A Rockwell Anniversary

From Facebook, this morning.

The Problem We All Live With was originally published as a centerfold in the January 14, 1964 issue of Look. It was Rockwell's first year after ending his long partnership with the Saturday Evening Post. 

He was 70 years old at the time, and after being a "moderate Republican: his whole life, the widowed artist had been slowly waking up. He had voted for JFK in 1960. His parting from the Post not just over the issue of political views, but because of other restrictions as well--he was not allowed to depict Blacks in anything other than menial roles. Rockwell pushed the limits with The Golden Rule in 1961, which depicted a group of people of all races, including a Black man in a middle class shirt and a Black girl holding school books. He got his first hate mail for that. 

It took Rockwell a couple of years to conclude that "the work I now want to do no longer fits into the Post scheme."

His audience was not ready for something as direct and blunt as this illustration, right down to the title which clearly stated that segregation and racism were not simply a Southern problem. Rockwell got tons of hate mail over this painting calling him, among other things, a race traitor. 

There is a fascinating article about Rockwell's "awakening" and this painting from Vox a few years ago. I recommend it. 

The painting was hung in the White House by Barrack Obama from July to October of 2011 at the suggestion of Ruby Bridges. He told her, "I think it's fair to say that if it hadn't been for you guys, I might not be here and we wouldn't be looking at this together."

Well, sitting here in 2024, I have to wonder who can actually look at this together. In many classrooms in many states, this would simply be too "divisive" to be allowed, to "controversial" to expose children to. Sixty years on and some of the audience still isn't ready to see this image, to face a historic truth that even America's most folksy, homespun artist was unwilling to look away from. How weird to find that 60 years later this image would not just be controversial, but actually illegal to show in classrooms. "Poignant and relevant to this day" indeed.