That's the title of the famous Norman Rockwell painting dipicting Ruby Bridges of New Orleans walking to her first day of school.
Ms. Bridges was only six years old when her parents volunteered her to help integrate New Orleans schools. As a result, she became the subject of a Norman Rockwell painting that captures her innocence and the malignant hatred the little girl endured on the day she walked into the all white William Franz elementary school in NOLA.
"The court-ordered first day of integrated schools in New Orleans, November 14, 1960, was commemorated by Norman Rockwell in the painting The Problem We All Live With.[5] As Bridges describes it, "Driving up I could see the crowd, but living in New Orleans, I actually thought it was Mardi Gras. There was a large crowd of people outside of the school. They were throwing things and shouting, and that sort of goes on in New Orleans at Mardi Gras." Former United States Deputy Marshal Charles Burks later recalled, "She showed a lot of courage. She never cried. She didn't whimper. She just marched along like a little soldier, and we're all very proud of her."--Wikipedia
The Norman Rockwell painting was recently placed in the White House on a temporary basis.
More here.
The election of our first bi-racial president has brought out the racism that never really disappeared after the Civil Rights Act, but, instead, went underground; and in parts of this country, flourished. All one has to do is read the comments under the report in Politico to understand that reality. All one has to do is look at the racist emails sent around by conservatives who think it's only a "joke" to depict the First Family as primates; all one has to do is stomach one afternoon listening to Rush Limbaugh bring Mr. Obama's race into his rants against the president's policies and then listen to his followers call it "comedy;" all one has to do is read the remarks spoken by members of the media and Congress--remarks that, make no mistake, are based on Mr. Obama's race.
This weekend a memorial to The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., will be dedicated at the Mall in Washington, and already I've read people complaining about this the way certain people complained when a day was set aside to honor Dr. King's birthday.
None of this surprises me; all of it saddens me. I thought, within my lifetime, I would see a lessening, not an increase of the problem we all live with.
Thank you Shaw!
ReplyDeleteI think this Rockwell painting, capturing the quiet dignity of a child attending school under armed guard, is a perfect analogue for the quiet dignity of our President, who does the best job he can against crushing odds. When I look at this painting and consider the utterly contemptible behavior of today's Republican party, it makes my blood boil !!!. There is no forgiving the GOP for how they have conducted themselves.
Well said Shaw,
ReplyDeleteWe like to think that progress is inevitable, that old prejudices will be put away for good with the passage of time and the coming of events. It seems truer that humanity seldom, if ever, learns anything from its mistakes -- at least not for long.
Yet there's some reason for optimism -- the sheer viciousness of the Culture of Obama Hate might, in MLK Jr. fashion, be seen as the inevitable backlash that comes with progress. In that sense, it's a sign of that very progress. The racists and bigots only get REALLY angry when something happens to challenge their unstated self-certainty and sense that "God's in his heaven and all's right with the world." Obama's election clearly challenges that self-certainty, so I think we all knew the fellow was "in for it" from the moment of his election. Nothing's going to be easy for him, including his re-election.
That's one of the paintings that, in my opinion, redeems Rockwell from being 'just an illustrator'
ReplyDeleteHe was an object of scorn back in the heyday of ABEX and Pop.
Yes, it's all about race, about that same old idea of 'ethnic purity' and a sense that there is a divinely ordered heirarchy that must be maintained lest the morons fail to inherit the Earth and be judged on their meager merits.
We were just about the last place to abandon slavery and it was not abandoned witout the bloodiest of wars and I can argue that it never really was abandoned. We're like a drunk behind bars - sober only because we're restrained by iron bars and mean old Liberal jailers.
That's why the anger is not only at 'ethnics' and people of 'color' and people of the wrong religion -- it's at the jailer, the forces of civilization keeping these losers from ascending to the power they imagine they deserve. That's why they hate Liberals and why they call anyone decent or intelligent a Liberal.
Racism, hate for government, contempt for civilization and respect for mankind -- it's the last refuge of the inferior louts who wouldn't dare to enter a Neanderthal spelling bee, but have all kinds of opinions about art and science and literature and about who God loves the most.
Where's the damn flood when you need one?
Thank you, Shaw. I remember that issue as my parents subscribed to the SEP. I was a 13-year-old kid in Ohio and had always lived in white neighborhoods and attended all-white schools yet I realized that there was something terribly wrong with a little girl needing federal marshals to escort her to school. My dad and I discussed it but neither of my folks were much help because both had grown up in small farming communities in Ohio and Wisconsin out in the country and never had any contact with African Americans but Dad did try to help me understand. Thank God for the magazines and my 8th grade American history teacher for educating me in tolerance on so many levels. My own kids grew up in an integrated neighborhood and our house was always filled with their friends of all races and creeds. I do confess to one prejudice: idiots -- and they abound across the spectrum of humanity.
ReplyDelete(O)CT(O), there is no forgiving the rank racism that has been a major part of the opposition to Mr. Obama.
ReplyDeleteO Khaki One, I've often said that progress is not always linear. We often go backwards before we advance. I'm sorry to be living in such a period.
Where's the damn flood? I think Irene is on her way, but in the southeast and northeast, Jerry Falwell would have a lot to read into that.
Kay, my sisters and I were talking about our childhood, and we agreed that we never, never heard a disparaging word about any religion or race. Maybe that's because we were sort of the bottom of the immigrant group at the time?
"That's why the anger is not only at 'ethnics' and people of 'color' and people of the wrong religion -- it's at the jailer, the forces of civilization keeping these losers from ascending to the power they imagine they deserve. That's why they hate Liberals and why they call anyone decent or intelligent a Liberal."
ReplyDeleteA Capt. Fogg classic -- one of the best things you've written! Deadly accurate, that. It captures the viciousness and malevolence of the Right's sloppy way with categorizations. The grimly humorous thing is of course that so much of the public gets the parties exactly wrong: they think the Republicans are all about "realism" and "adulthood" while the Democrats are a bunch of childish idealists. Nothing could be farther from the truth, in most cases. The Right lives in a fantasy world and tries to force others to live by its rules; liberals display a much firmer commitment to economic fact, political reality, and history. You know, trivial stuff like that. What a bunch of Debbie Downers!
Very well said, Shaw. I was 5 the year that Ruby took her brave walk. The schools in my area had not made any efforts towards integration. It was 1971 before the Wilson, NC school system integrated its students. My parents watched the regular news coverage of Ruby's school days and so did I. None of the white teachers at the school would teach her and they had to bring in a teacher just for Ruby. She didn't go to classes with the other students for more than a year, just one little 6-year-old with federal guards and a teacher in a classroom. White women stood outside of the school daily and shouted death threats at her and one woman actually had a small coffin with a black doll in it that she brandished daily.
ReplyDeleteI think that perhaps some of the ease with which some people slide into modern day racism is because they really don't understand or remember what it was really like. At least I like to think so because the reality, that they do know and remember and still are capable of speaking with a straight face about reverse racism sickens me. A six year old walking to school among armed guards with adults spitting at her and threatening her life, removing their children from school so as not to be contaminated by her mere presence, threatening to poison her food, shouting the n-word at her repeatedly, that's racism and I just don't know of any instances where such hatred has been inflicted on white children by black adults because of the color of their skin. If so I apologize because that is indeed reverse racism.
Thanks Dino. I appreciate it more than you know. I actually do hate to be intemperate, but I haven't felt this radical since 1968.
ReplyDeleteSomewhere there's a photo of me in a black beret, black t-shirt, jungle jacket and shotgun from back in the day. I think they all still fit.
Captain, are you familiar with Rockwell's "Murder in Mississippi?" I'd never seen it and was surprised at the subject matter, considering most of Rockwell's idealized paintings of America.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the link Shaw. The retrospective of Rockwell's work is impressive and while some of his works appeared to be idealized paintings of America, when one looks at the titles and the scope of his paintings, it is'n an idealization that says that America is perfect but more of a regret for what this country could and should be for all of its citizens.
ReplyDeleteShaw,
ReplyDeleteYes, I am. As usual it's for a magazine illustation and that put him outside the strict limits of the prevalent fashion in his time. I've seen some works he did during WW I too and they're very striking. Of course as an illustrator, he usually painted what someone ordered for a specific purpose which kept him outside the limits of "Ars Gratia Artis"
It was de rigeur to mock Rockwell, and indeed all figurative art if you were an art "insider" but he's more than the Velveeta Cheese of the art world and actually there's a new appreciation for the genre and for illustrators.
You can't accuse him of detachment from the world or current events just because his clients often commissioned 'kitchy' subject matter for middle class publications and I'm pleased that one doesn't fault him for realism nowadays either, or at least not so much.
I onced observed to a bit of laughter that painters like Peter Breughel the elder was kitch in his own time for painting peasant scenes rather than classical scenes or royal portraits, but the kitsch and the cheesyness aren't there for us at this great remoce in time. I stick by that opinion and think that Rockwell's viewers hundreds of years from now will see him differently than we are capable of.
Sheria is right about idealization. Depicting the ideal was once what art was all about and although ideas, ideals and fashions change, there's nothing inferior about such art despite what Clement Greenberg might have said. Rockwell was just another victim of Modernism but he might well survive it.