CLOSER LOOK CHANGES OF THE MOON

Thornton Dial was born in Emelle, Alabama, on a former cotton plantation in 1928. His family worked as sharecroppers in a region deeply rooted in the Jim Crow era, a time when individual states enforced a series of rigid anti-black laws that formed a racial caste system and legitimized discrimination. Beginning during Reconstruction, the period immediately following the Civil War, until the mid-1960s, states across the nation enacted laws that relegated African Americans to the status of second-class citizens. Alabama had some of the most restrictive laws in the South, and remained essentially racially segregated until Federal regulations were passed in the late 1960s, making it illegal for states to separate whites and blacks in any element of daily life.

The artwork Changes of the Moon is Dial’s interpretation of the 1963 imprisonment of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Birmingham, Alabama. Although King would be arrested twenty-nine times during his lifetime, this incarceration, his thirteenth, was a turning point for the movement. On April 12 of that year, King and nearly fifty fellow protestors were arrested for defying a court injunction by leading a Good Friday protest without a permit. The demonstration was part of the Birmingham Campaign, which included boycotts of whiteowned businesses, sit-ins, peaceful marches, and mass meetings designed to bring national attention to the brutal, racist treatment suffered by blacks in one of America’s most segregated cities. King was placed in solitary confinement and initially denied access to lawyers. A close friend smuggled in a copy of the Birmingham News featuring an open letter drafted by eight white religious leaders criticizing King, his demonstrations, and the movement. The Civil Rights leader famously countered the missive by composing a 7,000-word response, using the margins of the newspaper and scraps of paper supplied by his lawyers. King passionately defended his use of peaceful campaigns to incite change and called for constructive, nonviolent tension to force an end to unjust laws. The letter, which became a landmark document of the Civil Rights Movement, was printed by several publications including the New York Post, Liberation Magazine, The Atlantic, and The Christian Century

Dial’s assemblage depicts King sitting in his cell, wearing a distinctive prison orange suit. Contemporary images of young African Americans gaze through the bars, their smiling faces in awe of his sacrifice. One cannot tell if the cage is holding him in, or if he is emerging from the confines, escaping from the cell. The title, Changes of the Moon, references ongoing transformation—the lunar phases, the varying appearance of the moon as different amounts of sunlight illuminate the surface. The artist illustrates the month-long cycle in the corners, reinforcing the assertion that this event was just one occurrence in King’s never-ending crusade for freedom—a necessary step to move forward in his fight for equality.