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A handful of thoughts on the pandemic in this country

At this point in the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S., it appears to me that the language of “control,” at least in a strong sense, no longer seems appropriate when it comes to describing our actions and aims with regard to determining or affecting the course and effects of this pandemic. Rather, our efforts amount to placing various kinds of constraint on that course and those effects. To speak now of “control” is false, that is, grossly presumptuous and misleading. Perhaps at some point these constraints will make for a substantive difference (reach a tipping point, as it were) in the course and effects such that we can speak of exercising real (meaningful) control over COVID-19, as they have in more than a few other countries, most of which are nowhere near as disgustingly affluent as we are. If only public health officials, politicians, policy makers, social scientists, historians, and psychologists could collaborate in a timely fashion (befitting the urgency) to explain why our country has performed, comparatively speaking and in the main, so poorly, so incoherently, so inconsistently, so incompetently, indeed, so immorally, in dealing with this pandemic. Such narrative and explanatory collaboration is not likely to occur until after the worst has long passed us by.

Charles White’s democratic art on behalf of human dignity: the aesthetic imperatives of ethical and spiritual “social realism” (10)

[The introduction to this series of posts is here.] With this last post in the series, I want to again express my gratitude to Professor Edward (‘Eddie’) Chambers, Department of Art and Art History, University of Texas at Austin, for his permission to share material from his website.

“In 1999, the important publication, African Americans in Art: Selections from The Art Institute of Chicago was published. Alongside reproductions of said works, the publication featured essays by Colin L. Westerbeck, Amy M. Mooney, Andrea D. Barnwell and Kirsten P. Buick, Daniel Schulman, and Cherise Smith. Several of these scholars were joined by others, who penned the ‘Portfolio Entries’ that occupied an important proportion of the publication.

A detail from Charles White’s majestic Harvest Talk occupied the cover of African Americans in Art: Selections from The Art Institute of Chicago, and a reproduction of the work appeared on page 70. The ‘Portfolio’ entry was written by Andrea D. Barnwell, who, in 2002, would go on to author the first monograph on White in around 35 years. Unbelievably perhaps, by the turn of the 21^st century it had been well over thirty years since the last major publication on Charles White (that being his 1967 monograph, Images of Dignity). In 2002 Pomegranate Publications published its first instalment of The David C. Driskell Series of African American Art, Charles White, written by Andrea D. Barnwell. It was in many respects the most comprehensive monograph to date on the celebrated, late Los Angeles-based African-American artist Charles White.) Barnwell’s notes in African Americans in Art: Selections from The Art Institute of Chicago, on Harvest Talk, included the following:

‘White, whose father was a railroad and steel worker and mother a domestic worker, has a deep respect for labor. Harvest Talk, one of six charcoal and carbon pencil drawings originally exhibited at the ACA Galley in New York in 1953, exemplifies the artist’s mature drawing style. Here his strong, assured manner, coupled with the heroic proportions of the figures and the emphasis on the large scythe, evokes the indomitability of his subjects in the face of hard work. The presence of the scythe (an emblem often associated with the Soviet Union), as well as the social realist sensibilities that prevail throughout White’s oeuvre, his travels to the U.S.S.R. (where he exchanged ideas with Russian artists), and his writings for and affiliation with left-wing publications (such as Masses & Mainstream, Freedomways, and the Daily Worker) suggest that Harvest Talk was inspired by socialist ideals. Like many of White’s works on paper, Harvest Talk conveys the power of a mural, despite its relatively small format.”

“The Other Side of Color: African American Art in the Collection of Camille O. and William H. Cosby, Jr. (San Francisco, CA: Pomegranate Press, 2001)

This lavish, large scale publication was written by leading scholar of African American art, David Driskell and looked at African American Art in the Collection of Camille O. and William H. Cosby, Jr. Camille O. and William H. Cosby, Jr. each provided Introductions, and the artists’ biographies in The Other Side of Color were written by René Hanks. The book’s Foreword was written by Erika Ranee Cosby, and an Overview was provided by Daphne Driskell-Coles. Driskell’s text was divided into six sections, and Charles White appeared in Part Five, ‘The New Black Image in American Art.’

It is a measure of the calibre of White’s art that out of the nearly 50 leading artists represented in the publication, it was one of his pieces – Homage to Langston Hughes, oil on canvas, 48 x 48 inches – was selected for the cover. The painting was also reproduced, in full, on page 129. Charles White had had a long association with Bill Cosby, pointed to by the inclusion in The Other Side of Color of a full-page reproduction of Charles White’s drawing of Bill Cosby, Bill, 1968, charcoal on artist’s board, 57 x 33 ¼ inches. In her Introduction, Camille O. Cosby pointed to the significance of the Cosby’s relationship with White: ‘… On September 8, 1967, Bill and I purchased our first African American artwork, a Chinese ink and charcoal drawing by Charles White titled Nude. Twelve days later we bought another Charles White Chinese ink and charcoal drawing titled Cathedral of Life, and in 1969 we acquired Seed of Heritage. Eventually we acquired eighteen of Charles White’s works, all from the Heritage Gallery in Los Angeles, California. During the same year Bull commissioned Mr. White to create his portrait. Mr. White’s depiction of Bill is unlike any other that I have seen; amazingly, Mr. White captured Bill’s seriousness and complexities. Indeed, this portrait is my favorite Charles White drawing.’

In her Foreword, Erika Ranee Cosby, daughter of Camille O. and William H. Cosby, Jr., continued the reflections on White’s portrait, Bill. ‘The subjects in Charles White’s works have souls that live and grow and change over time. I believe this to be one of a few key factors separating good art from great art. One last example of White’s exceptional talent is the portrait he did of my father in 1968. Many people who viewed this work thought it was not an accurate likeness. Some didn’t like it and said it made my father look too serious. As a kid, I always thought that the head was rendered too small for Dad’s exaggerated powerful shoulders. But my mother always loved that portrait. It remains her favorite, and she proudly displays it in her favorite room. Mom recently revealed to me that White perceived a part of Dad that she had always known, the private, more serious side of the man revered for his humor. I believe this is the only portrait ever done of my father that presents another side of him. Those of us who know him as a son, husband, father, and close friend know him not only as a person with an amazing talent to make the world laugh, but also as a man with a deep, compassionate, and contemplative soul. Charles White captured that soul.’

There were six reproductions of White’s work in The Other Side of Color, a number of which were full page. Driskell’s text on White was a particularly useful summary, which included, ‘Many of White’s works – more than twenty in the Cosby Collection of Fine Arts – were created during the height of the civil rights movement in the 1960s.’ René Hanks’ biographical summary was similarly useful and succinct. Perhaps as much as anything else, The Other Side of Color located White’s work within a broader context of African American art from the mid to late 18^th century to the early 21^st century.”

“It is a measure of the potency of Charles White’s images that long after his death, they continued to be used on the covers of books, the subjects of which struck a variety of chords with While’s art and his own biography. Typical in this regard was the 2005 publication, Jeffrey B. Leak, Racial Myths and Masculinity in African American Literature, published by University of Tennessee Press. From the book’s jacket flaps: 

‘The portrayal of black men in our national literature is controversial, complex, and often contradictory. In Racial Myths and Masculinity in African American Literature, Jeffrey B. Leak identifies some of the long-held myths and stereotypes that persist in the work of black writers from the nineteenth century to the present—intellectual inferiority, criminality, sexual prowess, homosexual emasculation, and cultural deprivation. Utilizing Robert B. Stepto’s call-and-response theory, Leak studies four pairs of novels within the context of certain myths, identifying the literary tandems between them and seeking to discover the source of our culture's psychological preoccupation with black men.’

Calling upon interdisciplinary fields of study—literary theory, psychoanalysis, gender studies, legal theory, and queer theory—Leak offers groundbreaking analysis of both canonical texts (representing the ‘call’ of the call-and-response dyad) and texts by emerging writers (representing the ‘response’), including Frederick Douglass and Charles Johnson; Ralph Ellison and Brent Wade; Richard Wright and Ernest J. Gaines; and Toni Morrison and David Bradley. Though Leak does not claim that the ‘response’ texts are superior to the ‘call’ texts, he does argue that, in some cases, the newer work—such as Charles Johnson’s Ox Herding Tale—can address a theme or offer a narrative innovation not found in preceding texts, such as Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. In these instances, argues Leak, the newer texts constitute not only a response to the call text, but a substantial revision.

Leak offers the first in-depth criticism of black masculinity in a range of literary texts. In a final chapter, he expands his discussion to the emerging field of black masculinity studies, pointing to future directions for study, including memoir, film, drama, and others. Poised on the brink of exciting new trends in scholarship, Racial Myths and Masculinity in African American Literature is a flagship work, enhancing the understanding of literary constructions of black masculinity and the larger cultural imperatives to which these writers are reacting.

The jacket illustration is Charles White’s Frederick Douglass Leads the Way (1949).”

“It is a measure of the potency of Charles White’s images that long after his death, they continue to be used on the covers of books, the subjects of which strike a variety of chords with White’s art and his own biography. Typical in this regard Allan Dwight Callahan’s The Talking Book: African Americans and the Bible (Yale University Press, 2006). From the book’s rear cover:

‘The Talking Book casts the Bible as the central character in a vivid portrait of black America, tracing the origins of African-American culture from slavery’s secluded forest prayer meetings to the bright lights and bold style of today’s hip-hop artists. The Bible has profoundly influenced African Americans throughout history. From a variety of perspectives this wide-ranging book is the first to explore the Bible’s role in the triumph of the black experience. Using the Bible as a foundation, African Americans shared religious beliefs, created their own music, and shaped the ultimate key to their freedom—literacy. Allen Callahan highlights the intersection of biblical images with African-American music, politics, religion, art, and literature.

The author tells a moving story of a biblically informed African-American culture, identifying four major biblical images—Exile, Exodus, Ethiopia, and Emmanuel. He brings these themes to life in a unique African-American history that grows from the harsh experience of slavery into a rich culture that endures as one of the most important forces of twenty-first-century America.’

Allen Dwight Callahan is director of the Instituto Martin Luther King, Jr. in Salvador, Brazil.

The work by Charles White used on the cover was The Preacher, 1952. As well as gracing the cover of the book, a detail of the preacher (showing his hands clutching his bible) adorns the back inside flap of the dust jacket.”

“It is a measure of the potency of Charles White’s images that long after his death, they continue to be used on the covers of books, the subjects of which strike a variety of chords with White’s art and his own biography. Typical in this regard was the 2009 publication, Anticommunism and the African American Freedom Movement: “Another Side of the Story,” edited by Robbie Lieberman and Clarence Lang and published by Palgrave Macmillan. From the book’s rear cover:

‘The original essays in this book highlight the destructive impact of McCarthyism on the African American Freedom Movement. Recovering little-known stories of black radical activism, they challenge the idea that the Cold War was, on balance, beneficial to the movement. The book emphasizes what was lost when anticommunism forced the movement to submerge broader issues of economic justice, labor rights, feminism, and peace. The authors illustrate the often neglected or understated human costs of the Red Scare, focusing on local and individual stories that offer insight into larger national and international trends.’

The cover illustration was White’s ‘The Ingram Case’ from 1949. The Ingram Case was a notorious Jim Crow era judicial travesty that took place in rural Georgia in the late 1940s, which saw sharecropper Rosa Lee Ingram and her two sons received the death penalty in 1948 for murdering a white landowner in rural Georgia. The Ingram case was said to have received widespread press attention during the post-World War II era when the failings of the southern justice system and the iniquities of the Jim Crow culture were under new scrutiny, spearheaded by the ascending civil rights movement. 

A brief reference to the Ingram case, and indeed, to the illustration on the book’s cover, appeared on page 8 of Anticommunism and the African American Freedom Movement…. White’s illustration depicted three African Americans—we read them as being Rosa Lee Ingram and her two sons—behind bars, earnestly seeking justice and for their liberty to be restored.”

“Swann Auctions is the route through which a number of Charles White’s works are brought to the marketplace. The catalogues that accompany these auctions are always a treasure trove of high quality reproductions of work by African American artists, together with descriptions of varying lengths, biographical information, and guide prices. The Swann African-American Fine Art catalogue of February 17, 2009 offered for auction several works by Charles White, including the iconic Move On Up a Little Higher, 1961, Charcoal and Wolff crayon on illustration board, 1004 x 1205 mm; signed and dated in charcoal, lower right. Accompanying text as follows:

 ‘Move On Up a Little Higher is a most impressive example of the artist’s mid-career work, a masterful large-scale drawing that conveys all the emotional and figurative realism one associates with White. ...The title refers to the gospel song of Mahalia Jackson whose 1948 recording made her famous.’

Befitting such a monumental work, it was rendered as a gatefold. Additionally, the last of the four pages devoted to the work in the Swann catalogue featured a detail, of the face of the woman who was the subject of the drawing, her arms held aloft in a celestial vision.

Also offered for sale in this auction catalogue were the Charles White works, Untitled (Head of a Man), etching, circa 1940; Mayor Tom Bradley, lithograph, 1974; Frederick Douglass, etching, 1973; Profile, etching, 1974;  and Study for Lead Belly, graphite and charcoal on vellum paper, circa 1978.”

“[This is a] 44 page softcover catalogue, bound in stiff black paper covers and published on the occasion of the exhibition, Charles White: Let the Light Enter held at the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, January 10 - March 7, 2009. Including the cover illustration, the publication contained 10 drawings, beautifully reproduced - 3 in foldout pages. A taped interview with the artist is transcribed, along with an appreciative essay. Contents as follows:

• LET THE LIGHT ENTER—poem by Frances E.W. Harper
• AN INTERVIEW WITH CHARLES WHITE—transcribed conversation, broadcast on radio in the late 1960s, between Charles White and a now unidentified broadcaster
• A SELECTION OF DRAWINGS, 1942 - 1970
• CHARLES WHITE (1918 - 1979)—Biographical outline of the artist, taken from Andrea D. Barnwell’s Charles White (The David C. Driskell Series of African American Art: Volume I, San Francisco: Pomegranate, 2002). The reference to Barnwell was followed by: Betty Lochrie Hoag, ‘Oral history interview with Charles Wilbert White, 1965, Mar. 9,’ Smithsonian Archives of American Art. A web address followed, with a note that the site had been accessed by the writer November 21
• CHARLES WHITE CV
• FRANCES ELLEN WATKINS HARPER (1825 - 1911)—uncredited biographical outline of the poet

MICHAEL ROSENFELD GALLERY PUBLICATIONS”

“Charles White’s Walk Together, Charcoal, 1953-54 was used on the cover of Mary Helen Washington’s The Other Blacklist: The African American Literary and Cultural Left of the 1950s (Columbia University Press, 2014}. (On the flyleaf of The Other Blacklist, the work’s title was written as Let's Walk Together).

The book concerned itself with recovering ‘the vital role of 1950s leftist politics in the works and lives of modern African American writers and artists. While most histories of McCarthyism focus on the devastation of the blacklist and the intersection of leftist politics and American culture, few include the activities of radical writers and artists from the Black Popular Front. Washington’s work incorporates these black intellectuals back into our understanding of mid-twentieth-century African American literature and art and expands our understanding of the creative ferment energizing all of America during this period.’

This text, on the flyleaf of the book’s jacket, continued, ‘Mary Helen Washington reads four representative writers—Lloyd Brown, Frank London Brown, Alice Childress, and Gwendolyn Brooks—and surveys the work of the visual artist Charles White. She traces resonances of leftist ideas and activism in their artistic achievements and follows their balanced critique of the mainstream liberal and conservative political and literary spheres. Her study recounts the targeting of African American as well as white writers during the McCarthy era, reconstructs the events of the 1959 Black Writers’ Conference in New York, and argues for the ongoing influence of the Black Popular Front decades after it folded. Defining the contours of a distinctly black modernism and its far-ranging radicalization of American politics and culture, Washington fundamentally reorients scholarship on African American and Cold War literature and life.’

This was an important work of scholarship, that took its place alongside Andrew Hemingway’s Artists on the Left: American Artists and the Communist Movement, 1926-1956 (Yale University Press, 2002), both books chronicling and examining Charles White’s left-leaning impulses and his art work that reflected these impulses.”

“In 2017, Museum of Modern Art, New York, published Charles White: Black Pope. Written by Esther Adler, the 72-page book took as its starting point a renewed consideration of one of Charles White’s works in the collection of MoMA—Black Pope (Sandwich Board Man) (1973). 

From the rear of the book jacket: ‘The Chicago-born artist Charles White (1918–79) was celebrated during his lifetime for depictions of African-Americans that acquired the description “images of dignity.” His application of his extraordinary draftsmanship to address a lifetime of social and political concerns made him a vital influence on both his contemporaries and later generations; visually compelling and intellectually ambitious, his art engages audiences on many levels. Beginning with his early days in Chicago, moving through his time in New York in the late 1940s and ‘50s, and closing with his final decades as a revered artist and teacher in Los Angeles, Charles White: Black Pope offers a detailed exploration of his practice, focusing in particular on his late masterwork Black Pope (Sandwich Board Man), in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art.’

Though a more substantial monograph on White was to follow, Charles White: Black Pope, was an important and considerable introduction to White’s practice, which sought to place his work in a variety of art and visual culture contexts. The book contained important archival photographs and other material, including that which pointed to the source of inspiration for the figure that was the subject of White’s intriguing ‘masterwork,’ Black Pope.”

“Truth and Beauty: Charles White and His Circle was a very attractive catalogue, accompanying an exhibition of the same name at New York City’s Michael Rosenfeld Gallery. The exhibition was scheduled to coincide with the Museum of Modern Art’s showing of the major Charles White Retrospective that was first see at the Art Institute of Chicago.  Alongside a number of early and rarely seen works by White, Truth and Beauty: Charles White and His Circle featured work by the following artists:

• Benny Andrews (1930-2006)
• Richmond Barthé (1901-1989)
• Romare Bearden (1911-1988)
• John Biggers (1924-2000)
• Eldzier Cortor (1916-2015)
• Ernest Crichlow (1914-2005)
• Philip Evergood (1901-1973)
• William Gropper (1897-1977)
• Robert Gwathmey (1903-1988)
• David Hammons (b.1943)
• Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000)
• Norman Lewis (1909-1979)
• Kerry James Marshall (b. 1955)
• Archibald J. Motley, Jr. (1891-1981)
• John Outterbridge (b. 1933)
• Gordon Parks (1912-2006)
• Marion Perkins (1908-1961)
• Betye Saar (b.1926)
• Charles Sebree (1914-1985)
• Ben Shahn (1898-1969)
• Raphael Soyer (1894-1986)
• Harry Sternberg (1904-2001)
• Hale Woodruff (1900-1980)

Extensively illustrated, and with its high production values, Truth and Beauty: Charles White and His Circle was a beautiful catalogue.

Contents as follows:

• FOREWORD, halley k harrisburg (sic) and Michael Rosenfeld, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery
• PATH OF A NEGRO ARTIST, BY CHARLES WHITE, Excerpted from Masses & Mainstream, April 1955
• THE WORK OF CHARLES WHITE (nearly 20 plates, one per page)
• ABOUT CHARLES WHITE (1918 – 1979), uncredited biographical essay.
• SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
• Followed by a section, ‘& HIS CIRCLE’, reflections and appreciations by several of the 25 artists listed above.
• FREEDOMWAYS, CHARLES WHITE, Art and Soul, 1980 – a brief introduction to the Freedomways This section of Truth and Beauty: Charles White and His Circle reproduced several texts from the special commemorative issue of Freedomways. The tributes to White were as follows:

“CHARLES WHITE WAS A DRAWER,” Benny Andrews

“HIS INFLUENCE CAUSED ME TO TURN OUT LITTLE CHARLES WHITES,” John Biggers

“HE WAS AT HOME CREATIVELY IN ANY LOCALE,” Eldzier Cortor

“TO OUR COLLEAGUE”, Romare Bearden, Ernest Crichlow, Jacob Lawrence, Hughie Lee-Smith, Hale Woodruff

• THE WORK OF HIS CIRCLE – plates of work by each of the 25 artists listed above
• Section titled Truth and Beauty: Charles White and His Circle
• CHARLES WHITE – CHECKLIST OF THE EXHIBITION
• AND HIS CIRCLE – CHECKLIST OF THE EXHIBITION
• MICHAEL ROSENFELD GALLERY – EXHIBITION HISTORY (December 1989 – November 9 2019, 5 pages of exhibitions
• CREDITS

With its cover bearing an individually adhered plate of I BEEN REBUKED AND I BEEN SCORNED (SOLID AS A ROCK), 1954, this publication was a most handsome and useful document on Charles White.”

“Charles White’s last retrospective exhibitions had taken place several decades ago, both before and following his death in 1979. These retrospectives came with important, though relatively modest catalogues. Towering over these exhibitions from several decades ago, and towering over their attendant catalogues, was Charles White: A Retrospective, the first major museum survey devoted to the artist in well over 30 years. The exhibition charted the breadth of Charles White’s career—from the 1930s through to works completed before his death in 1979. Featuring in excess of 100 works, including drawings, paintings, prints, photographs, illustrated books, record covers and archival materials, this was by far the most extensive, well-resourced exhibition of the artist’s work ever to take place. Fittingly, it travelled to prominent galleries in the three US cities with which White was associated. Opening at the Art Institute of Chicago, the exhibition travelled to the Museum of Modern Art, New York, finishing its tour at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. This was a weighty, profusely illustrated catalogue, coming as it did with important texts by leading scholars and well-known names.

From the flyleaf:

CHARLES WHITE

A RETROSPECTIVE

Edited by Sarah Kelly Oehler and Esther Adler

With essays by Esther Adler, Ilene Susan Fort, Kellie Jones, Sarah Kelly Oehler, Mark Pascale, and Deborah Willis and a preface by Kerry James Marshall

Charles White (1918 - 1979) is best known for bold, large-scale paintings and drawings of African Americans, meticulously executed works that depict human relationships and socio-economic struggles with a remarkable sensitivity. This comprehensive study offers a much-needed reexamination of the artist’s career and legacy. With handsome reproductions of White’s finest paintings, drawings and prints, the volume introduces his work to contemporary audiences, places him in the art historical narrative, and stresses the continuing relevance of his insistent dedication to producing positive social change through art.

Tracing White’s career from his emergence in Chicago to his mature practice as an artist, activist and educator in New York and Los Angeles, leading experts provide insights into his creative process, his work as a photographer, his political activism and interest in history, the relationships between his art and his teaching, and the importance of feminism in his work. A preface by Kerry James Marshall honors White’s significance as a mentor to an entire generation of practitioners.

Published by the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and distributed by Yale University Press, the publication’s contents were as follows:

• Page of exhibition details, catalogue production details, et cetera
• Foreword, James Rondeau and Glenn D. Lowry
• Acknowledgements, Sarah Kelly Oehler and Esther Adler
• “A Black Artist Named White,” Kerry James Marshall
• “Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: Charles White’s Murals and History as Art,” Sarah Kelly Oehler
• “Graphic Interpreter of the Black People: Charles White as Draftsman and Printmaker,” Mark Pascale
• Plates: Chicago and War Years
• “Charles White: Feminist at Mid-Century,” Kellie Jones
• “In Search of Beauty: Charles White’s Exposures,” Deborah Willis
• Plates: New York
• “Charles White’s Art and Activism in Southern California,” Ilene Susan Fort
• “Charles White, Artist and Teacher,” Esther Adler
• Plates: Los Angeles
• Chronology, Compiled by John Murphy and Ashley James
• Selected Inventory of Charles White’s Library, Compiled by Ashley James
• Selected Exhibition History, Compiled by John Murphy and Stacy Kammert
• Checklist of the Exhibition
• Selected Bibliography
• Index
• Photography Credits”

Charles White’s democratic art on behalf of human dignity: the aesthetic imperatives of ethical and spiritual “social realism” (9)

[The introduction to this series of posts is here.]

Art reconciles the conceptual and the sensible* and makes connections between ideas and world that are difficult to make otherwise. It reconciles aspects of experience that are rarely considered together. — Enrique Martinez Celaya

* I suspect “sensible” is here being used in two senses: as in “perceptible by the senses” (from the Latin sensibilis), as well as in its later and more common sense, as in having good judgment or “good sense.”

“After his passing in 1979, Charles White’s reputation as an artist continued to increase, garnering more and more adulation. To this end, one of the first substantial posthumous overviews of his work was Images of Dignity: A Retrospective of the Works of Charles White. The exhibition was held at the Studio Museum in Harlem, June 20 - August 31, 1982. The exhibition’s title had, in large part, been borrowed from the celebrated monograph, published in several editions by Ward Ritchie Press (Los Angeles, 1967).

From the Foreword, by Dr. Mary Schmidt Campbell, Executive Director of the Studio Museum in Harlem:

‘Charles White was an artist who cared about his people and his art. His images—epic in their depiction of Black life, masterful in technique—were always accessible to his audience, always communal. The Studio Museum in Harlem has assembled White’s oils, temperas, watercolors, drawings and prints for the exhibition, Images of Dignity: A Retrospective of the Works of Charles White. The third in Studio Museum’s Black Masters’ Series, the exhibition clearly demonstrates White’s ability to portray, in his words, “love, hope, courage, freedom, dignity—the full gamut of the human spirit,” and to portray those highly abstract qualities within the very specific context of Black people, “their history, their culture, their struggle to survive.”’ Schmidt Campbell’s Foreword continued, ‘Divided into three sections—from the WPA to the Taller de Grafica (1935 to 1947); the transition to an African-inspired realism (1950 to 1963), and his mature works executed in the language of myth (1963 to 1979)—the exhibition traces the evolution of White’s increasingly complex use of graphic mediums as well as his increasingly subtle treatment of the human figure.’

The catalogue’s most substantial text was ‘Charles White: A Critical Perspective,’ by Dr. Peter Clothier.

Full catalogue contents as follows:

Foreword—Dr. Mary Schmidt Campbell
Lenders to the Exhibition
Charles White: A Critical Perspective—Dr. Peter Clothier
Bibliography—Earnest Kaiser and Benjamin Horowitz
Chronology — Kellie Jones
Catalogue of the Exhibition

Images of Dignity: A Retrospective of the Works of Charles White carried on its cover a reproduction of The Prophet, 1975-1976, 27" x 36.5". (At the time of its making, The Prophet had marked a new departure for White, in that it was a move away from the weighty social realism of his monochrome drawings.) It was extensively illustrated, with both monochrome and colour reproductions of White’s work.”

“It is a measure of the potency of Charles White’s images that long after his death, they continued to be used on the covers of books, the subjects of which struck a variety of chords with While’s art and his own biography. Typical in this regard was the 1984 publication, Michael G. Cooke, Afro-American Literature in the Twentieth Century: The achievement of Intimacy, published by Yale University Press. From the book’s jacket flaps: 

‘Where modernism in Anglo-American literature wears the guise of an artificial detachment from the human, in Afro-American literature it has taken a different tack: a grappling with a sense of intimacy that involves reaching out of the self into an unguarded, uncircumscribed engagement of the world. Intimacy is an experiment laden with psychocultural risk, and that is why it has been overladen by those with the least to lose in conventional terms—America’s black writers.’

From this persuasive and original perspective, Michael Cooke examines the essential structure of Afro-American literature in the 20th century. He shows a development out of the secret matrix of ‘signifying’ and the blues into successive conditions of self-veiling, solitude, kinship, and, finally, a lucid, capable state of intimacy. Among the individual writers who receive special attention are Jean Toomer, Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Eldridge Cleaver, Robert Hayden, Alice Walker, and James Baldwin. In addition to locating these authors in the progression toward intimacy, Cooke analyzes their work in terms of metamorphosis, materialism, suicide, magic, the interplay of identity and ‘voice,’ and the Afro-American posture toward history. In a final chapter, he discusses the most recent black fiction, demonstrating that it sustains the dynamism and creativity of its rich and centripetal tradition.

The jacket illustration is Charles White’s The Prophet # 1.”

“This was for many years the defining publication on Charles White, published in several editions by Ward Ritchie Press (Los Angeles, 1967): 121, with 95 black & white illus. Designed by Joseph Simon, Images of Dignity was the very first monograph on Charles White. Published in conjunction with White’s longtime dealer Benjamin Horowitz’s Heritage Gallery, it presents a comprehensive survey of over forty years of the artist’s moving works on paper, the African American image and experience located at the heart of these wonderful works. 

A measure of the significance and importance of Images of Dignity was alluded to in a text on White published in Ebony magazine.  A major eight page feature on the artist, written by Louie Robinson, stated, ‘The publication of [White’s] Images of Dignity alone is a singular achievement. No other living Negro artist has ever had a book of his works published (a collection of the art of the late Horace Pippin appeared in print after his death).’

With a chronology, exhibition history and bibliography, this was, until at least the time of his death, the go-to publication on Charles White.  The book’s contents:

• Foreword, by Harry Belafonte
• An Appreciation, by James Porter
• Images of Dignity, by Benjamin Horowitz
• The Drawings of Charles White—88 pages of White’s work, arranged chronologically, the earliest dating from 1925, the most recent works being a number of White’s J'Accuse! A measure of just how talented White was can be ascertained from the first reproduction, executed by White when he just 7 years old. The landscape, featuring a cabin, set in a forest clearing, with mountains in the background was truly a remarkably accomplished ink drawing.
• Artist’s CV.

That James Porter should write an appreciation is highly significant. Porter had been responsible for the first substantial study on African-American art, Modern Negro Art, published until 1943. From Porter’s appreciation: ‘I like to think of Charles White not just as an artist—not even as an American artist—but as an artist who, more than any other, has found a way of embodying in his art the very texture of Negro experience as found in life in America. Recognizing and seizing upon that which is unique as well as that which is general or universal about the Negro people, he has, as Mr. Belafonte has remarked, spoken in “the poetic beauty of Negro idiom.” In any case, White has made of his own artistic language a splendid vehicle for that idiom. Charles is an artist steeped in life; and his informed artistic vision conduces to an understanding of vivid pictorial symbols which, though large as life itself, are altogether free of false or distorted ideas or shallow and dubious emotion.’

Likewise, it was no surprise that Harry Belafonte should write a foreword for Images of Dignity, as Harry Belafonte and Charles White maintained a longstanding friendship over many years and the singer/civil rights activist owned one of White’s signature works, a depiction of a singing guitarist. Belafonte had owned the work since at least as early as the mid-1950s, and it appeared in the background of a portrait of the singer and his wife, Julie Robinson, used on the cover of Ebony magazine, July 1957. White had provided illustrations for several publications on Belafonte, so this foreword by Belafonte was no surprise. Wrote Belafonte, ‘His portraits are real, but, like some of Sean O’Casey’s dramas, they are oftentimes much bigger than life, as if the artist is saying to us, “Life is much more than this. Life is big and broad and deep.”’ Belafonte’s respect for White was re-inscribed, in 2001, when White’s work (owned by Belafonte) was used on the cover of The Long Road to Freedom: An Anthology of Black Music, an extraordinary, ambitious box set that was Belafonte’s brainchild and labour of love. 

The cover of Images of Dignity featured White’s Two Brothers Have I had on Earth—One of Spirit, One of Sod (charcoal), 1965, a distinguished work made all the more so by being in the collection of Premier Sekou Toure of Guinea. The rear flyleaf of the book’s jacket contained several extracts from glowing  reviews written by the several reviewers, included Arthur Miller, whose review of Images of Dignity had appeared in Los Angeles Herald Examiner.”

“Charles White: Drawings was an exhibition that was held at the art galleries of three historically Black colleges and universities:

Inaugural exhibition

The Gallery of Art
College of Fine Arts, Howard University
September 22 - October 25, 1967
(James A. Porter, Director, Gallery of Art)

Second exhibition

The Carl Murray Fine Arts Center
Morgan State College, Baltimore, MD
November 1 - November 24, 1967
(James E. Lewis, Director of Art Gallery)

Third exhibition

The Art Gallery
Ballentine Hall, Fisk University
Nashville, TN
(David C. Driskell, Director of Art Gallery)

The above itinerary appeared on the first page of the catalogue. This catalogue carried on its cover (beneath a reproduction of White’s J'Accuse! No. 2, 1966) a reference to the third venue: 

The Gallery of Art (sic)
Ballentine Hall, Fisk University

It’s not clear if the Inaugural and second venues came with their own catalogues. It is also not clear if this catalogue was published before or after the publication of Images of Dignity, first published by Ward Ritchie Press (Los Angeles, 1967). Both Charles White: Drawings and Charles White: Images of Dignity contained ‘An Appreciation,’ by James Porter and ‘Images of Dignity,’ by Benjamin Horowitz. Both texts were similar in content (though not in length). In addition to his ‘Appreciation.’ Porter also penned a ‘Foreword’ for Charles White: Drawings. From the ‘Foreword’:  

‘During all of the present century as well as for a part of the Nineteenth century, the role of American colleges and universities in the conservation and interpretation of art has been both active and purposeful. In recent years, however—notably—during the past thirty years, many American universities through their art departments have also demonstrated concern with the training of artists and, in particular, with the encouragement of experimentation in art at a high professional level. In 1945, Charles White was at Howard University as artist-in-residence, undoubtedly, one among the first American artists to be thus employed on a university campus. And it is safe to say, that through such brief associations with the art program at Howard, Charles White’s art became more fully known to an interested Washington public.’ [….]

From Horowitz’s text in Charles White: Drawings: 

‘In an era when the artist is expressing his detachment from the human condition by a ‘cool’ and geometric style, Charles White’s superb drawings challenge this lack of faith and self-involvement. Their epic quality affirms his deep concern for humanity, his love of man and life, and his belief that brotherhood is not just a catchword. Here, on his canvasses, the vitality and poignancy of humankind are captured for the eye to see and the heart to feel.

... But while insistence on the dignity of the individual and respect for the human being is a universal quality of his art, White is deeply and spiritually a product of his race and environment. A bare 100 years ago his grandfather was a slave in Mississippi, and his mother lived most of her life in the South where little had changed from her father’s day.

... There are many collectors of Charles White’s work whose admiration for him is boundless. Here is an art, they say, that has grown out of the gritty seams of life, out of the anger of the dispossessed, out of the dregs of despair. Here is an art, they say, that makes you catch your breath at the strength of life, its beauty, its love. Here is an art that mirrors man’s hopes, warms his blood, and makes his heart sing. Here, they say, is a man who is a great artist—an artist who is a great man.’

The catalogue contained an abbreviated CV, a list of works in the exhibition (including ten works from White’s J'Accuse! series), and a list of lenders to the exhibition.”

“What turned out to be one of the last major museum exhibitions of Charles White’s work was The Work of Charles White: An American Experience, held at the High Museum, Atlanta, Georgia (September 4 - October 3, 1976), before touring on to Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, Alabama (October 23 - December 5, 1976), Hunter Museum of Art, Chattanooga, Tennessee (February 17 - March 31, 1977), Art Museum of the Palm Beaches, Inc., West Palm Beach, Florida (April 22 - May 29, 1997), ending its Southern states tour at Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, Arkansas. The exhibition was documented with this small, but very useful catalogue, [adorned] with Charles White’s circular ‘Vision’ oil drawing, 1968, 20" diameter. 

This particular catalogue, somewhat curiously, had references to Dr. and Mrs. Richard A. Simms, roughly redacted from the list of Lenders to the Exhibition, and from four works in ‘Catalogue’ section of the publication. (Los Angeles-based Simms was a noted art collector). There were thirteen monochromatic reproductions in the publication, punctuated by modestly sized pieces of writing, the most substantial of which was a one-page Introduction by Edmund Barry Gaither, Director/Curator, Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists.”

“In 1994, Barricade Books published Reaches of the Heart: A Loving Look at the Artist Charles White, written by Frances Barrett White with Ann Scott. This was a personal account of the 29-year marriage between Charles White and Frances Barrett White, his white, social worker wife, and of their family life with two adopted children. 

From the book’s flyleaf:

‘Charles White was one of the most distinguished and best known artists of the twentieth century. In 1950 he fell in love and married Frances Barrett, the daughter of a Catholic priest. They had no honeymoon because they were not, under the laws of the state of Michigan, allowed to share a hotel room. Charlie was black and Fran was white. Reaches of the Heart is a very personal story of a marriage between two people of different races who loved each other enough to have a world not quite ready for such a union. In another sense, it is a record of those decades in America that affected not only Charles and Frances, but all people, black and white, who fought for dignity and progress in the crucible of contemporary life. And it is also the story of an accomplished artist whose work is collected by museums and notable private collectors like Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte. Reaches of the Heart is a moving account of a marriage and a career, but it is also an invaluable record of the times and of lessons learned that must not be forgotten.’

Reaches of the Heart: A Loving Look at the Artist Charles White contains a fascinating selection of photographs. The cover featured White’s Wanted Poster Series #17, 1971.

Frances Barrett White was born September 30, 1926, and passed away September 25, 2000.”

“In 1996 Cambridge University Press published Harriet Jacobs and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: New Critical Essays, a title in the Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture. This anthology presented a far-ranging compendium of literary and cultural scholarship on Harriet Jacob’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Edited by Deborah M. Garfield and Rafia Zafar, the volume’s contributors included both established Jacobs scholars and emerging critics, their essays taking on a variety of subjects in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, treating representation, gender, resistance, and spirituality from differing angles, in the book’s 306 pages.

Charles White’s Wanted Poster Series #17 was reproduced on the cover of Harriet Jacobs and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: New Critical Essays.”

“Charles White: American Draftsman was the title of an exhibition of Charles White’s work, held at the North Carolina Central University Art Museum, Durham, North Carolina (August 22 - October 15, 1999). The exhibition was supported and documented by this handsome publication, the cover of which was graced by a reproduction of Charles White’s Wanted Poster Series #6. A selection of more than 30 reproductions of White’s work, in both monochrome and colour, were featured in the catalogue, the contents of which are as follows:

• Uncredited photograph of Charles White at the Heritage Gallery, 1978
• Acknowledgement
• Introduction - Kenneth G. Rodgers
• Charles White: American Draftsman—text by Kenneth G. Rodgers
• Endnotes for Rodgers’ text
• Chronology of Charles White
• Plates
• Exhibition checklist

The main text by Rodgers, NCCU Art Museum Director, was a substantial reflection on White’s practice, and covered 8 pages of the catalogue.”

“In 1999, the important publication, African Americans in Art: Selections from The Art Institute of Chicago was published. Alongside reproductions of said works, the publication featured essays by Colin L. Westerbeck, Amy M. Mooney, Andrea D. Barnwell and Kirsten P. Buick, Daniel Schulman, and Cherise Smith. Several of these scholars were joined by others, who penned the ‘Portfolio Entries’ that occupied an important proportion of the publication.

A detail from Charles White’s majestic Harvest Talk occupied the cover of African Americans in Art: Selections from The Art Institute of Chicago, and a reproduction of the work appeared on page 70. The ‘Portfolio’ entry was written by Andrea D. Barnwell, who, in 2002, would go on to author the first monograph on White in around 35 years. Unbelievably perhaps, by the turn of the 21^st century it had been well over thirty years since the last major publication on Charles White (that being his 1967 monograph, Images of Dignity). In 2002 Pomegranate Publications published its first instalment of The David C. Driskell Series of African American Art, Charles White, written by Andrea D. Barnwell. It was in many respects the most comprehensive monograph to date on the celebrated, late Los Angeles-based African-American artist Charles White.) Barnwell’s notes in African Americans in Art: Selections from The Art Institute of Chicago, on Harvest Talk, included the following:

‘White, whose father was a railroad and steel worker and mother a domestic worker, has a deep respect for labor. Harvest Talk, one of six charcoal and carbon pencil drawings originally exhibited at the ACA Galley in New York in 1953, exemplifies the artist’s mature drawing style. Here his strong, assured manner, coupled with the heroic proportions of the figures and the emphasis on the large scythe, evokes the indomitability of his subjects in the face of hard work. The presence of the scythe (an emblem often associated with the Soviet Union), as well as the social realist sensibilities that prevail throughout White’s oeuvre, his travels to the U.S.S.R. (where he exchanged ideas with Russian artists), and his writings for and affiliation with left-wing publications (such as Masses & Mainstream, Freedomways, and the Daily Worker) suggest that Harvest Talk was inspired by socialist ideals. Like many of White’s works on paper, Harvest Talk conveys the power of a mural, despite its relatively small format.”

[….] “In 2002 Pomegranate Publications published its first installment of The David C. Driskell Series of African American Art, Charles White, written by Andrea D. Barnwell. It was in many respects the most comprehensive monograph to date on the celebrated, late Los Angeles-based African-American artist Charles White.  Extensively illustrated, the flyleaf of the publication contained the following text:

‘As the debut volume in the highly anticipated David C. Driskell series of African American Art, Charles White sets a remarkable standard for the volumes to follow. Filled with drawings and paintings—many of which have never been published before—and scholarly text by Andrea D. Barnwell, this monograph encapsulates the spirit, vision, and extraordinary brilliance of White’s powerful art.’

Charles White (1918 - 1979) intentionally and unapologetically dedicated his life and work to conveying the concerns, sentiments, and beauty of African Americans, always realistically portraying his subjects with the dignity they so richly deserved but were so often denied. Through universal themes he interpreted and presented the humanitarian and social issues of his time by examining the heroism, struggles, hopes, histories, and triumphs of black people.

Barnwell discusses White’s regard as an artist and chronicles his career as he pursued artistic excellence, personal integrity, economic freedom, and racial equality. White’s works are in the collections of major museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Hampton University Museum, Hampton, Virginia; the Howard University of Art, Washington, D.C.; and the Art Institute of Chicago; many are in private collections in the United States, Europe, and Africa.

One of the greatest American artists of the 20th century, Charles White and his place in the annals of art history has not been adequately examined. Charles White (The David C. Driskell Series of African American Art: Volume 1) is an important step in ensuring the legacy of this seminal artist and singular man.

David C. Driskell, retired as distinguished University Professor of Art Emeritus from the University of Maryland, where he taught for twenty-two years, is a painter and the author of several essays and books. His own paintings are in many public and private collections throughout the world. A noted curator, scholar, and lecturer, Driskell is also a collector of art; an exhibition of his personal collection has toured museums in the United States.

Andrea D. Barnwell, an art historian, writer, and critic, is the Director of the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art. Her primary research interests are African American, Black British, and Contemporary African art. Her writings have been featured in major publications, including To Conserve a Legacy: American Art from Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Rhapsodies in Black: The Art of the Harlem Renaissance, and African Americans in Art: Selections from The Art Institute of Chicago. In 1990 she organized and was the principal author of The Walter O. Evans Collection of African American Art. Her critical writings have appeared in numerous journals, such as the International Review of African American Art, African Arts, and NKA: Journal of Contemporary African Art. She is the recipient of numerous academic and scholarly awards, including a MacArthur Curatorial Fellowship in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Art Institute of Chicago. Barnwell, an alumna of Spelman College, completed her master’s and doctoral degrees in art history from Duke University.

The book’s contents are as follows:

• Foreword, by David C. Driskell
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter One—Chicago: The Early Years
• Chapter Two—From New York to Los Angeles
• Chapter Three—At Home in California
• Charles White Chronology
• Index

From the Foreword:

‘... [P]aramount in White’s search for art that was solid and permanent, art informing both himself and his public, was the seriousness with which he engaged in making art and showing its relevance to the human condition. This led him to anchor most of his works in patterns of realism. In realism he could pursue the narrative and avoid the untested ways of emerging modernism. While White never fully embraced the tenets of modernism, he did experiment with a modified form of cubism, moving his work in and out of a style uniquely adaptable to geometric abstraction. He needed neither tricks of the craft nor whimsical art formulas to articulate his consummate vision, the vision of the insider. During nearly five decades, works such as Native Son, The Worker, Preacher, and Woman Worker, all carefully crafted in style and form, revealed the heart and soul of his creativity in one of the strongest figural traditions in American Art.’

The book’s cover image was Ye Shall Inherit the Earth, 1953 (charcoal on paper, 39 x 26 in.) Courtesy ACA Galleries, New York.”

Charles White’s democratic art on behalf of human dignity: the aesthetic imperatives of ethical and spiritual “social realism” (8)

[The introduction to this series of posts is here.]

“In 1976 Charles White provided a drawn rendering of Leadbelly for the record that accompanied the eponymously titled biopic of the singer’s life, directed by Gordon Parks. This was not the first drawing of Leadbelly that White had produced. For that matter, White had produced a significant number of drawings of African American guitar players, signifying the extent to which White saw within African American music much that sustained and reflected the lives of his people. The drawing of Leadbelly on the record sleeve depicted a man sitting atop a pile of rocks (themselves evocative of the chain gang), strumming his guitar. Not surprisingly, given that the man – a prisoner wearing distinctive striped pants that were at one time regulation prison attire – is manacled at his bare feet, the guitar player carries a somewhat pained expression on his face.

Within the film itself, the life of legendary blues and folk singer Huddie Leadbetter, (nicknamed Leadbelly) is recounted. Much of the film is set within the context of Leadbelly’s life in prisons and the chain gangs that were such a dreaded aspect of incarceration. With Roger E. Mosely playing the part of Huddie Ledbetter, Parks’ film emerged alongside a significant number of the Blaxploitation films common at the time. Indeed, several years earlier, Parks was responsible for directing the defining film of the Blaxploitation era, Shaft, a 1971 American action-crime film which revolved around a private detective named John Shaft, who is hired by a Harlem mobster to rescue his daughter from the Italian gangsters who have kidnapped her.

Amongst the credits on the back of this 1976 release by ABC records is Cover illustration: Charles White.

In its auction of February 17, 2009, Swann auction house, New York, offered for sale Study for Lead Belly, graphite and charcoal on vellum paper, circa 1978.”

“In 1975 Charles White provided a drawn rendering of the legendary folk hero, John Henry, for the cover of John Oliver Killens’ book A Man Ain't Nothing But a Man: The Adventures of John Henry (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1975). John Henry, the American super hero who was said to have engaged in a victorious struggle with a new-fangled steam drill, a struggle in which though victorious, cost John Henry his life.

The book was a colorful retelling of the story of John Henry, who was said to have worked as a steel-driving man — a man tasked with hammering a steel drill into rock to make holes for explosives to blast the rock, in constructing a railroad tunnel. According to legend, John Henry’s prowess as a steel-driver was measured in a race against a steam-powered hammer, a race that he won only to die in victory, with hammer in hand as his heart gave out. The story of John Henry is told in a classic folk song, which exists in many versions, and has been the subject of numerous stories, plays, books, and novels. This work by John Oliver Killens was one such work.

For his drawing, White rendered John Henry as a giant of man, full of determination, quiet confidence, strength and resolve. There was something of the heavyweight boxer about White’s depiction. Here was a man of destiny, who when called on, would, with efficiency, get the job done and bring down an adversary, at any cost. Arms folded, bare-chested, relaxed, pensive, this was truly a magnificent rendering of John Henry. Within his drawing, White utilised the distinctive partially obscured snatches of text that were, [for a time], such a feature of his work…. There was in White’s drawing, an evocation of the sledgehammer, looming large over the formidable physique of this historic folk hero.

The book jacket informed the reader that John Oliver Killens was ‘currently writer-in-residence at Howard University.’ The blurb continued, ‘Mr. Killens writes of John Henry: ‘Ahead of his time, John Henry saw before most men that man must control the machine or ultimately become its slave. This is the ultimate meaning of his life which he gave in the struggle against the machine.’

The credit on the jacket merely stated Jacket painting by Charles White.”

“[….] This particular issue [of Freedomways], Vol. 16, No. 1 Winter 1976 (First Quarter) carried on its cover a very recent lithograph by Charles White, The Prophet, 1975-1976, 27" x 36.5". The Prophet marked a new departure for White, in that it was a move away from the weighty social realism of his monochrome drawings. This particular issue of Freedomways was its 15th anniversary issue.”

“This particular issue of Freedomways, Vol. 18, No. 1 Winter 1978 (First Quarter) carried on its cover a work by Charles White, dating from 1961. Awaken from the Unknowing was a drawing of a young African American woman, studying, her copious papers spread across the table at which she reads and learns. The work was charcoal and Wolff crayon on paperboard, its dimensions being 31 x 56 inches/78.7 x 142.2 cm. 

There were no further references to White beyond a cover credit of ‘Cover Art by Charles White,’ though the inside cover carried a full page advert for a limited edition folio of six Charles White reproductions, published by Freedomways.”

“In the wake of Charles White’s death [April 2, 1918 – October 3, 1979], there were a number of celebratory evaluations of his life and work that appeared in print. Not surprisingly, given White’s longstanding association with Freedomways journal, there was a special issue on White that was Volume 20, Number 3, 1980. If ever evidence were needed, not only of the unprecedented and unequaled status achieved by White as a portrayer of his people, but also of the unbounded love, respect and adulation he received, this was it.

The Contents pages attest to nature of the issue, packed as it was with heartfelt testimonials and reflections on what this great artist meant to so many different people.

• Editorial - Charles White: Art and Soul
• ‘First and foremost, an artist”—Edmund Gordon
• ‘The story of White’s art is the story of a struggle’—Peter Clothier
• ‘Charles White was a drawer’—Benny Andrews
• ‘He was at home creatively in any locale’—Eldzier Cortor
• ‘He will always be a Chicago artist to me’—Margaret G. Burroughs
• Charles White—Nikki Giovanni
• Charcoal Blues—Tom Feelings
• Charles White In Person—Sharon G. Fitzgerald
• On the Road With Charlie White—Benjamin Horowitz
• ‘He could make change in harmony with the demands of life’—Frances White
• ‘His influence caused me to turn out little Charles Whites’—John Biggers
• ‘His special gift for teaching...’—Richard Wyatt, Jr.
• To Our Colleague—Romare Bearden, Ernest Crichlow, Elton C. Fax, Jacob Lawrence, Hughie Lee Smith, Hale Woodruff
• ‘The impact of his art crossed the borders of North America’—Academy of the Arts, German Democratic Republic
• ‘He was an implacable critic of his own creations’—John Pittman
• "He took his art more seriously than he did himself’—John Oliver Killens
• Brothuhs—Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier
• ‘We are of the same sidewalks’—Lorraine Hansberry
• ‘We got the message and are grateful’—M. J. Hewitt
• ‘They loved him, the people did’—Lerone Bennett, Jr.
• A Charles White Bibliography—Ernest Kaiser and Benjamin Horowitiz
• Several pages of Greetings

With contributions from gallerists, fellow artists, editors, writers, collectors and other friends and professionals with whom White interacted, this issue of Freedomways was a truly remarkable document. With its contributions from luminaries and visionaries such as Edmund Gordon, Benny Andrews, Eldzier Cortor, Margaret G. Burroughs, Nikki Giovanni, Tom Feelings, John Biggers, Romare Bearden, Ernest Crichlow, Elton C. Fax, Jacob Lawrence, Hughie Lee Smith, Hale Woodruff, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, Lorraine Hansberry, and Lerone Bennett, Jr., this is as stellar a cast of contributors as could be imagined. Hansberry for example, was represented by a text originally published in 1961 as the Foreword to the catalogue of the ACA Gallery’s Charles White exhibition.

A selection of Charles White’s works appeared in a section of the magazine. A measure of just how talented White was can be ascertained from one of the reproductions, executed by White when he just 7 years old. The work in oil depicted a house, a tree set in a rural setting. The work had the appearance of having been produced by an artist significantly older than White’s 7 years. (A different work, by an equally young White, appeared in his book Images of Dignity (Ward Ritchie Press, 1967). That particular work, featuring a cabin, set in a forest clearing, with mountains in the background was truly a remarkably accomplished ink drawing.)

Ernest Kaiser and Benjamin Horowitiz’s Bibliography was an extraordinarily important section, offering as it did a comprehensive guide to material on White published up to the beginning of June 1980.

The cover of this Freedomways issue featured White’s Sound of Silence lithograph from 1978. Such work marked a new departure for White, in that it was a move away from the weighty social realism of his monochrome drawings.

The back inside back cover and back cover featured a photograph of White working on his Mary McLeod Bethune Mural, 1978 (Los Angeles Public Library, Exposition Park) and a portrait of White, respectively. A detail of the Mary McLeod Bethune Mural appeared in the inside front cover.”

“Shortly after Charles White’s death, his drawing Let's Walk Together, from the early 1950s, was used on the cover of a brochure by Ray O. Light. Ray O. Light (which may well have been a play on ray of light) was a producer of revolutionary material, espousing Marxism-Leninism. This pamphlet was titled The Founding of The Black United Front and Its Revolutionary Potential. Published in December 1980, the only reference to the artist was ‘Drawing by Charles White,’ which appeared below the drawing on the cover.

A sense of the politics espoused in the publication can be ascertained from its Table of Contents:

1. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FOUNDING OF THE NATIONAL BLACK UNITED FRONT
2. SOME TASKS FOR MARXIST-LENINISTS IN THE BUILDING OF THE NATIONAL BLACK UNITED FRONT
3. Marxism-Leninism vs. White Chauvinism and Narrow Nationalism on the Afro-American National Question
4. Presentation of the Problem
5. Marxist-Leninism Tasks on the Afro-American National Question in the Building of the National Black United Front
6. Marxism-Leninism vs. ’Left’ Adventurism and Bourgeois Nationalist Capitulation in Strategy and Tactics
7. Presentation of the Problem
8. Marxist-Leninism Tasks on Strategy and Tactics in the Building of the National Black United Front
9. Marxism-Leninism vs. ‘Left’ Sectarianism and Bourgeois Reformist Tailism on Building the National Black United Front Organization
10. Presentation of the Problem
11. Tasks of the Marxist-Leninists in the Building of the National Black United Front Organization.”

“After his passing in 1979, Charles White’s images would still be used to illustrate record sleeves. To this end, the sleeve of a 1981 release, Love Byrd, by Donald Byrd and 125^th Street, N.Y.C., featured a work by White. The piece in question was Silent Song #2 (Nocturne), 1969, an etching on heavy cream wove paper, measuring 324 x 351 mm. On the sleeve notes, the illustration (here untitled) was credited to White, though no other details were given. Though Silent Song #2 (Nocturne) dated from 1969, beneath the bottom left corner of the image their appeared a small copyright symbol followed by 1961 Heritage Gallery. At the time of the release of Love Byrd, all bar a very small number of the records featuring illustrations by White had been released on the Vanguard label.

Musician Donald Byrd had been one of the stars and friends who participated in a celebration of White’s life and work, that took place shortly after his passing, at the Kinsey Auditorium of Los Angeles’ Museum of Science and Industry. Byrd and his band performed at the event.”

Please note: Our last two posts (9 and 10) in this series will be devoted to book jacket covers, largely of titles about White’s life and art, but some of books that treat subjects directly related to White’s moral and political values and commitments as those mesh with his well-considered aesthetic choices with regard to style and media. However, the end of this series does not mean the end of our concern with White’s life and art, which I will continue to discuss on occasion in light of my recent research.

Charles White’s democratic art on behalf of human dignity: the aesthetic imperatives of ethical and spiritual “social realism” (7)

[The introduction to this series of posts is here.]

“Charles White’s interactions with the editor and publisher John H. Johnson included providing a cover illustration for an issue of Black World journal, which along with Ebony, was published by Johnson. A detail of a work by White, Go Tell It On The Mountain, charcoal, 1961, private collection was used on the cover of the July 1970 issue of Black World (Vol. XIX, No.9) though there was no credit to White or the work within the issue itself.”

“No one African American artist contributed more work to be used as illustrations for book jackets or record sleeves than Charles White. His extraordinary drawings, resonating as they did with incredible levels of sensitivity, empathy, creativity and technical skill, made White something of a go-to artist for a number of publishers. White’s work was used to illustrate the cover of Black History: A Reappraisal, edited with commentary by Melvin Drimmer - Doubleday & Co., Inc., Garden City, New York, 1968.

The 1960s and early 1970s saw an incredible range of books such as this one being published, responding as they did to the urgency and gravity of the times. Drimmer’s book consisted of essays from leading contemporary historians, journalists, and other contributors on Black history in the United States from its beginnings in colonial times to the late 1960s. This book presents the foremost interpretations of African Americans in American history, each prefaced by an analysis of the historical events surrounding the period covered. The book contains footnotes, bibliography, and an index. The book’s most highly distinguished contributor was W.E.B. Du Bois (incidentally, the book was published during the year marking the centenary of Du Bois’s birth, though the great man had died some five years earlier, in 1963. Other contributors included Basil Davidson, Benjamin Quarles, E. Franklin Frazier, John Hope Franklin, August Meier, E. David Cronon, and Eric Lincoln. Such contributors had distinguished themselves over the course of their careers to furthering and disseminating research and scholarship on Black History, making the book a most impressive undertaking. Du Bois provided a Prologue ‘Of Our Spiritual Strivings.’ which was followed by six sections: Africa and the Beginnings, Slavery Takes Root in the Americas, The Negro Response, The Struggle for Freedom, Patterns of Negro Life and Thought, 1880-1930, and finally, Toward a Second Reconstruction, 1933 -  . This final section underlined the magnitude and gravity of the moment, in that the present-day period was framed as having started in the early 1930s, and was ongoing. It was, additionally and for good measure, cast as a ‘Second Reconstruction.’ The jacket illustration was UHURU, Chinese Ink, 1964.”

“Charles White interacted with Freedomways journal more than any other publication. His work appeared on the covers of the journal on many occasions. It was the leading African-American theoretical, political and cultural journal of the 1960s–1980s, having been published between 1961 and 1985. Freedomways (which represented itself as ‘A Quarterly Review of the Negro Freedom Movement’) remained unsurpassed in its embrace of, and attention to, African, African American and African Diasporic subjects. Each issue of Freedomways amounted to a treasure trove of texts and features, written by a distinguished range of scholars, academics, artists and writers.

This particular issue Vol. 8, No. 1, Winter 1968 (First Quarter) carried on its cover a Charles White drawing (possibly a lithograph) of Nat Turner, dated ’50.’ The drawing/lithograph related to a feature in the issue – ‘William Styron’s Dilemma – on The Confessions of Nat Turner,’ written by Loyle Hairston. Styron’s acclaimed 1967 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel presented as a first-person narrative the historical figure of Nat Turner, who led a slave revolt in Virginia in 1831.

White’s rendering of Nat Turner was first used on a 1950 poster for Nat Turner, a play in three acts, written in 1940 by playwright Paul Peters. This play, which opened in late 1950 in New York City, was an imaginative retelling of the story of Turner and his insurrection.”

“Paul Robeson (born 1898) was one of the greatest Americans of the 20th century, on account of his extraordinary contributions and achievements on many fronts - acting, singing, the theatre, social and civil rights activism. Towards the later part of his life Robeson lived a somewhat reclusive life, in Philadelphia. The battles he waged throughout his life, leading up to and including his battles with the US government, left Robeson exhausted and it was this, in part, that led to him living his life away from public view. Notwithstanding his reclusiveness, Robeson remained a much loved and much respected figure and Charles White captured Robeson as a man of dignity, resolve and destiny, in his circular drawing of the man.

This drawing of Robeson was used on the cover of Salute to Paul Robeson: A Cultural Celebration of His 75th Birthday. The book was, as its title indicated, published on the occasion of Robeson's 75th birthday, in 1973. The book was part pictorial biography, part celebration of Robeson’s life and work, part compendium of accolades, part decade-by-decade visual and written narrative of Robeson’s 20th century, from the 1920s through to the 1960s. Also included were extracts on writings about and by Robeson.

Robeson was truly a global personality, who was a world citizen as much as he was a US citizen. Nowhere in Salute to Paul Robeson: A Cultural Celebration of His 75th Birthday was this more evident than in the ‘Birthday Greetings to Paul Robeson’ section, which included fulsome greetings and salutations from figures such Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India, Julius K. Nyerere, President of Tanzania, Michael Manley, Prime Minister of Jamaica, Imamu Amiri Baraka, Chairman, Congress of Afrikan People, and Arthur Ashe. This attractive publication was published by the Paul Robeson Archives, Inc.”

This particular issue Vol. 10, No. 2 (Second Quarter) 1970, carried on its cover a detail of one of Charles White’s legendary drawings from his ‘Wanted’ series. The credit on the Contents page read, ‘The cover drawing by Charles White is from his Wanted Poster Series recently exhibited in New York City. A new portfolio of six in the series will soon be available from FREEDOMWAYS.’”

“Charles White interacted with Freedomways journal more than any other publication. His work appeared on the covers of the journal on many occasions. It was the leading African-American theoretical, political and cultural journal of the 1960s–1980s, having been published between 1961 and 1985. Freedomways, which by 1970 represented itself as ‘A Quarterly Review of the Freedom Movement’ (The word ‘Negro’ by now having been dropped from its masthead) remained unsurpassed in its embrace of, and attention to, African, African American and African Diasporic subjects. Each issue of Freedomways amounted to a treasure trove of texts and features, written by a distinguished range of scholars, academics, artists and writers.

This particular issue Vol. 12, No. 1 (First Quarter) 1972, carried on its cover a reproduction of one of Charles White’s legendary drawings from his J’Accuse! series. The credit on the cover read, ‘Cover Art by Charles White.’ The work in question was J’Accuse! No. 2, 1966.”

“In the mid-1970s, Charles White undertook a most demanding, original and dynamic collaboration, with the writer and editor Lerone Bennett, Jr. The Shaping of Black America (Chicago, IL: Johnson Publishing Co., 1975) was a very handsome publication, featuring copious illustrations by Charles White, including the very distinctive cover. From the flyleaf of the book’s jacket:

The Shaping of Black America is, in the author’s words, ‘a historical reconstruction,’ of the history of black people in the United States, since the famous landing of the 20 blacks at Jamestown in 1619. This book covers virtually the same ground encompassed in the author’s classic Before the Mayflower, published originally in 1962. The difference is in the approach. [….]

The book is developed around the body of thought presented in the concept that Bennett first expressed in The Challenge of Blackness (Chicago, IL: Johnson Publishing Co., 1972): 39, that ‘blacks lived in a different time and a different reality in this country.’ White provided 11 full page illustrations ‘rendered in monochromatic oil on boards.’ Titles included, ‘The First Generation,’ ‘The Black Founding Fathers [Paul Cuffee, Richard Allen],’ ‘The World of the Slave [Harriet Tubman],’ and ‘The Black Worker.’ This was a substantial publication, which demonstrated the ways in which White was equal to any task, when it came to illustrating the Black experience, and rendering Black-figures from history, with sensitivity, creativity and depth. A portrait of Bennett and White, discussing their collaboration, adorned the back cover of The Shaping of Black America.”

“Charles White interacted with Freedomways journal more than any other publication. His work appeared on the covers of the journal on many occasions. It was the leading African-American theoretical, political and cultural journal of the 1960s–1980s, having been published between 1961 and 1985. Freedomways, which by 1970 represented itself as ‘A Quarterly Review of the Freedom Movement’ (The word ‘Negro’by now having been dropped from its masthead) remained unsurpassed in its embrace of, and attention to, African, African American and African Diasporic subjects. Each issue of Freedomways amounted to a treasure trove of texts and features, written by a distinguished range of scholars, academics, artists and writers.

This particular issue Vol. 12, No. 1 (First Quarter) 1972, carried on its cover a reproduction of one of Charles White’s legendary drawings from his J'Accuse! series. The credit on the cover read, ‘Cover Art by Charles White.’ The work in question was J'Accuse! No. 2, 1966.” 

Jonathan Turley Unfairly Attacks the Cornell Law School

Professor Jonathan Turley has recently referred to the rapid loss of free speech values on campuses across the United States with special emphasis on Cornell. His post discussing this contains inaccurate and misconceived claims. https://jonathanturley.org/2020/06/12/cornell-professors-declare-informed-commentary-criticizing-the-protests-as-racism/#more-158282

The impetus for his broad attack involves the writings of William Jacobson and criticism thereof. William Jacobson is a securities law clinical professor at the Cornell Law School who holds conservative views that to my mind are over the top. He says, “You send your kids to public schools and colleges, where they are taught from their earliest years that America and capitalism are the sources of evil in the world . . . while socialist and communist systems are more equal and fair.” https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/06/the-bloodletting-and-wilding-is-part-of-an-agenda-to-tear-down-the-country/(6/3/20). In fact, what distinguishes public schools in our federal system is the diversity of messages and values that are reflected in our great country. You would have to look long and hard to find public schools teaching that socialism and communism are more equal and fair than the American system of government. If they exist (I doubt it), they are few and far between. Even in American colleges, the number of communist professors is vanishingly small. 

So too, Jacobson steps far away from reality when he writes that, “Concern for black lives, and all lives, is important. But that is not the agenda of the Black Lives Matter movement, they seek to tear down our society to achieve their marxist goals . . . .  https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/06/reminder-hands-up-dont-shoot-is-a-fabricated-narrative-from-the-michael-brown-case/(6/4/20).

Although the letter was written sometime earlier, on June 9, 21 members of the Cornell Clinical Law Faculty, writing in their individual capacity, published a letter in the school newspaper: “We are … outraged by commentators, some of them attached to Ivy League Institutions, who are leading a smear campaign against Black Lives Matter. . . . These commentators express rage over the sporadic looting that has taken place amidst the largely peaceful protests, calling for organized manhunts to track down those responsible. Theirs is a form of racism that gives cover to those police who use their batons and tear gas and rubber bullets and fists to silence and maim their critics.. . . These commentators are the defenders of institutionalized racism and violence. They are entitled to their viewpoints. We do not name them, so as to deprive them of a larger platform for their racist speech.”

One can see how Professor Jacobson’s claim about the “Marxist” goals of the Black Lives Matters Movement can be construed as part of a smear campaign. And that smear campaign gives some cover to police brutality, as do other claims he makes about “false narratives” concerning police killings. It is well within the bounds of fair commentary to describe his views as defending institutionalized racism (perhaps he would deny its existence) and violence. It is also within the bounds of fair commentary to characterize the defending of institutionalized racism as a form of racist speech.

Two things to note about the clinicians’ statement: the language used by the clinicians is hard hitting, but the clinicians do not identify anyone as a racist (conscious or otherwise); and second the clinicians acknowledge that the commentators they criticize are entitled to their opinions (which is obviously a recognition of the commentators’ right to free speech).

On June 7, Cornell Law School Dean Eduardo Penalver wrote that Professor Jacobson’s broad and categorical aspersions on the goals of those protesting for justice for Black Americans do not reflect the values of Cornell Law School. At the same time, he indicated that the law school is committed to academic freedom and job security and any discipline against Professor Jacobson for his views would corrode the values of the institution. https://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/spotlights/Statement-on-Prof-William-Jacobson-and-Academic-Freedom.cfm

Turley’s commentary is not fair-minded or careful. He says that there is no mention of free speech or academic freedom in the clinicians’ letter, but the letter says that commentators are entitled to their opinions. In addition to misreading the clinicians’ letter, Professor Turley has not done his homework. He cites Jacobson as saying there was an effort to fire him. But he has not read the statement of Dean Penalver. Dean Penalver specifically indicates that Cornell is committed to academic freedom and job security and that any discipline of Professor Jacobson would be inappropriate.

Turley also mischaracterizes the clinicians’ letter when he cites it to support the view that any questioning of the BLM movement means that you are per se or presumptive racists. This is a decidedly exaggerated reading of the clinicians’ letter. First, nothing in their letter suggests that fair minded criticism of the BLM movement is a form of racist speech. Moreover,  claiming that the movement is part of a Marxist conspiracy is unworthy of civilized discourse. This gives the lie to Professor Turley’s headline. The headline suggests that the clinicians maintain in this context that “informed commentary” is racist. Turley's suggestion is that informed commentary should be sacrosanct in the university. The clinicians, however, never suppose that Jacobson’s Marxist conspiracy theories are any part of the category of “informed commentary.”

Finally, in this connection, there is a substantial difference between contending that the defense of structural racism is a form of racist speech and contending that the utterer of the speech is personally a racist.

There is more to criticize in Professor Turley’s excursion into an area where his confidence exceeds his understanding, but I want to briefly mention one. He suggests that the purpose of the clinicians’ letter was to silence Professor Jacobson. No one with the slightest awareness of the Cornell Law School would think that the clinicians who said such commentators were entitled to their opinions were out to silence Professor Jacobson, and similarly no one who knows Professor Jacobson would think that such an effort would be successful. Similarly, no one with the slightest knowledge of the Cornell Law School would have thought that Professor Jacobson’s job was ever in jeopardy or that he was at any risk for discipline.

Professor Turley has no understanding of the Cornell culture. Hopefully, he will learn. And while he is at it, perhaps, he will learn something more about freedom of speech. He specifically chides two of my First Amendment colleagues because he claims the letter violates Professor Jacobson’s free speech rights. This blinks at the fact that the clinicians had a right to speak, and that Professor Jacobson does not have a free speech right to be free of criticism.  

Charles White’s democratic art on behalf of human dignity: the aesthetic imperatives of ethical and spiritual “social realism” (6)

[The introduction to this series of posts is here.]

I like to think that my work has a universality to it. I deal with love, hope, courage, freedom, dignity—the full gamut of human spirit. When I work, though, I think of my own people. That’s only natural. However, my philosophy doesn’t exclude any nation or race of people. — Charles White

“In 1961 Charles White provided a drawing for the cover of the Communist-leaning Mainstream magazine, Vol. 14, No. 2, February 1961. This was the magazine’s Negro History Week 1961 special issue. The drawing was Lift Every Voice (no date recorded in the magazine), named after Lift Every Voice and Sing – the iconic song known for many years as the Negro National Anthem. It was a song written as a poem by James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) in 1900 and several years later, set to music by his brother John Rosamond Johnson (1873–1954). Mainstream magazine was published monthly by Masses & Mainstream, Inc.”

“For its August 1966 special issue on The Negro Woman, Ebony magazine used on its cover Charles White’s memorable circular charcoal drawing depicting the faces of several African-American women, titled J'Accuse! No. 10 (Negro Woman). Unsurprisingly, given the history of the image’s use, the work was formerly in the private collection of John H. Johnson of Johnson Publishing Co., Chicago. As publisher of Ebony magazine, it was a page-long statement penned by John H. Johnson that introduced the special issue (p. 25). J'Accuse! No. 10 (Negro Woman) was illustrated in Benjamin Horowitz’s, Images of Dignity: The Drawings of Charles White: 116.

J'Accuse! No. 10 (Negro Woman) referenced the famous title of the influential French novelist, playwright, journalist and writer Émile Zola’s article against anti-Semitism in the Dreyfus Affair (in English: ‘I accuse ...!’). Zola’s open letter was published on 13 January 1898 in the newspaper L'Aurore, and it was an astute editor, with a flair for the dramatic, who gave the piece its legendary title.  J'Accuse! addressed French President Félix Faure and accused his government of anti-Semitism, which Zola alleged was demonstrated by the unlawful jailing of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French Army, who was sentenced to lifelong penal servitude for espionage. Zola’s letter gave voice to the belief that the charges against Dreyfus lacked credibility, was characterised by judicial errors and the conspicuous absence of compelling evidence. J'Accuse! was printed on the front page of the newspaper (The Dawn) and caused a sensation.

… [With] his accusatory letter Zola put anti-Semitism (and allegations of its use by the French state) in the dock, [while] White himself, in the series of J'Accuse! drawings, leveled at the state and society accusations of racism, discrimination, oppression and willful abuse against African Americans. White … unambiguously portrayed African Americans as dignified survivors of racism, rather than merely victims of racism. J'Accuse! No. 10 (Negro Woman) was in this regard, a typical work, in that it depicted a range of women who were proud, resilient and strong, and above all, resonated with humanity. Ebony magazine’s special issue drew attention to the particular historical and contemporary challenges facing ‘The Negro Woman.’ Reflective of the ongoing struggle for equality and civil rights, it described how African-American women in the mid-1960s were beginning to defy the female roles and stereotypes of the era. The first section of the Ebony feature depicted six women across the country, excelling in their respective professions as Newspaper Editor, Nutrition Expert, Computer Systems Expert, Finishing Plant Manager, Tax Account Specialist, and Employment Coordinator. Other texts included ‘Builders of a New South,’ ‘The Long Thrust Toward Economic Equality,’ ‘The Angels of Saigon’ (about two African American nurses treating wounded GIs of the Viet Nam conflict), and ‘A Despised Minority’ (about the ways in which ‘[u]nwed mothers are targets of abuse from a harsh society’).

The Contents page had the following reference to White’s cover: ‘COVER: The Negro Woman, subject of this special issue, has been characterized by artist Charles White in a series of melancholy, yet proud female faces. Internationally famous for his apt portrayal of earthy Negro women, White was the logical choice for illustrating the cover of this issue dedicated to his favorite artistic subject. Today, his original works can be found in galleries, art museums and in homes of many leading entertainers. Countless inexpensive prints of them are displayed wherever there are lovers of Negro art.’

There were at least 18 works in White’s J'Accuse! series, with 12 of them being reproduced in Images of Dignity: The Drawings of Charles White (Ward Ritchie Press, 1967).”

“Charles White interacted with Freedomways journal more than any other publication. His work appeared on the covers of the journal on many occasions. It was the leading African-American theoretical, political and cultural journal of the 1960s–1980s, having been published between 1961 and 1985. Freedomways, which by 1970 represented itself as ‘A Quarterly Review of the Freedom Movement’ (The word ‘Negro’ by now having been dropped from its masthead) remained unsurpassed in its embrace of, and attention to, African, African American and African Diasporic subjects. Each issue of Freedomways amounted to a treasure trove of texts and features, written by a distinguished range of scholars, academics, artists and writers.

This particular issue Vol. 6, No. 1 (First Quarter) 1966 was published … [with a] detail of Nocturne, a charcoal drawing dating from 1960. When it was reproduced in Charles White’s Images of Dignity (Ward Ritchie Press, 1967) the accompanying credit declared the drawing to be in the ‘Collection of the Estate of Lorraine Hansberry.’

This issue of Freedomways contained four drawings by White, noted as follows: ’Cover drawings by the well-known Negro artist, Charles White... Front Cover: Nocturne, Back Cover: I Had a  Dream, Inside Front: Birmingham Totem Pole, Inside Back: Juba.’”

“Charles White’s commitment to African American history and culture was consistently reflected in his record sleeve and book jacket illustrations. Typical in this regard were his illustrations for Philip Sterling and Rayford Logan’s Four Took Freedom: The Lives of Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Robert Smalls, and Blanche K. Bruce. The book was published by Zenith Books in 1967. [I]t was aimed at a juvenile readership, and this particular copy was formerly the property of Watkins Mill Elementary Center. The cover featured portraits by White of the four who took freedom, and the book itself was liberally illustrated with White’s renderings of various scenes from the lives of Tubman, Douglass, Smalls, and Bruce. While the cover portraits (versions of which also appeared at the beginning of each respective section), White’s other illustrations in the book are looser, freer, particularly creative and graphically innovative.”

“Charles White’s commitment to African American history and culture was consistently reflected in his record sleeve and book jacket illustrations. Typical in this regard was his cover and frontispiece illustration for A Layman’s Guide to Negro History, compiled and edited Erwin A. Salk. The publication used on its cover a reproduction of General Moses: A study of 19th Century Heroine Harriet Tubman, by Charles White, from the Golden State Mutual Negro Art Collection, Los Angeles, California.

The book was ‘The first comprehensive bibliography of books and teaching aids, plus listings of major events and personalities in the United States.’ The above, from the cover of A Layman’s Guide to Negro History, was embellished by an endorsement from no less a figure than the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, ‘An outstanding compilation ... few contributions will be so significant to teachers, students, pastors and movement leaders.’ The book was published in 1966 by Quadrangle Books, Chicago.”

“Charles White interacted with Freedomways journal more than any other publication. His work appeared on the covers of the journal on many occasions. It was the leading African-American theoretical, political and cultural journal of the 1960s–1980s, having been published between 1961 and 1985. Freedomways (which represented itself as ‘A Quarterly Review of the Negro Freedom Movement’) remained unsurpassed in its embrace of, and attention to, African, African American and African Diasporic subjects. Each issue of Freedomways amounted to a treasure trove of texts and features, written by a distinguished range of scholars, academics, artists and writers.

This particular issue Vol. 9, No. 2 Spring 1969 (Second Quarter), carried on its cover a Charles White drawing, ‘The Wall.’ From the inside cover of the issue: ‘Cover: “The Wall” by Charles White, is reproduced from a new folio by the world-renowned artist. To order from FREEDOMWAYS see back cover for details.’”

“The June 1967 issue of Negro Digest carried a feature promoting the recently released Charles White book, Images of Dignity. A drawing from the book, Work (depicting a young African American worker), 1953. Wolff crayon and charcoal on illustration board, 44 × 28″ (111.8 × 71.1 cm) appeared on the cover. This was a nine-page feature, running from page 40 – 48. The uncredited piece was introduced as follows: A new book about the life and work of America’s most popular Black artist provides a dramatic illustration of his success, which lies in his never-wavering concern for the humanity and suffering of his people.

Interspersed among the eight drawings reproduced in the feature was a text introducing White and summarizing the book. The piece began, ‘Of the two best known Black artists in America – Charles White and Jacob Lawrence – Charles White is by far the most popular. It might even be said that Charles White is to painting and drawing what Langston Hughes is to literature: both men direct their art to primal human concerns, to the simple problems and pleasures, the ordinary joys and sorrows of the long journey from the cradle to the grave.

In his successful career as a full-time painter, White, like Hughes, has found favour and support among the Black people who are his subjects. More affluent collectors like Harry     Belafonte and Eartha Kitt own one or more original works by White, but thousands of ordinary people all over the country have for many years coveted the modestly-priced reproductions which have been made available in art shops and book stores.’

Elsewhere the text states that ‘The artist… is part Creek Indian,’ and that ‘during the late Thirties and Early Forties … [White] met and became friend or associate of a number of talented Black people who were to make an impact on the cultural life of the nation. Among these were Gordon Parks, Katherine Dunham, Gwendolyn Brooks, E. Sims Campbell, Richard Wright, Margaret Walker, Theodore Ward and Willard Motley.’”

Charles White’s democratic art on behalf of human dignity: the aesthetic imperatives of ethical and spiritual “social realism” (5)

[The introduction to this series of posts is here.]

“In the mid-1950s (the exact year is not specified on the recording), Charles White provided an illustration for the cover of Urbie Green and his band. The record was released on the Vanguard label (in the UK, PPT 12021). Again, it was a 10” mono recording. The cover of Urbie Green and his band featured a drawing of a trombone player, the trombone being Green’s instrument. The drawing was signed by Charles White and dated ’54.’ There were no further references to White in the notes on the back of the record cover.”

“In 1958 the Vanguard record label re-released Brother John Sellers Sings Blues and Folk Songs. The sleeve of the reissued record carried the same drawing by Charles White, though on this occasion, the red colouring of the singer’s shirt was removed, the background instead becoming a shade of red, and the sleeve carrying other typographic and text changes. The text on the back of the sleeve had also changed. The opening paragraph of the now uncredited sleeve notes read:

‘Brother John Sellers was born a little over thirty years ago in Clarksdale, Mississippi. As a child he sang gospel songs in the Church of God in Christ, the members of which traditionally address each other as “brother” and “sister.” Mississippi has one of the largest Negro populations of any state, and most of this population lives under conditions of extreme hardship and poverty. This life is reflected in the music, and Mississippi is one of the richest centres of folk music of the Negro people. The music is full of poignance, but also found in its strength, dignity and love of life. It takes many forms: gospel or church songs, spirituals, children’s game songs, traditional story ballads, blues or a solo, improvised “minstrel” music. Much of this music infused jazz, as it developed. But to those who knew and felt its origins, and understood its styles, these strands of music were not to be lightly confused with one another. Gospel songs and spirituals were a serious and sacred music. Blues and ballads were a different music, secular, sometimes “sinful.” Jazz was something else again, a music often using the blues, but with a different beat, born in the cities rather than in the countryside where the blues had arisen. It is not surprising that some of the greatest Negro folk singers were Mississippi born, like the blues singer Big Bill Broonzy. All this music was familiar to John Sellers from childhood.’

The 1958 re-released Brother John Sellers Sings Blues and Folk Songs (VRS 9036) contained a greater number of songs than its previous version, with nine songs being added. This time, the sleeve notes included ‘Cover drawing by Charles White,’ and the drawing itself carried a Charles White signature in the lower right corner of the sleeve. “

“In 1955, Charles White provided an illustration for the cover of Jimmy Rushing sings the blues. The record was released on the Vanguard label as part of its ‎Vanguard Jazz Showcase – AVRS-7005. Again, it was a 10” mono recording. Jimmy Rushing (1901– 1972) was an American blues and jazz singer who had worked closely with Count Basie’s Orchestra from the mid-1930s to mid-1940s. The cover of Jimmy Rushing sings the blues featured a drawing of two guitar-carrying musicians. The original drawing for the record cover, ‘Jazz - Jimmy Rushing Sings the Blues,’ a pen and ink work, 34” x 24,” dating from 1955, was, nearly three decades later, offered for sale by Heritage Gallery, Los Angeles.

The album notes contained the following: ‘ABOUT THE COVER--The drawing on the cover is one of a series commissioned by Vanguard from the distinguished artist, Charles White. Mr. White’s work is represented in the Whitney Museum, Library of Congress, and other famous collections. In 1952 he won an Academy of Arts and Letters award and a national prize in the Metropolitan Museum of Art competition in New York. The drawing does not portray any of the performers on this record, but attempts to capture the human experiences out of which the blues arose.’ A version of this text was reproduced on a number of the Vanguard sleeves that Charles White illustrated.”

“In 1954, Charles White provided an illustration for the cover of Buck Meets Ruby. (Ruby Draff, trumpet and Buck Clayton, trumpet). The record was released with several different coloured covers, featuring the same drawing by Charles White. Another record of the same name, featuring a different selection of tracks, again featured the same drawing by White. This record was released on the Vanguard label as part of its ‎Vanguard Jazz Showcase – AVRS-7002-X. Again, this was a 10” recording. The cover featured a drawing of two trumpet players.

The album notes contained the following: ‘ABOUT THE COVER—The drawing on the cover is one of a series commissioned by Vanguard Recording Society, Inc., from the distinguished artist, Charles White. Mr. White won an Academy of Arts and Letters award in 1952, and, that same year, a National Prize of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. His work is represented in the Whitney Museum, Library of Congress, and other famous collections. The drawing does not portray any of the actual performers on this session, but rather reveals the human experiences out of which jazz comes, in this case symbolizing the young student of the horn and the old veteran.’ A version of this text was reproduced on a number of the Vanguard sleeves that Charles White illustrated.” 

“In 1965 Charles White provided one of his drawings for the sleeve of an RCA Victor Red Seal recording. [Morton] Gould: Spirituals for Orchestra / [Aaron] Copland: Dance Symphony, directed by Chicago Symphony Orchestra with Morton Gould conducting. The circular drawing used was made in 1965. A feature on White, that appeared in Negro Digest, June 1967, included the drawing, on page 47, with the following accompanying text: J’Accuse! No. 14, 1965, done in charcoal, Collection of Heritage Gallery (The drawing was nominated for an award by the National Academy of Recording Arts and sciences in 1966. It is also called ‘Spirituals’).”

“In 1961 Folkways Records released a unique recording—W.E.B. DuBois—a recorded autobiography/ interviewed by Moses Asch. The grand old man of African American politics of the 20th century was, by 1961, in his early 90s, so this was a very special undertaking. The record sleeve used Charles White’s distinctive portrait of DuBois, which had been previously appeared in print, in 1951, in a small pamphlet, entitled I Take my Stand for Peace.”

Charles White’s democratic art on behalf of human dignity: the aesthetic imperatives of ethical and spiritual “social realism” (4)

[The introduction to this series of posts is here.]

“During the 1950s Charles White began a notably fertile period as an artist whose work appeared on records of the Vanguard label. Vanguard was a particularly innovative record label, founded in 1949 by Seymour Solomon and his younger brother Maynard Solomon in New York City. The label grew to become one of America’s leading independent labels. Charles White supplied drawings and illustrations for a number of Vanguard records, for the most part with 10 inch sleeves. Many of these were jazz recordings, but in one or two instances his illustrations were used for other types of recordings.

In 1954, Charles White provided an illustration for the cover of the eponymously titled Sir Charles Thompson Trio. The record was released on the Vanguard label as part of its ‎Vanguard Jazz Showcase – AVRS-7008-X. Again, it was a 10” mono recording. Sir Charles Thompson (1918 – 2016) was an American swing and bebop pianist, organist, composer, and arranger. The cover of Sir Charles Thompson Trio featured a drawing of a pianist. The drawing was not signed by White and neither did the record sleeve contain any references to him.”

“In 1955, Charles White provided an illustration for the cover of another eponymously titled release by the Sir Charles Thompson Trio. The record was released on the Vanguard label as part of its ‎Vanguard Jazz Showcase – VRS-8018. Again, it was a 10” mono recording. Sir Charles Thompson (1918 – 2016) was an American swing and bebop pianist, organist, composer, and arranger. White’s drawing for this album was of a pair of hands, touching, with sensitivity and purpose, the keys of a piano. The hands took up pretty much the whole of the record cover and as such, accentuated an understanding that a pianist’s skills lay for the most part in her or his hands and fingers. This was an exquisite drawing which was somehow able to communicate a sense that a passage was being played which required attention, focus and care. There was an otherworldly dimension to the image, as it appeared as if the pianist (whose disembodied hands played with such delicacy and intent) was submerged in water, as was the piano being played. It was thus possible to read White’s illustrations such as this as distinctly interpretive. 

The notes on the back of the sleeve included ‘The drawing on the cover is by the distinguished artist Charles White, winner of several national awards, whose work is represented in the Whitney Museum in New York, Library of Congress, and other famous collections.’”

 

“In 1955, Charles White provided an illustration for the cover of a jazz recording by the Sam Most Sextet, the record being released on the Vanguard label as PPT 12009. Again, it was a 10” mono recording. It was perhaps White’s determination to portray his people that led him to a highly original approach to the sleeve he created for Vanguard’s mid-50s releases of music by Sam Most, then a young American jazz flautist, clarinetist and tenor saxophonist. Most was white and it was perhaps this consideration that lead White to provide his commissioners with a drawing of a pair of disembodied Black hands, playing a flute. Slightly angled, the top and bottom of the flute extended beyond the top and bottom of the sleeve, with a hand on the instrument, in both of the sections of the cover. In this version of the recording by the Sam Most Sextet, the imagery of the disembodied black hands playing a flute was duplicated, the two instruments crossing to create a dramatic V shape.

[From the notes on the back sleeve:] ‘The drawing on the cover is what photographers would call a ‘perspective’ and ‘angle shot’ of a flute and the player’s hands, as expanded and recreated in the unique technique of the distinguished artist Charles White. Mr. White’s work is represented in the Whitney Museum in New York, the Library of Congress, and his previous drawings for the Vanguard Jazz Showcase series have been on public display.’”

“In 1954, Charles White provided an illustration for the cover of folk singer Brother John Sellers’ recording Jack of Diamonds. The record was released on the Vanguard label as part of its ‎Vanguard Jazz Showcase – VRS-7022. Again, it was a 10” mono recording. The record sleeve stated ‘Cover drawings (sic) by Charles White.’”

“In 1955, Charles White provided an illustration for the cover of 2 Part Inventions in Jazz, a two-volume issue. The record illustrated here was an Austrian release, Vol. 1, on the Vanguard label as part of its ‎Vanguard Jazz Showcase – AVRS-7009-X. Again, these were 10” recordings. The cover featured two drawings by White, one of a piano player (Ellis Larkins’ instrument) and the other of a trumpet player (Ruby Braff’s instrument). The drawings had each been used on other Vanguard record sleeves, but for 2 Part Inventions in Jazz had been montaged together. There were no references to White on the back of the sleeve.”

“In 1954 Vanguard released Alexander Nevsky (VRS 451)– a cantana (a medium-length narrative piece of music for voices with instrumental accompaniment, typically with solos, chorus, and orchestra), an opus by Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953), Alexander Nevsky was a revered 13th century Russian leader (1219-1263), prince of Novgorod and then grand prince of Vladimir. He was an outstanding military leader and statesman who earned his surname from a victory over the Swedes at the Neva River. Sung in Russian, the music was performed by the Vienna State Opera Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by Mario Rossi. Ana Maria Iriarte was mezzo soprano. The record cover featured a montage, part of which was a rendering of Nevsky drawn by Charles White and dated ’54.’ Though the gatefold sleeve contained extensive notes when opened up, there was nothing about Charles White.”

“Perhaps the most unusual sleeve commissioned from White was the one he produced for Sandhog, a folk opera devised and executed by Earl Robinson, singer and pianist, and Waldo Salt, narrator. Miscellany notes by I S Horowitz, in the Billboard magazine of February 26, 1955, noted that, ‘Vanguard Records will soon cut its first L.P. in a new series of show albums. The initial set will be a “special composers’ performance” of “Sandhog,” with Earl Robinson and Waldo Salt featured. The work was recently introduced in New York.’ (I.S. Horowitz, ‘Liner Notes,’  Billboard magazine, February 26, 1955: 38.) A Sandhog was the informal term traditionally given to miners, and those construction workers toiling underground on excavation projects in cities such as New York. Sand was the brainchild of Robinson and Salt. Both were blacklisted (on account of their apparent or perceived left-leaning sympathies) during the McCarthy era, during which time hundreds of Americans, many of whom were artists, writers or otherwise involved in the creative industries, were accused of being communists or communist sympathizers and became the focus of aggressive investigations and questioning before government or private industry panels, committees and agencies. It was as a consequence of this targeting that figures such as Salt and Robinson came to be blacklisted. (Charles White’s own left-leaning impulses and his art work that reflected these impulses were chronicled in Mary Helen Washington’s The Other Blacklist: The African American Literary and Cultural Left of the 1950s [Columbia University Press, 2014] and Artists on the Left: American Artists and the Communist Movement, 1926-1956, by Andrew Hemingway [Yale University Press, 2002]….)

The record, (an opera-like musical) for which White provided a fascinating cover was about a sandhog (as mentioned, a tunnel digger in cities such as New York) named Johnny O’Sullivan, set in the late 19th Century. Characteristically, the opera celebrated the common people, and the laboring man. White’s sleeve feature a sympathetically drawn portrait of a sandhog, shirt sleeves rolled up, with industrial safety goggles perched on his forehead. His muscular arms dominated the lower part of the portrait, and as with other renderings by White, the man’s shirt was suggested by a series of sometimes briskly executed lines. The sandhog gazed, somewhat wistfully, out of the frame, suggesting, in the clearest yet unspoken terms, that though this man lived by the sweat of his brow, he was, even so, a man capable of deep thought and singular intellect. He was, to coin a phrase, a gentle giant. It was though, the delicate line drawing of a little girl jumping rope, in the upper left corner of the record sleeve, that re-inscribed this depiction of humanity. The girl was draw with her knees bent, as the jump rope passed beneath her, the folds of the rope momentarily joining the folds of the sandhog’s shirt. Robinson and Salt’s wish to celebrate the humble laborer was echoed by White’s drawing, including his simple, fetching, depiction of a carefree little girl, skipping, her hair in unpretentious, simple, pigtails.

The record was likely to have been released circa 1956, the only references to White on the sleeve being his signature on the drawing, located below the right-sided wrist of the sandhog. The signature was appended with ’56.” “Recorded in 1953, Vanguard Jazz Showcase released Vic Dickenson Septet, a four-volume set of records. Charles White provided an illustration that was used on the four covers. The drawing of an African American trombone player (the trombone being Dickenson’s instrument) was signed ‘Charles White ’55.’ This was Volume 4 [VRS 8013] and featured a blue background. This colour coding differentiated each of the four records. There were references to White in the notes on the back of the record cover, as follows: ‘The drawing on the cover is one of a series commissioned by Vanguard Recording Society, Inc., from the distinguished artist, Charles White. Mr. White won an Academy of Arts and Letters award in 1952, and, that same year, a National Prize of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. His work is represented in the Whitney Museum, Library of Congress, and other famous collections.’ A version of this text was reproduced on a number of the Vanguard sleeves that Charles White illustrated.”

“Recorded in 1953, Vanguard Jazz Showcase released Vic Dickenson Septet, a four-volume set of records. Charles White provided an illustration that was used on the four covers. The drawing of an African American trombone player (the trombone being Dickenson’s instrument) was signed ‘Charles White ’55.’ This was Volume 4 [VRS 8013] and featured a blue background. This colour coding differentiated each of the four records. There were references to White in the notes on the back of the record cover, as follows: ‘The drawing on the cover is one of a series commissioned by Vanguard Recording Society, Inc., from the distinguished artist, Charles White. Mr. White won an Academy of Arts and Letters award in 1952, and, that same year, a National Prize of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. His work is represented in the Whitney Museum, Library of Congress, and other famous collections.’ A version of this text was reproduced on a number of the Vanguard sleeves that Charles White illustrated.”

Charles White’s democratic art on behalf of human dignity: the aesthetic imperatives of ethical and spiritual “social realism” (3)

[The introduction to this series of posts is here.]

“In 1951, one of Charles White’s iconic pen and ink drawings, executed in 1949, was used on the cover of a publication celebrating Negro History Week. The drawing in question was ‘Frederick Douglass Lives Again (The Ghost of Frederick Douglass).’ The publication was ‘Prepared by EDUCATIONAL DEPARTMENT NEW YORK STATE COMMUNIST PARTY' and was ‘Dedicated to THE STRUGGLE FOR NEGRO LIBERATION.’ White was at the time in his early 30s and in a period in which his work was widely used in publications associated with the Communist Party. Though Douglass had died towards the close of the 19th century, he remained a giant of African American struggle and in this mi -20th century escalation of the civil rights struggle, it was no surprise that White should use this rendering of Douglass to such dramatic and emphatic effect in the drawing. In ‘Frederick Douglass Lives Again (The Ghost of Frederick Douglass),’ the titan was depicted pulling aside barbed wire fencing and pointing in the direction of progress and liberation. Several of the African Americans depicted as responding to Douglass’s stirring and rousing intervention were those holding aloft symbols of progress through education and learning. Elsewhere in the publication, on page 14, there was a ‘Drawing of the Trenton Six by the distinguished Negro artist, Charles White.’”

“This particular illustration on the cover of the January 1951 issue, was a portrait of William L. Patterson. It is a striking, dignified portrait of the personality, in determined mood, with a visionary expression. Patterson was a member of the Communist Party USA from 1926 to 1929 and transferred his membership to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1929 to 1936. When he was appointed to the Central Committee of the American Communist Party, he resumed his membership in it. He was a delegate to the Sixth Congress of the Communist International in 1928 and to the Tenth Plenum of the Executive of the Comintern in 1930. He also served as an official of the Red International of Labor Unions and as a representative of the Communist International in France.

A feature on Patterson, ‘William L. Patterson: Militant Leader,’ written by Michael Gold, appeared in the following month’s issue of Masses & Mainstream, February 1951, Volume 4, No. 2: 34 - 43.”

[See too, Gerald Horne, Black Revolutionary: William Patterson and the Globalization of the African American Freedom Struggle. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2013.]

Charles White’s democratic art on behalf of human dignity: the aesthetic imperatives of ethical and spiritual “social realism” (2)

Introduction

This is the first in a number of forthcoming posts on the work of Charles White that I found at a website (permission granted) maintained by Professor Edward (‘Eddie’) Chambers, Art History and African Diaspora Art, Department of Art and Art History, University of Texas at Austin. These works of art “reflect[ ] the artist’s prolific work as an illustrator of book jackets, record sleeves, and other published/printed material.” Professor Chambers quotes the poet Nikki Giovanni on this score: “Charles White and his art were introduced to me through magazines and books—that’s why I love them.” Later I will post items found in exhibitions and catalogues and more directly related to my ongoing reading and research on White’s life and art (this is the second in the larger series on same, hence the parenthetical ‘2’ in the title). Quoted material is from Professor Chambers and any bracketed remarks that appear on occasion are from yours truly.

“NEGRO: U.S.A: A Graphic History of the Negro People in America, was a set of prints issued by The Workshop of Graphic Art, 106 East 14th Street, New York City, around the end of the 1940s - beginning of the 1950s. The folio was issued as Workshop Prints No. 2, The Graphic Workshop and included work by:

• Leonard Baskin
• Roy DeCarava
• Antonio Frasconi
• Robert Gwathmey
• Bud Handelsman
• Charles Keller
• Louise Krueger
• Jacob Landau
• Al Lass
• Jacob Lawrence
• Jerry Martin
• Leona Pierce
• Jim Schlecker
• Edward Walsh
• Charles White

This folio may well be incomplete and certainly lacks the jacket and the Foreword by Dr. Herbert Aptheker. The jacket features this print, Negro: U.S.A., which lends its name to the folio itself. This print, signed CHARLES WHITE ‘48 was one of two in this incomplete folio.”

“Masses & Mainstream, was a New York-based journal, published from 1948 to 1963, and was an American Marxist monthly publication. It resulted from a merger between New Masses, which ceased publication in January 1948, and Mainstream, a Communist cultural quarterly established the previous year. Charles White contributed illustrations to a number of the covers of Masses & Mainstream and the journal published a set of White’s prints in 1953.

The cover of Masses & Mainstream’s February 1951 (Volume 4, Number 2) dedicated to Negro History Week 1951, featured a print by White. There were two further prints by White in the issue, though none of them were accompanied by credits. The contents page stated ‘Drawings by Charles White’….”

“Black Lives Matter”: the ennobling and social realist art of Charles (Wilbert) White (1)

Charles White, Mother and Child, 1953

“Black Lives Matter” could be said to have been the motivating proposition behind the art of the black artist Charles (Wilbert) White (April 2, 1918 – October 3, 1979), whose choice of media included drawings, easel paintings, lithographs, and murals. He was a master of portraiture and aptly described as “one of the nation’s most skillful draftsmen,” committed to a style of social realism suffused with spiritual, ethical, and political values, while largely eschewing styles of art in vogue during his adult lifetime. Among the artistic influences on his art we note Mexican and African American muralism, while speculating about the possible impact on his aesthetic sensibilities from the fact that his first wife was Elizabeth Catlett (April 15, 1915 – April 2, 2012). I hope to occasionally post more on White’s life and art over the next several months.   

The following is from an oral history transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview with Charles Wilbert White on March 9, 1965. The interview was conducted at the Heritage Gallery in Los Angeles, California by Betty Lochrie Hoag for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. The “interview conducted as part of the Archives of American Art’s New Deal and the Arts project, which includes over 400 interviews of artists, administrators, historians, and others involved with the federal government’s art programs and the activities of the Farm Security Administration in the 1930s and early 1940s.”

“… [B]ooks had been my second greatest passion in life. And by the time I got into high school I’d read all the books of Jack London. I had read Mark Twain, all of his works. I was going to go through the alphabet in the library. I started with the A’s and it didn’t matter what the subject was, fiction or non-fiction, or what it was, I was just going to read right through. So I started and naturally I didn’t even get halfway, but this was the course I took. Somehow in all this exploring of books and different kinds of books on different subjects, I came across quite accidentally in the library one of the most definitive and one of the most important books that had ever been done on the culture of the Negro, which was a book called The New Negro by Dr. Alain Locke who was Professor of Philosophy, chairman of the Philosophy Department at Howard University. Dr. Locke was the authority on American Negro culture, with a particular interest to me because of his own special interest in art, the history of the Negro artist in America.

This book opened my eyes, because I heard names, read names, read of people that I’d never heard of before, like Countee Cullen, the great Negro poet. [I] heard Paul Robeson’s name for the first time. Most of the great literary figures of the early twenties, when it was a period which they called ‘The Negro Renaissance’ when the first blossoming of Negro culture in America really came to a head. And this book dealt specifically with that. Well, once I found this one book, then I began to search for other books on Negroes, which led to Negro historical figures, individuals that played a role in the abolition of slavery, names like Denmark Vesey, who led a slave revolt. Nat Turner who also led a slave revolt. Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass, all were names that in later years I’ve become quite well read on. For the first time, at 14 years old, these names came to my mind. I became aware the Negroes had a history in America. So, when I went to high school and had to take U.S. History, the first year I got through fine. Then the second year I decided that—I began to question why these names weren’t mentioned in the standard U.S. History which we all studied, which was Beard’s History. The only Negro name that was mentioned in there was Crispus Attucks, the first man to die in the American Revolution and there was one sentence on Crispus Attucks. There was nothing else throughout the whole of Beard’s History. So I read this and I remember the first day of class I had in my second year, I raised this question to the teacher and she told me to sit down. She didn’t even bother to be polite about it.”

When the Golden Rule is not pure gold: the arbitrary circumscription of moral responsibility

In addition to the general human proclivity for weakness of will (akrasia), for states of denial, self-deception, and wishful thinking, for occasionally succumbing to illusions, or even imbibing the occasional delusional thought, we are constitutionally or dispositionally prone to any number of cognitive and social biases. This should enter into any account, in moral psychological terms, of why even ostensibly “good” people tend to arbitrarily and thus irrationally circumscribe their sphere of moral considerations and conduct. Thus, even the Golden Rule, which “does not ask for heroic self-sacrifice or saintly forbearance” (or supererogatory moral behavior), is often limited to the private or intimate realm, as it were (in contrast to the parable of the Good Samaritan), thereby excluding its logical extension into public or political morality. Interestingly and perhaps surprisingly, it was Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) who invoked the golden rule as axiomatic for prescriptive social morality.* I was provoked into thinking about such matters after reading the following paragraph from George Kateb’s important book, Human Dignity (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011):

“The vexatious problem is that people who practice the golden rule in everyday life are sometimes willing to give their support to political policies that do not rise to the best political morality [this is a distinct but not unrelated problem from what occurs with moral and political rationalizations for ‘dirty hands’]. They are uncommonly good persons who go out of their way to help others, but who think that they are good citizens when they allow or endorse state activities that regularly invade the rights of people abroad or at home [i.e., in their own country]. They implicitly accept the division between personal and public spheres of action, but in such a way as to confine morality to personal life and exclude it from public life. It is as if the only goodness that can be shown is to people to whom one can do it in one’s own person [Perhaps this is why La Rochefoucauld wrote that ‘Virtue would not go so far without vanity to bear it company’ and ‘We should often blush at our noblest deeds if the world were to see all their underlying motives’] The irony is that those who try to follow the golden rule show imagination in dealing with the suffering of a few, but lose all imagination of suffering when events are distant or on a large scale. [There may be something at work here that is other or more than a ‘failure of imagination.’ According to William Ian Miller, we are liable to be afflicted with ‘two desperate and inescapable desires: to be thought well by others and to think well of ourselves. The second desire depends on the first more than the first on the second; in any event, they are complexly intertwined. Nor is either of these desires mere vanity: they are much of what makes us socializable; nor is it entirely distinct from what we, flatteringly, call conscience.’ The desire for esteem and a desire for self-esteem are more easily satisfied in an interpersonal world or communal context in which we directly interact with others, although La Rochefoucauld and the moralists writes Jon Elster, believed ‘civilized life is held together by the desire for esteem or vanity, which has the miraculous capacity to mimic virtue.’] They have the imagination to see what is before them but not to see what isn’t. Patriotism [which, in this case, is indistinguishable from nationalism] is one of the passions that help to bring about the public blindness of private goodness.”

There is a book that provides the requisite philosophically sound moral argument for extension of morality beyond not only the private sphere or intimate realm (or the slightly larger interpersonal space of daily life), but also beyond that crooked circle bounded by one’s fellow citizens as members of a nation-state: please see Robert E. Goodin’s Protecting the Vulnerable: A Reanalysis of Our Social Responsibilities (University of Chicago Press, 1985).

* For a brief account, see the relevant sections from my introductory essay on the Golden Rule.

Reflections on the nature of truth from several philosophers (with concluding comments from yours truly)

“From the cowardice that shrinks from new truth,
From the laziness that is content with half-truths,
From the arrogance that thinks it knows all truth,
Oh, God of Truth, deliver us.” – author unknown

“The concept factual judgment or judgment with a truth-value and the concept of ethical judgment will be different concepts—such a distinction is there to be made, just as the concept mouse and the concept mammal are different concepts—but the distinctness does not preclude a judgment’s being both a factual and an ethical judgment. Compare the way in which the distinct concepts mouse and mammal will each collect any particular mouse you please, Timmy Willy or Johnny Town or whichever, within their extensions. Ethical judgments could be a subset of factual judgments even if they were an utterly special and essentially contestable subset. In this way, we can have a clear difference between the ethical-as-such and the factual-as-such without any dichotomy between their property provinces. The hope of making good a claim of this sort is the characteristic hope of ethical objectivism or moral cognitivism.” — David Wiggins

“Objectivity calls for putting one’s idiosyncratic predilections and parochial preferences aside in forming one’s beliefs, evaluations and choices. It is a matter of proceeding in line not with one’s inclinations but with the dictates of impartial reason. The universality of reason must be recognized: What is rational for one person to do, to believe, or to value will thereby also of necessity be equally rational for all the rest of us who might find ourselves in the same circumstances. For rationality is inherently “objective:” it does not reconfigure itself to meet the idiosyncratic predilections of particular individuals. To be sure, objectivity will have to take context into account, seeing that different individuals and groups confront very different objective situations. Rationality is universal, but it is circumstantially universal—and objectivity with it. It is a matter of what “any of us” would do in one’s place. [….] The contextuality of good reasons can be reconciled with the universality of rationality itself by taking a hierarchical view of the process through which the absolutistic (and uniform) conception of ideal rationality is thought to bear context differently, on the resolution of concrete cases and particular situations.” — Nicholas Rescher

“The content of an assertion is intrinsically related to a conceptual scheme. [….] In effect, propositions, true or false, are implicitly indexed to some conceptual scheme or schemes. [….] Facts are internal to conceptual schemes, or ways of dividing the world into objects, among which there can be equally acceptable alternatives. [….] [S]uch metaphysical pluralism is consistent with realism about truth.” — Michael P. Lynch

“[T]here is no logical incoherence in supposing that facts and propositions are relative to conceptual schemes and that truth is the correspondence of (relative) propositions with (relative) facts.” — Michael P. Lynch

“[T]he conditions under which a proposition is true are partly determined by the conceptual scheme in which the proposition is expressed. But what makes a proposition true is not its relation to a scheme but whether or not the conditions in question obtain. For a claim to be true (or false), the conditions must be relative to a scheme. Yet the reason that the claim is true is not because it is relative to a scheme (as the truth relativist must hold); it is true because it is the case. [….] A fact, in the human sense, is simply what is the case.” — Michael P. Lynch

“[I]n taking concepts to be flexible and fluid-like, the pluralist is not saying that we are confused about our concepts. Rather, the point is that concepts are not absolutely determinate or closed; they do not have a fixed use in every possible situation. This does not imply, however, that no concepts have determinate uses in all actual situations. Some concepts may be perfectly determinate in actual situations, but not in all possible situations. [….] For the pluralist, concepts are … flexible; they are subject to possible extension in the fact of unforeseen circumstances. Hence, there can be irresolvable disagreements over how to apply any concept. In a sense, concepts are therefore always possibly vague in a nonpejorative sense; they have what Waismann called ‘open texture.’” — Michael P. Lynch

“Thinking about why we should care about truth tells us two things about it: first, that truth is, in part, a deeply normative property—it is a value. And second, this is a fact that any adequate theory of truth must account for. In light of this fact, I suggest that truth, like other values, should be understood as depending on, but not reducible to, lower-level properties. Yet which properties truth depends on or supervenes on may change with the type of belief in question. This opens the door to a type of pluralism: truth in ethics may be realized differently than in physics.” — Michael P. Lynch

“Truth is a property that is good for beliefs to have. Since propositions are the content of beliefs, and it is the content of a belief and not the act of believing that is true, we can also say that truth is the property that makes a proposition good to believe.” — Michael P. Lynch

“All truths are relative, yes, but our concept of truth needn’t be a relative concept.” — Michael P. Lynch

“Truth is immanent in distinct properties of beliefs; our ordinary concept of truth is univocal.” — Michael P. Lynch

“Deflationists are right to be skeptical of the thought that any one traditional theory of truth can tell us what all and only true beliefs have in common. At a suitable level of abstraction, understanding what true beliefs are simply involves simply understanding what they do—their role in our cognitive economy. To play this role is to satisfy certain truisms, truisms that display truth’s connection to other concepts. It is this truth-role that gives truth its unity; the features that are constitutive of this role are what true propositions have in common, and simply having those features is what we ordinarily mean by saying that a proposition is true. But not all facts are exhausted by the truisms. One such fact is that there is more than one property that make beliefs true. Truth…is immanent in those other properties of beliefs. In some domains, what makes a belief true is that it corresponds to reality; in others, beliefs are made true by a form of coherence. [….] [Traditional theories of truth] are not best conceived of as theories of truth itself. They are better seen as theories of the properties that make beliefs true—or manifest truth.” — Michael P. Lynch

“A theory of truth should make sense of the following metaphysical principle: Truth is One: There is a single property named by ‘truth’ that all and only true propositions share.” The theory should also be “able to make sense of the intuition that drives pluralism about truth, namely, Truth is Many: there is more than one way to be true.” — Michael P. Lynch

“[T]ruth is a single higher-level property whose instantiations across kinds of propositions are determined by a class of other, numerically distinct properties. [….] Truth is many because different properties may manifest truth in distinct domains of inquiry. In those domains they have the truish features [we find in those folk-truisms enumerated above]. Truth is one because there is a single property so manifested, and ‘truth’ rigidly names that property.” — Michael P. Lynch

“Truth is an immanent functional property that is variably manifested.” — Michael P. Lynch

“We have to come to terms with epistemic realities, which include:
• the diversity in people’s experiences and cognitive situations
• the variation of ‘available data’
• the under-determination of facts by data (all too frequently insufficient)
• the variability of people’s cognitive values (evidential security, simplicity, etc.)
• the variation of cognitive methodology and the epistemic ‘state of the art’
Such factors—and others like them—make for an unavoidable difference in the beliefs, judgments, and evaluations even of otherwise ‘perfectly rational’ people.” — Nicholas Rescher

“[W]e can (quite appropriately) disagree about what it is that is true and what good reasons are at hand, while yet maintaining an (appropriately) absolutistic view of what truth and good reasons are. The ideal nature of actual truth and of actual good reasons that inhere in our (defining) conceptions of inquiry establishes a clear limit to the implications of cognitive relativism. To re-emphasize: a pluralistic contextualism of potential basis-diversity is altogether compatible with an absolutistic commitment to our own basis. One can accept the prospect of alternatives as available to the community at large without seeing more than one of them appropriate for oneself. One can combine a pluralism of possible alternatives with an absolutistic position regarding ideal rationality and a firm and reasoned commitment to the standards intrinsic to one’s own position. We ourselves are bound to see our own (rationally adopted) standards as superior to the available alternatives—and are, presumably, rationally entitled to do so in light of the cognitive values we in actual fact endorse. The crux of the pluralism issue lies in the question of just what it is that one is being pluralistic about.” — Nicholas Rescher

“There is no more evidence that science converges to one final worldview than there is that literature or morality converge to one final worldview.” — Hilary Putnam

“… [The] ‘scientific’ is not coextensive with ‘rational.’ There are many perfectly rational beliefs that cannot be tested ‘scientifically.’ But more than that, … there are whole domains of fact with respect to which present-day science tells us nothing at all, not even that the facts in question exist. These domains are not new or strange. Three of them are (1) the domain of objective values; (2) the domain of freedom; (3) the domain of rationality itself.” — Hilary Putnam

“Heeding the strictures of morality is part and parcel of a rational being’s cultivation of the good. For us rational creatures morality (the due care for the interests of rational beings) is an integral component of reason’s commitment to the enhancement of value. Reason’s commitment to the value of rationality accordingly carries in its wake a commitment to morality. The obligatoriness of morality ultimately roots in an ontological imperative to value realization with respect to self and world that is incumbent on free agents as such. On this ontological perspective, the ultimate basis of moral duty roots in the obligation we have as rational agents (toward ourselves and the world at large) to make the most and best of our opportunities for self-development. Moral obligation ultimately inheres in this ontological obligation to the realization of values in one’s own life.” — Nicholas Rescher

“We learn most of what we know about what makes life worth living, and how to live it well, from non-scientific sources–biography, narrative history, serious journalism, and religious texts [I would add ‘philosophy’], not to mention novels, poetry, drama and the visual arts. For Europeans at least, there is more insight to be got from a single volume by Jane Austen or Gustave Flaubert than a whole shelf of treatises on the social psychology of bourgeois love and marriage.” — John Ziman

“The question of truth and the question of life’s meaning are among the most fundamental questions of moral philosophy. [….] The question of life’s meaning does, as the untheoretical suppose, lead into the question of truth—and conversely.” — David Wiggins

“To affirm that there can be several different systems all giving us, at the same time, varying and yet legitimate ‘true’ metaphysical descriptions of the world does not…necessarily entail that there are many realities, that nothing is absolutely real, or, put less dramatically, that there is no such thing as a single, context neutral description or account of the world, that is, as the world really is. It only means that no metaphysical description of it can be outside every possible conceptual framework, but Reality itself is. Nor does it follow that any assertions about this ’real’ or ‘true’ world beyond all conceptual frameworks, are nonsense. [....] The conceptual frameworks we build in the realm of rational thought are not useless just because they cannot describe Ultimate Reality. Serious examination of, reflection on, these explanatory and interpretive schemes, their differences and overlaps, are crucial to expanding and deepening our understanding of reality, even if these conceptual frameworks (any or all possible combinations and collections of them) cannot bring us the Absolute Truth. If nothing else, they enable us to understand the relativity of conceptual truths and structures, and make us see what Pascal meant when he said that the highest function of reason is to show us the limitations of reason.” — Nandini Iyer

“I think that the idealist “picture” calls our attention to vitally important features of our practice—and what is the point of having “pictures” if we are not interested in seeing how well they represent what we actually think and do? That we do not, in practice, actually construct a unique vision of the world, but only a vast number of versions (not all of them equivalent…) is something that ‘realism’ hides from us.” — Hilary Putnam

Speaking of truth, and for what it’s worth, I’ve come to notice how I turn again and again to three philosophers in particular: Nicholas Rescher, Hilary Putnam, and Michael P. Lynch (especially the last), in an attempt to understand the meaning of (‘absolute’) Truth and (relative) truths. I perhaps should mention one more philosopher who wrote a book that is very much in the spirit of works by the aforementioned philosophers, Lenn E. Goodman’s In Defense of Truth: A Pluralistic Approach (Humanity Books/Prometheus, 2001). With regard to religious and philosophical worldviews, I often think of questions of truth from the vantage points provided by both orthodox and non-orthodox Indian philosophies (and, to a lesser extent, several Chinese worldviews, the most prominent being ‘Confucianism’ and Daoism), but three in particular stand apart, at least for me: Advaita Vedānta (in Hinduism), Jainism, and Buddhism. I have not been able to reconcile the different perspectives, arguments, and attitudes to truth among these philosophers and worldviews, but there appears to be significant overlap among them, at least here and there, and in varying degrees of family resemblance (the overlap can be metaphysical, epistemic, psychological, having to do with philosophy of language, ritual praxis, ethical orientation, therapeutic regimen or spiritual exercises, etc.).

The closest I may ever come to coherently connecting the dots scattered about above will be in a piece I’ve been writing over the years about how best to fairly and impartially compare and contrast religious and non-religious worldviews based on a belief that each, in principle, contains truths we can appreciate, even if we may not fully share them or in spite of the fact that they contradict truth-claims found in other worldviews. I am constitutionally averse to worldview claims that add up to a monopoly or open-ended patent on truth. Finally, I’m inclined to believe that there may be something like an elective affinity between types of character and associated dispositional temperament (connected, in turn to a larger social and cultural history and context) and one’s worldview or lifeworld (this being the individual's peculiar or idiosyncratic interpretation and understanding of an ‘official’ worldview), assuming it is freely chosen, as it were; in other words, there is a strong correlation between the kind of person one is, construed in largely moral psychological terms, and the sort of worldview one is drawn to, assuming a period in one’s youth that allowed for (if not encouraged) critical examination of the presuppositions, assumptions, values, and ethics of the religion, philosophy, or way of life (tradition) in which one was raised, in which one was socialized, to which one has grown accustomed to spontaneously relying upon as a moral compass and general guide to worthy living or personal fulfillment.

Thus a particular worldview or lifeworld may fit this person better than that person, it suits her, so to speak. Individuation and self-realization might lead to adopting a different worldview or lifeworld over the course of one’s lifetime, but the kinds of commitment, psychological benefits and values of community or fraternal association that are part and parcel of many worldviews should mean we consider the possible downsides of (perhaps premature or wrongly-motivated) abandonment and conversion (an immensely fraught topic I will not discuss here), including its possible deleterious effects on the values and commitments of others.

References & Further Reading

• Castañeda, Hector-Neri, “Philosophy as Science and as a Worldview,” in Avner Cohen and Marcelo Dascal, eds. The Institution of Philosophy: A Discipline in Crisis? La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1989.
• Cottingham, John. On the Meaning of Life. London: Routledge, 2003.
• Cottingham, John. The Spiritual Dimension: Religion, Philosophy and Human Value. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
• Dupré, John. Human Nature and the Limits of Science. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 2001.
• Goodman, Lenn E. In Defense of Truth: A Pluralistic Approach. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books/Prometheus Books, 2001.
• Iyer, Nandini. “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” in Knut A. Jacobsen, ed. Theory and Practice of Yoga: Essays in Honour of Gerald James Larson. Leiden: Brill, 2005: 99-127.
• Kupperman, Joel. Value … And What Follows. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1999.
• Lloyd, G.E.R. Cognitive Variations: Reflections on the Unity & Diversity of the Human Mind. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 2007.
• Lynch, Michael P. Truth in Context: An Essay on Pluralism and Objectivity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998.
• Lynch, Michael P. True to Life: Why Truth Matters. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004.
• Lynch, Michael P. Truth as One and Many. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
• Matilal, Bimal Krishna. The Central Philosophy of Jainism: Anekāntavāda. Ahmedabad: L.D. Institute of Indology, 1981.
• Mou, Bo, ed. Two Roads to Wisdom? Chinese and Analytic Philosophical Traditions. Chicago, IL: Open Court, 2001.
• Murdoch, Iris. The Sovereignty of Good. London: Routledge, 1991.
• Norton, David. Democracy and Moral Development: A Politics of Virtue. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991.
• Putnam, Hilary. Reason, Truth and History. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
• Putnam, Hilary (James Conant, ed.). Realism with a Human Face. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.
• Putnam, Hilary. The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.
• Rescher, Nicholas. Pluralism: Against the Demand for Consensus. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1993.
• Rescher, Nicholas. The Validity of Values. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993.
• Rescher, Nicholas. Objectivity: The Obligations of Impersonal Reason. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997.
• Rescher, Nicholas. Nature and Understanding: The Metaphysics and Method of Science. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 2000.
• Rescher, Nicholas. Cognitive Pragmatism: The Theory of Knowledge in Pragmatic Perspective. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001.
• Wiggins, David. Ethics: Twelve Lectures on the Philosophy of Morality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006.
• Ziman, John. Real Science: What It Is, and What It Means. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Policing in the United States: essential reading

• Balko, Radley. Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces (Public Affairs, 2013).
• Butler, Paul. Chokehold: Policing Black Men (The New Press, 2017).
• Camp, Jordan T. and Christina Heatherton, eds. Policing the Planet: Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter (Verso, 2016).
• Cobbina, Jennifer E. Hands Up, Don’t Shoot: Why the Protests in Ferguson and Baltimore Matter… (New York University Press, 2019).
• Davis, Angela J., ed. Policing the Black Man: Arrest, Prosecution, and Imprisonment (Pantheon Books, 2017).
• Greenberg, David F., ed. Crime and Capitalism: Readings in Marxist Criminology (Temple University Press, updated ed., 1993).
• Harring, Sydney L. Policing a Class Society (Haymarket Books, 2^nd, 2017).
• Muñiz, Ana. Police, Power, and the Production of Racial Boundaries (Rutgers University Press, 2015).
• Nelson, Jill, ed. Police Brutality: An Anthology (W.W. Norton & Co., 2000).
• Pegues, Jeff. Black and Blue: Inside the Divide between the Police and Black America (Prometheus Books, 2017).
• Rios, Victor M. Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys (New York University Press, 2011).
• Schenwar, Maya, Joe Macaré, and Alan Yu-lan Price, eds. Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? Police Violence and Resistance in the United States (Haymarket Books, 2016).
• Taylor, Flint. The Torture Machine: Racism and Police Violence in Chicago (Haymarket Books, 2019).
• Vitale, Alex S. The End of Policing (Verso, 2017).
• Williams, Kristian. Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America (AK Press, revised ed., 2015).

The Culture of Police Silence

Why can be done about police brutality and criminal misconduct? The murder of George Floyd was shocking and depraved. That other officers did not intervene is also indefensible. So also, is the behavior of officers who fired rubber bullets at peaceful law- abiding demonstrators including members of the press. The audacity of these officers is appalling.

Suppose a private citizen murdered another citizen in front of police officers. In the absence of collusion, wouldn’t the officers try to stop the murder and arrest the citizen? Suppose private citizens fired rubber bullets at citizens involved in a lawful protest or shot them at members of the press? Wouldn’t the officers arrest the private citizens for their criminal conduct.

What accounts for the daring of the officers who engage in criminal conduct? The fact is that the odds that these officers would be arrested by another police officer is quite small. As Ibrim X. Kindi wrote in The Atlantic in May, 2018 ”The National Institute of Ethics surveyed 3,714 officers and academic recruits from 42 states in 1999 and 2000. A no-snitching code of silence commonly exists, responded 79 percent of officers. More than half of the officers said this no-snitch code does not bother them. Nearly half of the officers reported witnessing misconduct and not reporting it. That’s probably because 73 percent of responding officers said they’d be fired if they snitched. And 73 percent of the officers said the individuals pressuring them to keep quiet were leaders.”   https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/05/quis-custodiet-ipsos-custodes/560324/

Yes, social media has made criminal conduct by police officers more risky, but the no-snitching culture of police silence has to be frontally attacked. Criminal justice cannot be achieved when police officers participate in a culture making them complicit in criminal conduct.