Blog posts tagged with “civil-rights”

We Shall Survive without a Doubt, 1971, by Emory Douglas.

For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights is a fantastic exhibition, online presentation, and book on the images that defined—and shaped—the quest for equality in this country. Maurice Davis, who curated the show and wrote the catalogue text, explains that visual media (from newspapers and magazines to films and TV) played an important, and sometimes ambiguous, role in perpetuating stereotypes and exposing racial injustice:

In 1955, shortly after Emmett Till was murdered by white supremacists in Mississippi, his grieving mother distributed to the press a gruesome photograph of his mutilated corpse. Asked why she would do this, she explained that by witnessing with their own eyes the brutality of segregation and racism, Americans would be more likely to support the cause of racial justice. "Let the world see what I’ve seen," was her reply. The publication of the photograph inspired a generation of activists to join the civil rights movement.

The intelligent and thought-provoking presentation spans five decades—encompassing Hollywood movies of the 1930s (Paul Robeson as Joe in Show Boat, for example), the segregation signs of the Jim Crow South, W.E.B. Du Bois's The Crisis magazine, the fly posters of the Black Panther Party, TV "ghetto comedies" of the 1970s (Sanford & Son, for example), and the proliferation of snapshots as cameras became affordable to all. The overarching theme is both original and satisfying, lending a real sense of clarity, and nifty visual surprises abound.

Organized by the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture at the University of Maryland in partnership with the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the exhibition is on view at ICP through September. 

Fan, Evans Memorial Chapel, Saginaw, Michigan, c. 1968.

I Spy #4, 1967.

Two Women.