The Problems We Live With......1964

[Tone]

I was 3 years old when this was originally painted, But the profound effect that this painting has on me leaves me speechless, I have this painting on my wall in my office. I have stared at this painting for Hours on end and i mean Hours if you think this is an impossibility i challenge you to stare at it for 15 minutes and see if it doesn't stir up some kind of emotion, and if it does please comment,
The Artist needs no introduction Norman Rockwell dedicated his brush to representing real Americans (along with their quintessential spirit). One such American was six-year-old Ruby Nell Bridges on November 14, 1960, the first day black children in New Orleans would go to school with white children. Yet far from sentimental, Rockwell juxtaposes the beauty and innocence of this young child against the savage racism that animated large swaths of the American public at that time.

Rockwells painting depicts a young black girl, with the viewer looking at the girl at her eye level as if they were a child themselves. The girl wears a pristine white dress with white socks and sneakers; this is an outfit one often sees children wearing to Sunday religious services and indicates her finest attire. In her left hand the girl holds a ruler, pencils and two books; she carries the tools of a young student. She is surrounded by four white men in business suits; their anonymous faces are not shown to the viewer. The men wear badges of office on their coats and yellow armbands that indicate that they are federal marshals and they march together in lockstep and with fists firmly clenched; the men expect and are ready for a physical fight.

The reason for the Men's aggressive posture is made clear when one looks upon the wall presented in the background. Scrawled out in paint is an ugly racial epithet intended to communicate the writer's view of the alleged sub-human status of the members of the child's race. A splattered tomato sits on the pavement, its fresh ejecta dribbles down the wall, the trace of its rays indicating that these ejecta were mere inches away from sullying the girl's immaculate dress. Drawing the viewer into the drama of the scene, the tomato lies on the ground in a way that makes it seem that it was thrown over the viewer's own shoulder; Rockwell does not permit the viewer to escape as a mere passive observer, but makes him an active participant in the scene depicted in his painting.

Yet in perhaps the most striking aspect of Rockwells canvas, the girl does not seem to notice the rage that surrounds her; instead, she innocently pantomimes the marshals, her small hands clenched as theirs are and her tiny feet in step with their own. Furthermore, while the men guard the girl, they make no emotional contact with her; they do not hold her hand or offer any gesture of warmth or compassion. They protect her from physical assault, but on every other level, the girl stands alone and is as exposed as her white dress against the angry invective of the mob. Yet though it all, she remains pure; her youthful innocence remains intact.

I have yet to encounter any parallel to this work in American art. Rockwell assembles a host of contrasts, from the innocence of the young girl, to the tomato-splattered wall, to the grim determination of the marshals to defend the girl, to their seeming emotional indifference to her plight and he presents them for us to reconcile. Yet there is no easy reconciliation; such is the nature of the problem we all live with. What Rockwell makes clear to his viewers are the stakes of this conflict; one must truly be depraved not to feel empathy for the girl and contempt for those who would act with such irrationality and malice against her. The cornerstone of their creed was that by nature, blacks were separate and beneath whites, yet Rockwell shows us a young girl thrust into a maelstrom with her humanity plainly in view and for all to see. The world seethes angrily around her, yet she remains a guiltless girl, a young scholar on the first day of classes.

As I alluded to earlier, Ruby Nell Bridges, the first black child to attend William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans and the first black child to attend an all-white school in the South, is a real person. Now a mother and speaker on the history of the era that she as a six-year-old child helped to pioneer, she is able to share her story and its implications in her own voice. Nevertheless, the voice that Norman Rockwell was able to give her and others like her though his painting continues to inform us to this day. At root, it is a message of humanity in the face of adversity and contempt, and it is a message that deserves to be told.

[Edie Antoinette]

God's Kingdom that we pray for at Matthew 6:9,10 will eradicate all traces of this type of thing that minorities have faced since forever. Then all nations and races will live on a Paradise Earth in perfect peace. I'm looking forward to it.

Thanks for your submission Tone.