Artist Jacob Lawrence’s powerful Confrontation at the Bridgedepicts the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches for voting rights that would enable African Americans to register and vote without harassment.

Lawrence uses strong colors and expressive composition to highlight the strength and courage of the peaceful African-American marchers. They dominate the image with their forward movement. The unarmed marchers were confronted on the Edmund Pettus Bridge by state troopers who violently attacked and beat them. Lawrence clearly shows a mood of violence by the snarling dog, the dark sky, and the marchers’ worried faces. His choice to not show any state troopers is important and we know they are right there, just outside of the image. He focuses the artwork on the brave act of the African-American marchers who are taking (dangerous) action for their future.

The Selma to Montgomery marches were three protest marches in 1965 for voting rights and racial justice. The first march took place on March 7. State troopers and locals attacked the unarmed marchers with billy clubs and tear gas after they passed over the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Photos of the beaten and bloodied African-American marchers were seen around the world. The event became known as “Bloody Sunday”. The second march took place March 9. Troopers and marchers confronted each other at the bridge, but Martin Luther King Jr. led the marchers back to Selma. The third march started on March 21 after President Johnson committed to protecting the marchers with 1,900 members of the National Guard and FBI agents. Alabama Governor Wallace refused to do this. Over 25,000 people joined the marchers to the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery, arriving on March 25. The Voting Rights Act became law on August 6, 1965.

This print was created by Jacob Lawrence when he was commissioned to produce a print to celebrate the United States’ bicentennial in 1976.

Artwork

Born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Lawrence grew up in Harlem during the Depression. Harlem was an active cultural center then, and Lawrence became interested in the arts while still a teenager. He received early training at art workshops sponsored by the federal government’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) in Harlem and then studied at the American Artists School in New York. From 1938 to 1939, Lawrence worked in the Federal Arts Project and produced some of his earliest major works. His first important solo exhibition in 1944, at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, secured his place as an important commentator on the American scene, particularly African American experiences. Lawrence died on 9 June 2000.

“Sharecropper” is a powerful portrait of an anonymous woman that calls attention to the hardships experienced by tenant farmers of the American South, who were required to pay for the land they rented with part of their crop and thus often faced lifelong debt. She created “Sharecropper” at the Taller de Gráfica Popular (People’s Graphic Workshop) in Mexico City, which was dedicated to the production of socially engaged prints.”

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/364497

Elizabeth Catlett’s artwork and life painted a noble and human way of life for African American and Mexican working-class women. Her work tells accurate stories of their lives.

She was born in the United States in Washington, DC, in 1915. Raised by her mother because her father died shortly after she was born, Catlett spent summers with her grandparents in North Carolina.

She graduated from Howard University with a degree in Art and the University of Iowa with a Masters in Fine Arts degree. In 1940, she got a job as the department chair of Art at Dillard in New Orleans.

The first female professor of sculpture at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, School of Fine Arts San Carlos, in Mexico City, Catlett taught there until she retired in 1975.

Her work is collected in America, Mexico and the Czech Republic.

In addition to supporting marginalized communities in protests marches, Catlett was also commissioned to create monuments for the Ralph Ellison, Louis Armstrong and at Howard University.  Social justice was a matter that filled her work with images of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Black Power and other African American figures.