Color photos were a thing, but they were significantly more expensive than black and white until around the 1970s. They were mostly saved for special occasions.

Plus, news papers didn't really do much full color until the 80s. Before the mid 50s it was basically just the comic pages that had color. It was the launch of USA Today in 82 that popularized the way newspapers use color today.

Photographers capturing events shoot a lot of film, and there was no compelling reason to shoot in color at the time.

It's almost certainly isn't a conspiracy to make students think it happened a long time ago.

They are in black ad white because that was what was frequently used for newspapers and stuff. Color film was often not as clear and the color tech they used was very hard to use with dark skin. So action shots of a march or speech ae just esier to do in black and white at the time.

Schools definitely like to pretend that its over and thats probably why they dont show any color pictures, as there were almost definitely color portraits of MLK and stuff, but the tech was actually a surprisingly limited factor as well.

I first realized that in high school. Where it was showing civil rights photos from the 60s-70s in black and white, and acted like racism was OVER.