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Art and Evidence of the Civil Rights Movement

Gordon Parks
Gordon Parks, Malcolm X Holding up Black Muslim Newspaper, Chicago, Illinois, 1963, Gelatin silver print, 15 1/2 x 18 3/4 in., The Gordon Parks Foundation, Purchase, New York, EL113.060. © The Gordon Parks Foundation

The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s was a particularly turbulent chapter in American history. It was the product of social inequality, was motivated by hope and justice, and took place in tandem with a quickly growing media culture. Black-and-white pictures of protestors attacked by dogs in the Birmingham race riots, footage of President Kennedy’s assassination on live television, and images of helicopters full of American men in Vietnam flooded television screens and newspaper pages. It was the dawn of modern American media culture; sensational images of turmoil landed front and center on a scale like never before.

These images would provide the evidence of a growing shift in American ideals, and serve as documents of the legacy of injustice that plagued American men and women of color. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. understood the power of images, and often tipped off photojournalists when he and fellow Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) members were planning a protest. White photographer James ‘Spider’ Martin was there in Selma, Alabama on what would be deemed Bloody Sunday, and documented now infamous images of violence and police brutality. He stayed to photograph marchers from Selma to Montgomery, and his archive of photographs of this watershed moment in the fight for voting rights is an important body of work.

Sam Gilliam
Installation view: Sam Gilliam, Red April, 1970, Acrylic on canvas, The University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City, Gift of The Longview Foundation and Museum purchase, 1971.11

Artists also responded fervently. Washington D.C. painter Sam Gilliam witnessed the riots that followed Dr. King’s assassination from the windows of his studio, and painted a body of work in response. Other black painters like Jack Whitten produced abstracted compositions in charred palettes or hot fields of color. White artists like Jim Dine, Mark di Suvero, and May Stevens, whose practice would be forever changed by Dr. King’s “I have a dream” speech at the March on Washington, also contributed in significant ways to the art-making discourse surrounding segregation, discrimination, and violence against African Americans.

Join me and Don E. Carleton, director of the Briscoe Center for American History, this Wednesday, April 8 at 6pm for “Perspectives: Art and Evidence of the Civil Rights Movement” at the LBJ Presidential Library, a conversation moderated by LBJ Library Director, Mark Updegrove. Don and I will present and discuss works included in the LBJ Library exhibition March to Freedom, organized in collaboration with the Briscoe Center, and Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties, organized by the Brooklyn Museum and on view at the Blanton until May 10.

More details are available here. We hope you’ll join us!

Evan Garza
Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art

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