Art has been a storyteller since its existence. It has taken us through time, and opened our eyes to new ideas. Art has served as a platform for revolution and been a tunnel for acceptance for new movements through history. So it was no surprise that it started to take on a more political role in American politics in the early nineteenth century. It helped to establish woman’s rights and played a large part in electing countless government candidates with public advertisements and posters. Probably one of the most controversial topics artists took on in the mid nineteenth century was the issue of civil rights. Very few artists were willing to take the risk of putting African-Americans into their art and would never give them rolls of dominance. This leads to a posing question as to why a well known artist by the name of Norman Rockwell who was at the time known for his representation of a conservative audience, would take this risk in one of his most famous magazine illustrations.
This illustration issued in a 1964 issue of Look Magazine made a large impact
on its time. The first thing to grab your attention is the small African-American girl wearing a crisp white dress with crisp white socks and scuffles white shoes topped off with a matching bow. After first only noticing her coloring and clean outfit, you then start to notice her body posture. She is standing tall, face forward, chin up, with almost a small grin coming across her face as though she doesn’t even notice her surroundings. She is grasping schoolbooks to her side just as you would imagine any other student her age.You then start to draw your attention to the four men surrounding the young girl. There are two in front and two behind the girl looking like they are serving as her protection. The men are cut off at their necks and you cannot see their heads or faces. They are all dressed in drab grey and tan suits buttoned up with badges and armbands that read “Deputy U.S. Marshall.” The man in the front left has a white letter with a seal on it sticking out of his pocket.
By taking a step back and looking at the picture as a whole you notice that everyone in the picture, including the girl, is standing with one foot forward and a fist held in their right hand about waist high. This almost bring a unity to the photo by having all of the characters in the image have the same pose even though they are in totally different situations. What was the artist trying to say by doing this? What is being said through the way these characters are dressed? What is the setting the artist is trying to portray?
To better understand this piece of art it is important to know and understand the man behind the image. Norman Rockwell was most famously known for his illustrations featured in the Saturday Evening Post throughout the 1940s and 50s. Rockwell was known for his conservative illustrations, most often capturing the everyday happenings in the “All American”, most often white middle class, families. When he would decide to address the war in his art he would most often illustrate a soldier or navy officer upon their return to America and in a happy, homey setting. This is displayed in the image below titled “Homecoming Marine”.
This image although it does lend itself to interpretation, displays more of a reunion; a happy experience where the son has come home and can now share his stories with his family and friends. This is what Americans at the time wanted to see. They wanted to see their soldiers coming home from the war and hear their stories and share in their experience. It was not until he started drawing for Look Magazine that Rockwell started to address more political and real happenings going on in the world. There is an obvious change in message between Rockwell’s illustration above and the one being analyzed. “The Problem We All Live With” does not display an image that all Americans wanted to see. First of all it features an African-American girl. This was not seen in Rockwell’s, or any other American artist’s, paintings at that time. It also shows vandalism and hatred acts that white spectators undoubtedly preformed.
I believe that since it was in fact Norma Rockwell that painted this image, and since he did have such a strong American fan base, that this image had such an impact. If he had not already had so many followers that saw his illustrations as “visions of a nation,” would people have taken this image as seriously?
Looking back at the image I start to question what exactly is taking place. It seems as though it has such purpose and is so structured that it is almost portraying a photograph. After researching more into the image I found that it is doing exactly that. It is much debated that little girl in the image is representative of a little girl named Ruby Bridges. Bridges was the first African-American child to attend an all white elementary school. This image is a depiction of what happened that day she crossed the picket lines and walked into Franz Elementary School in New Orleans. Like Ruby Bridges, the little girl in the picture is wearing a white crisp dress and is standing confidently in the middle of a disastrous situation. To me this breaks through any stereotype held at that time that African-Americans were dirty or badly dressed. It showed that she was just as nicely dressed if not more so than any of the white children attending school that day.
As for the words written on the back wall, they are just a glimpse to what was really being shouted to this Kindergarten child. It was said that on the day Bridges was to attend school hundreds of white folks, mostly woman, crowded the streets yelling racial slurs and slanders at the young child. It was also reported that the young girl hardly acknowledged the crowd. This is strongly depicted in the facial expression and body posture of the young girl in the image by here not even glancing at the writings or evening seeming to have acknowledged the tomato thrown her way.
By now understanding what is taking place around the image we can understand the choice of setting for the illustration. It is now clear that it was most likely on the side of a school building and they are against the wall for protection from the protesters gathered. The writings on the wall and the tomato splattered were acts of hate and protest from those gathered to prevent the young girl from attending the all white school.
We can also decipher the purpose of the men in the image. We already know that they are representatives of the government because of the Marshall bands on their arms. Their suites could be grey and uniformed to help the audience understand that they are part of the government and they are being sent to do a job that is not going to be pleasant. They could also be dressed dully to bring out the brightness of this little girl and the brightness of America’s future and the future of civil rights. So why are their heads not showing? At first I thought it might be because Rockwell wanted to keep the attention on the little girl and not have the audience distracted by the expressions or faces of the surrounding men. I then started to think again about what they represent. They are representatives of the United States government, much like the little girl is the representative of the segregated African-American population. They are standing tall over her; much like the government stands above its people, and in the 1960s was working to stand above racism. These men were showing power and the protection that the government was placing on the African-American population. They were standing almost as walls of protection for the little girl, and in that standing as protection from racism in the United States.
The men, as well as the little girl, are walking with their right hand forward clenched in a fist. What could this mean? To mean it represents the idea of an iron fist. It is symbolic of the government laying down the law and allowing diversity in schools. By having the men and girl in the illustration holding a fist, Rockwell is showing their will and the will of children like Ruby Bridegs to lay down an iron fist and enforce civil rights by not letting anything get in their way.
Art is a storyteller. It has opened our eyes to new ideas and built bridges to help us cross over into change. Norman Rockwell did just this through his piece “The Problem We All Live With.” He opened America’s eyes, especially those of his conservative audience, to the problems that lied within segregation and racism. Through this analysis we were able to see his message and his purpose and become readers of the history he spelled out for us. We will now forever have a vision of change. All thanks to the great storyteller, Norman Rockwell.
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