TWO PICTURES STRIKINGLY ALIKE yet profoundly different. Thumbing through old magazines this afternoon, I came across “Slavery and Freedom” (with a poster of Uncle Tom’s Cabin at the top) by B.Cory Kilvert; it appeared on the cover of the old Life humor magazine, October 7, 1915. And it reminded me of the other painting, Norman Rockwell’s famed “The Problem We All Live With” done for Look, January 14, 1964. Rockwell was commemorating the courage of Ruby Bridges, a six-year-old girl who was the first black student to integrate New Orleans public schools in November 1960. She was escorted to school by federal marshals amidst violent signs of protest and fearful ignorance, about which one of her escorts later said: “She showed a lot of courage. She never cried. She didn’t whimper. She just marched along like a little soldier. And we’re all very proud of her.” The old Life cover, done 49 years earlier, depicts a different world and a different point of view. In 1915, there were evidently little black girls of privilege against which Kilvert contrasted the fate of a little white girl, who is clearly of a working class decidedly poorer than that of the black girl. How times change.
Posted on: Sat, 03 Jan 2015 23:58:03 +0000
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