by Cieslafdn | Jan 2, 2015 | Rosenwald Grant Recipients
In 1950, while working for Life magazine, Gordon Parks returned to his hometown of Fort Scott, Kansas to photograph his classmates from the segregated Plaza School. Parks previously received a Rosenwald fellowship in 1942 to work at the Farm Security Administration. Known for his striking images that highlighted racial issues in America, Parks’ portrait of his former classmates offers a glimpse into the lives of African Americans on the cusp of the civil rights movement. Although the series was originally intended to be a Life cover story, the magazine never published the photographs, which were soon forgotten (you can read about another discovery of lost Parks’ photographs in a previous blog post).
An article in The New York Times details how the photographs were uncovered in the archives of the Gordon Parks Foundation by a curious curator at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. The museum will be opening an exhibition of the lost photos on January 17. The photographs themselves depict intimate moments from the lives of Parks’ now-adult classmates, most who were struggling to survive under the burdens of racism and segregation. Accompanying the photographs are Parks’ own words, his notes possibly intended as an introduction in Life magazine. Although there is no official explanation for why the story never ran, the exhibit’s curator speculates the spread was too political and newsworthy for the magazine.
by Cieslafdn | Dec 29, 2014 | Rosenwald Fund
A new book, “Driving the King” by Ravi Howard, offers a glimpse into the struggles of the early civil rights movement through the eyes of Nat King Cole and his fictitious best friend, Nat Weary. Although the novel is set among the backdrop of real events, such as the Montgomery bus boycotts, the specifics of Mr. Cole’s experiences during the 1950s are admittedly made up.
A reviewer in the New York Times points out, “But even this book’s distortions suggest a man whose story remains barely told, while few white singers of his day are without up-to-date biographers.” While Nat King Cole may be lacking the recognition an authentic biography affords, suggesting perhaps the racial barriers he faced in his career and reflected in the novel still linger today, his popularity is hardly forgotten. Timuel Black, an interviewee in
The Rosenwald Schools, fondly remembers Nat King Cole as one of the many illustrious African American celebrities who visited the Michigan Boulevard Garden Apartments. Cole is pictured in the film along with other Michigan Boulevard Garden Apartment visitors Langston Hughes and Marian Anderson.
Read more about the book
here by Cieslafdn | Dec 23, 2014 | Social Justice Work
Selma is a dramatic film about a courageous chapter of the Civil Rights movement in Alabama when Rev. Martin Luther King led the march for voting rights. Starring Giovanni Ribisi, David Oyelowo, Tim Roth, Oprah Winfrey and Cuba Gooding Jr., Selma will open this week in a limited theatrical run. I got a chance to see an advance screening of this powerful and moving film last night and I highly recommend you see it when it plays at a theater near you. The film includes the brave story of Civil Rights icon John Lewis, played by Stephan James, who risked his life fighting for Civil Rights in Selma in 1965 to obtain our most basic voting rights for African Americans.
Rep. Lewis was interviewed and will appear in our upcoming film The Rosenwald Schools.
by Cieslafdn | Dec 23, 2014 | Rosenwald Grant Recipients
The “Talladega Murals,” completed by future Rosenwald fellow Hale Woodruff in 1938, have been on tour since 2012 in galleries all over the country. This traveling exhibit is an amazing chance to see these great works, and we’ve reported on their progress here on this blog over the past couple years.
One of Woodruff’s mural on display in Washington D.C.
Photo credit: The Washington Post
Michael E. Ruane, writing for the Washington Post, recently reviewed the exhibit in its current location, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. The article, which includes quotes from National Museum of African American History and Culture experts like Jacquelyn D. Serwer and Kinshasha Holman Conwill (both of whom were interviewed for our upcoming documentary, The Rosenwald Schools), is well worth a read. Ruane tells the story of the Amistad slave ship revolt and explains how Woodruff’s paintings of it revived interest and became an important historical touchstone for representation of the unique and powerful event. As Conwill puts it in the article, the murals depict “the rarest of moments in 19th-century history […] the triumph of Africans over their enslavement that is a success.”
You can read more about the exhibit, Woodruff and the Amistad at the Washington Post.
by Cieslafdn | Dec 22, 2014 | Social Justice Work
Rep. John Lewis of Georgia wrote about the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases in The Atlantic on Monday.
There is a growing discontent in this country. And if the fires of frustration and discontent continue to grow without redress, I fear for the future of this country. There will not be peace in America. I do not condone violence under any circumstance. It does not lead to lasting change. I do not condone either public rioting or state-sponsored terrorism. “True peace,” King would tell us, “is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.”
Rep. John Lewis, who attended a Rosenwald School as a child, will appear in our upcoming documentary The Rosenwald Schools.
Rep. John Lewis during our 2013 interview with him
Photo credit: The Ciesla Foundation, September 2013
Charlene Drew Jarvis, the daughter of Rosenwald Fund fellow Dr. Charles Drew, also shared her insights on the troubling current events recently, in an address to the Metropolitan Chapter of the Links Inc. Here’s an excerpt of her speech, which was published in The Washington Post:
The narrative about race is changing. Witness the CBS national news just last night in which two young whites acknowledged that they never had to think about race as they went about their daily lives, but they understood that the African Americans on the panel think about race all-of-the-time. Their ability to empathize, to put themselves in the shoes of African Americans, is a very important part of better communication between the races.
Jarvis was also interviewed for The Rosenwald Schools on the Rosenwald Fund’s timely assistance of her father Dr. Drew’s graduate study and his later innovations in banked blood.
Charlene Drew Jarvis during our 2012 interview with her
Photo credit: The Ciesla Foundation, May 2012
Recent Comments