Blog 5

I have always been a visual learner. I have always appreciated art, not only for its beauty, but for the messages people convey through it. Some are abstract and tell a story, but many artists of today produce art that holds a strong message towards the problems of the world. Dread Scott said it best in his lecture, that we need to change art because it is constantly changing to help the world around us.

Maurice Berger, a professor at the University of Maryland, is the man behind a moving and expansive new exhibition documenting the effect of imagery on the civil rights movement for the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Berger states that “One of the most extraordinary and least understood aspects of Dr. Martin Luther King’s leadership was his incisive understanding of the power of visual images to alter public opinion,”. Berger worked on the collection—movies, tele­vision clips, graphic arts and photography, most of it from eBay—over the past six years. But he’s been putting it together his entire life.

In 1960, when Berger was 4 years old, his family moved into a predominantly black and Hispanic housing project on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Berger lends himself to the project and finds his inspiration and drive from his youth, as “My world was not a world of whiteness when I grew up, which was great,”. It gave him insights into black culture and racism. He recalls, for example, that he could walk unconcerned around a department store, while his black friends would be followed by store security guards.

In the exhibit, Berger examines how visual messages were used not only by movement leaders and the media, but also by ordinary people not mentioned in history books. Berger claims he “really wanted to understand the level of human interaction on the ground. Whether it was TV or magazines, the world got changed one image at a time.” He believes the most simple images can deliver an emotional wallop, such as a poster by San Francisco graphic artists that declares in red letters, “I Am a Man” referencing the sanitation worker strike. Berger examines the 1955 murder and mutilation of 14-year-old Emmett Till, after he was accused of whistling at a white woman while visiting Mississippi. His gruesome death, where his mother’s insistence on having an open casket at his funeral, became a rallying point for the civil rights movement. Berger explained how she wanted attention to be on how disgusting the murder was, to demonstrate the blatant racism of not only the uncalled for death, but the inhumane way it was done. “She also directed photographers to take pictures of the body, saying, ‘Let the world see what I’ve seen’, and I thought, well then I’ll answer Mrs. Till’s call. It’s this totally distraught, grieving mother, not a historian, not a political figure, who suddenly realizes that that one image could spur a revolution.”