CIVIL RIGHTS

The Civil Rights movement was a sociopolitical fight against racial injustice for Black Americans that took place during the mid-twentieth century. Though slavery had been abolished, racism— and its unequal living conditions—endured, especially in the South. Being pushed to the brink by unrelenting prejudice and violence, a spirit of revolution fueled the nation’s Black population and their allies, one that would lead to great social and political change over the next two decades. This portfolio includes artists’ responses to the events, sentiments, and figures that defined the Civil Rights movement by those living though it and those that inherited its history. Themes addressed include the Freedom Riders, segregation, death and violence at the hands of the Klu Klux Klan, lynching, and Jim Crow laws.

Gordon Parks (American, 1912-2006)

Parks’ life and art were defined by the tensions between entrenched racism and a reshaping of black identity in the United States during the twentieth century. Through his photography, Parks granted visibility to the diverse Black experiences and hardships playing out across the country. This photograph, one in a series titled Segregation in the South (1956) commissioned by LIFE magazine in the wake of the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, records the social conditions of daily life in the segregated South.

Accession Number: 2020.1.4

Title: Untitled, Shady Grove, Alabama

Date: 1956

Medium: Archival pigment print

Rights: © The Gordon Parks Foundation

KEYWORDS

Civil Rights; racial tension; Jim Crow laws; segregation; the South; documentary; everyday life.

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Emory Douglas (American, b. 1943)

Serving as the Black Panther Party’s Minister of Culture, Emory Douglas was known for his antipacifist visual rhetoric, which directly opposed the non-violence preached by Martin Luther King, Jr. Douglas found inspiration in the propagandistic images of liberation posters from Cuba and Vietnam, among others, and created work that advocated for militancy and the use of weapons against abuses of power in the fight for civil justice.

Accession Number: 2017.15.11

Title: Only with the power of the gun can the black masses halt the

Date: 1969

Medium: Offset lithograph on paper

Rights: Image courtesy of the artist

KEYWORDS

Civil Rights; racial tension; Black Panther Party; propaganda; militancy; protest; rioting; weaponized combat.

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Purvis Young (American, 1943-2010)

Young spent his entire life in Miami’s Liberty City and Overtown neighborhoods, from which he experienced the full range of Black life in the twentieth-century United States, including Jim Crow segregation, Civil Rights, riots, anti-war protests, the War on Drugs, and so-called “urban renewal.” His densely layered, expressive mixed-media works blend fantastical figures like angels and unicorns with depictions of the urban landscape and its everyday inhabitants.

Accession Number: 2016.18

Title: Golf Course of America

Date: 2002

Medium: Household paint on plywood

Rights: © Estate of Purvis Young/Artists Rights Society (ARS) New York, NY

KEYWORDS

Civil Rights; racial tension; prison; displacement; crime; Miami; murals; activism.

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Dawoud Bey (American, b. 1953)

Dawoud Bey is a chronicler of histories and communities. This diptych, part of his Birmingham Project, commemorates the 50th anniversary of the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama by members of the Ku Klux Klan, during which four African American girls were killed. Bey photographed members of the community who were the same age as the young victims at the time of the incident, and adults who were the ages the victims would be had they survived.

Accession Number: 2015.9

Title: Janice Kemp and Triniti Williams

Date: 2012

Medium: Archival pigment prints mounted on dibond

Rights: Image courtesy of the artist and Rena Bransten Gallery

KEYWORDS

Civil Rights; racism; Klu Klux Klan; death; murder; memory; history; advocacy.

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Hank Willis Thomas (American, b. 1976)

In this work by artist Hank Willis Thomas, hosted faces peer back from inside a color bar; the faces belong to members of the original Freedom Riders, a group of over 400 Black and white activists that participated in the Freedom Rides through the Deep South, organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in 1961. Visible only with the presence of raking light, such as from a cellular phone’s flash, the act of illuminating functions both literally and metaphorically to reveals their photographs and their overlooked story.

Accession Number: 2021.1.9

Title: Freedom Riders (Spectrum)

Date: 2021

Medium: UV print on retroreflective vinyl mounted on Dibond

Rights: © Hank Willis Thomas. Image courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

KEYWORDS

Civil Rights; racism; Freedom Riders; the South; the Black experience; protest; activism; history.

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Romare Bearden (American, 1911-1988)

Romare Bearden’s paintings and collages are filled with the symbols and myths of the black experience. He often used literary sources, such as the Greek classics, to add layers of interpretation to his work. This screenprint was one of six included in the series Odysseus Suite. In it, Bearden illustrates a scene from The Illiad, swapping traditional characters with Black figures as commentary on the lack racial representation in the Western cannon and more broadly to discuss the turbulence of the present moment.

Accession Number: 1992.12

Title: Odysseus: Fall of Troy

Date: 1979

Medium: Color screenprint on wove Lana paper

KEYWORDS

Civil Rights; racial inequality; the Black experience; mythology; Black representation; The Odyssey; epic poetry.

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Melvin Edwards (American, b. 1937)

Edwards, who grew up in a segregated Houston community, graduated from art school at the height of the Civil Rights Movement and began creating works that addressed African American life and history. His welded sculptures, known as Lynch Fragments, are made from found metal scraps, inspired by political issues, including civil rights and African-American identity. Weapon of Freedom features an axe and railroad spike, referencing African and African American blacksmithing traditions.