Photos: Protests past and present
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OSMAN ORSAL/reuters/LANDOV
A riot police officer uses tear gas as people protest the destruction of a park for a pedestrian project in Istanbul's Taksim Square on May 28, 2013. The woman in red became the face of the protests.
Photos: Protests past and present
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Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images
Protesters in Kiev, Ukraine, catch fire as they stand behind burning barricades during clashes with police on February 20, 2014. Kiev's Independence Square had been the center of anti-government protests since November 2013, when President Viktor Yanukovych reversed a decision on a trade deal with the European Union and instead turned toward Russia.
Photos: Protests past and present
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Bobby Yip/Reuters/Landov
Riot police use pepper spray as they clash with pro-democracy protesters outside the government headquarters in Hong Kong on September 28, 2014. Demonstrations began in response to China's decision to allow only Beijing-vetted candidates to stand in the city's 2017 election for chief executive. Protesters say Beijing has gone back on its pledge to allow universal suffrage in Hong Kong, which was promised "a high degree of autonomy" when it was handed back to China by Britain in 1997. The umbrella has become the defining image of the protest movement, used to shield protesters from tear gas and the elements.
Photos: Protests past and present
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Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
A protester in Ferguson, Missouri, stands in front of police vehicles with his hands up on November 24, 2014. A grand jury's decision not to indict police Officer Darren Wilson in the killing of Michael Brown prompted waves of protests in Ferguson and across the country. The "hands up, don't shoot" gesture became a rallying cry and protest symbol.
Photos: Protests past and present
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Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
A man attempts to calm a fellow demonstrator as they face police in Baltimore in April 2015. Riots broke out after the funeral for Freddie Gray, who died of a severe spinal cord injury while in police custody. His death sparked protests in Baltimore and raised long-simmering tensions between police and residents.
Photos: Protests past and present
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David Lagerlof /TT News Agency/Press Association Images
Tess Apslund, 42, stands with a raised fist in front of uniformed neo-Nazis during a Nordic Resistance Movement demonstration in Borlange, Sweden, on Sunday, May 1.
“It was just impulse, to go in their middle. I remember standing there and one of the guys staring at me,” Asplund told CNN in May. “When you have Nazis marching in the street for May 1, it’s important to show that that’s not okay. People in other countries can’t understand how come Nazis are marching in Sweden.”
Weekend of unrest
The Baton Rouge photograph was captured amid a weekend of intense, sometimes violent nationwide protests that culminated in the arrest of hundreds of demonstrators, angry at the latest killings of black men by police officers.
Despite pleas for calm from all sides, at least 312 people have been arrested at protests from New York to Chicago, and in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Baton Rouge, where two black men, Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, were shot to death by police.
Many of the protests against police violence have been peaceful. In Dallas – before a gunman killed five police officers at a Black Lives Matter rally last week – officers were even posing for photos with demonstrators.