National Portrait Gallery | Face to Face blog

Portrait of Rosa Parks by Marshall D. Rumbaugh

With a courageous act of civil disobedience, Rosa Parks sparked a challenge to segregation that culminated in one of the seminal victories of the modern civil rights movement. On December 1, 1955, while traveling on a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama, the seamstress was arrested for refusing the driver's demand that she surrender her seat to a white male passenger.

When Parks was convicted of violating local segregation laws, Montgomery's African American community launched a massive one-day boycott of the city's bus system. The boycott expanded with the help of Martin Luther King Jr. to last 382 days, ending only after the U.S. Supreme Count ruled bus segregation unconstitutional.

This portrait of Rosa Parks, by sculptor Marshall D. Rumbaugh, is on display at the National Portrait Gallery in the new permanent exhibition "The Struggle for Justice" on the museum's second floor. 

Rosa Parks / Marshall D. Rumbaugh / Painted limewood, 1983 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Portrait of Booker T. Washington

In the face of racial hatred, segregation, and disenfranchisement following the Civil War, it was unrealistic, Booker T. Washington contended, to expect African Americans to gain entry into America’s white-collar professions. Instead, he suggested they establish themselves as a skilled and indispensable laboring class. With that accomplished, racial discrimination would gradually disappear.

In 1881 Washington put this theory to the test, becoming the director of the newly created Negro Normal School in Tuskegee, Alabama. As the school grew, Washington became viewed as the nation’s leading spokesman for African Americans. Yet by the century’s end, many critics began to challenge his “get along” philosophy.

Jim Barber, historian at the National Portrait Gallery, recently discussed this bronze bust of Booker T. Washington by Richmond Barthé at a Face-to-Face portrait talk. The work is displayed on the museum’s first floor, in the exhibition “American Origins.”

Listen to Jim Barber's Face-to-Face talk on Booker T. Washington (17:16)

Face-to-Face occurs every Thursday evening at the National Portrait Gallery. The next talk is tonight (February 25), when L. Michael Seidman, professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center, speaks about Justice Thurgood Marshall. The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

Booker T. Washington / Richmond Barthé / Bronze, 1973 cast after 1946 original / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Medgar Evers and Roy Wilkins

Medgar Evers (right) played a critical role in organizing and sustaining the Jackson Movement—a multifaceted campaign to end segregation in Mississippi's most populous city. In the spring of 1963, Evers launched a boycott of stores in Jackson's main shopping district after the city's mayor rejected a NAACP-sponsored resolution calling for fair hiring practices in municipal jobs, desegregation of public facilities and accommodations, an end to discriminatory business practices, and the establishment of a biracial committee to combat injustice and promote reform.

When NAACP national secretary Roy Wilkins joined Evers in picketing the F. W. Woolworth store in downtown Jackson, both men were swiftly arrested by local police brandishing electric cattle prods. This press photograph documenting the arrest appeared in the New York Times on June 2, 1963—just ten days before Evers's assassination by white supremacist Byron de la Beckwith.

In this video produced by Smithsonian Education, National Portrait Gallery curator Frank Goodyear and Tia Powell Harris, former educator at NPG, look deeply into the 1963 photograph of Medgar Evers and Roy Wilkins.

Medgar Evers and Roy Wilkins / Unidentified Artist / Gelatin silver print , 1963/ National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor: A Short Memoir of What Happened to Fifty Percent of My Comedy Album Collection

By Warren Perry, Researcher, Catalog of American Portraits    

One day when I was a teenager, circa the bicentennial years, I was rummaging around the house and I found some albums that belonged to my folks.  Some of the titles were never going to hit my turntable—anything by Marty Robbins or Floyd Cramer was pretty safe in its sleeve.  But then I found mom and dad's trove of Bill Cosby albums and heard "The Chicken Heart That Ate New York City" for the first time. 

There  was (this radio program) "Inner Sanctum" where the guy played the organ and then he     would come in—"Good Evening"—and he was so happy—TO SCARE YOU TO DEATH.  And he opened that door (creeee-aaaaakkkk), and then he told you a weird story about his Uncle Harry  who had lost his hipbone or something. But what really scared me was when he CLOSED the door (BOOM)!   I knew somebody was in the house then, and I'd start smearing that Jello. No monster was going to get near me with that Jello on the floor. I've tripped up many a monster with that Jello on the floor, yessiree bob.

So for three and a half decades, I have listened to the chicken heart story on that same beat-up album, over and over again, probably hundreds of times.  The Cos is fun, engaging, and a great storyteller.  He doesn't tell jokes; he tells stories, and they are all crafted like great music—like jazz.

Just around the corner from the moment when I discovered Bill Cosby's jazz, I also discovered Richard Pryor's raw metal.     

Maybe it was the summer of 1976, sometime around then, I was in a record store and found a couple of albums by Richard Pryor.  I had seen him on Saturday Night Live and thought I would give him a test drive.  As soon as I put on one of my new Pryor albums, I realized that this would probably have to be material I reviewed when mom and dad were elsewhere.  The only thing Richard Pryor's comedy had in common with Bill Cosby's was that Pryor was also a storyteller; he didn't tell jokes.  His vulgarity was ear-singeing and his subject matter was crass.  And man, was he funny.

I am pressed to think of a Richard Pryor routine that can be discussed in this venue.  Even if the subject matter was printable, the language would not be.  Some of Pryor's album titles and routines were and are still "R-rated."  And then one time late in my junior high school years, my mother found my Pryor collection and listened to part of it with my dad and one of my uncles.  I remember her saying, "You no longer own these albums."  And then the albums disappeared.

Both comedians were innovators, both had significant impact in entertainment, both made millions, and both won the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.  However, they each had different ways of getting to their respective destinations.  Cosby began his series of intermittent television successes in 1965 with his role as Alexander Scott on I Spy.  Later, Cosby's The Cosby Show anchored NBC's Thursday night beginning in 1984, running to superior ratings for eight seasons.  Richard Pryor was a staple in American comedy for his entire adult life, though he spent no small time fighting his own demons.  In 1986, he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis; Richard Pryor died in December, 2005.       

Bill Cosby / James VanDerZee / Gelatin silver print, 1980 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Donna Mussenden Van Der Zee / © Donna Mussenden VanDerZee

Richard Pryor / Steve Schapiro / Gelatin silver print, 1981 (printed 2006) / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution / © Steve Schapiro, courtesy Fahey Klein Gallery             

Portrait of Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass became the first nationally known African American in United States history by turning his life into a testimony on the evils of slavery and the redemptive power of freedom. He had escaped from slavery in 1838 and subsequently became a powerful witness for abolitionism, speaking, writing, and organizing on behalf of the movement; he also founded a newspaper, the North Star.

Douglass’s charisma derived from his ability to present himself as the author of his own destiny at a time when white America could barely conceive of the black man as a thinking and feeling human being. The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is not only a gripping nonfiction account of one man’s struggle for freedom; it is also one of the greatest American autobiographies. This powerful portrait shows Douglass as he grew in prominence during the 1840s.

Rose Weiss and Braden Paynter of the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site in Washington, D.C., recently discussed Douglass at a Face-to-Face portrait talk.

Listen to a Face-to-Face talk on Frederick Douglass (18:47)

Face-to-Face occurs every Thursday evening at the National Portrait Gallery. The next talk is this Thursday, February 25, when L. Michael Seidman, professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center, speaks about Justice Thurgood Marshall. The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

Frederick Douglass / Unidentified artist / Oil on canvas, c. 1844 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Valentine's Day + President's Day = Millard Fillmore

Sure, there have been some handsome men to hold the office of chief executive, but who was the best looking presidential heartthrob of them all?  Was it the movie star Ronald Reagan?  How about the youthful John Kennedy, or perhaps the well-coiffed James Buchanan?  According to one legend, the most obscure president of them all was one of the most handsome men of his age.

Is it true that Queen Victoria said that Millard Fillmore was the most handsome man she had ever seen? 

"That statement is disputed," says Marie Schnurr, one of the curators at the Millard Fillmore House Museum in East Aurora, New York, but she adds, "He was considered a very handsome man."  Schnurr also states that President Fillmore was a very serious man, "very impressive, very dignified-- he took his responsibilities very seriously."

At the beginning of his administration, Millard Fillmore bestowed his presidential blessing on the Compromise of 1850—Senator Henry Clay's proposal to unite the North and the slaveholding South. The ensuing harmony, however, was short-lived. Among the compromise's concessions to the South was the new Fugitive Slave Law, which facilitated the capture of runaway slaves, and Fillmore was determined to enforce it. As northern abolitionists sought to undermine enforcement, tempers on both sides of the issue flared again. The sectional bitterness made a future rupture over slavery all but certain.

Fillmore's portrait by an unidentified artist dates to about the time he retired from the House of Representatives in the early 1840s. In the years following, he devoted himself to reconciling the growing differences among fellow Whigs in his native New York State.

Millard Fillmore / Unidentified artist / Oil on canvas, c. 1843 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Portrait of Lena Horne by Edward Biberman

Singer and actress Lena Horne helped break the color barrier in mainstream popular culture in the mid-twentieth century, beginning her stage career in the chorus at Harlem's Cotton Club in 1933, where Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway mentored her.

In 1942 Hollywood beckoned, but her roles were often musical cameos that southern theaters could cut; Horne once said that Stormy Weather and Cabin in the Sky were the only films "in which I played a character who was involved in the plot."

Lena Horne became Hollywood's highest-paid African American actor, and her renditions of "Stormy Weather" and "Just One of Those Things" were considered classics. During this time, Horne also became a vocal spokesperson for civil rights. She also continued to enjoy a successful nightclub and recording career, and triumphed in the 1980s with her one-woman show, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music. 

Ann Shumard, curator at the National Portrait Gallery, will discuss Lena Horne at a Face-to-Face portrait talk, at 6pm on Thursday, February 11.  Her talk is part of a series of Face-to-Face talks celebrating Black History Month. 

Lena Horne / Edward Biberman / Oil on canvas, 1947 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution / © 1947 Edward Biberman

J. D. Salinger, 1919-2010

Portrait of J.D. Salinger by Robert Vickrey, now on view

     Art © Robert Vickrey/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

"A lot of people, especially this one psychoanalyst guy they have here, keeps asking me if I'm going to apply myself when I go back to school next September.  It's such a stupid question, in my opinion.  I mean how do you know what you're going to do till you do it?  The answer is, you don't.  I think I am, but how do I know?  I swear it's a stupid question."
—Holden Caulfield

Jerome David Salinger had one of the great successes of all time with The Catcher in the Rye (1951). He then vanished, publishing only a few collections of short stories and emerging only to sue people who attempted to write about him; his last publication was in 1965. Yet Catcher in the Rye remains a classic. Its teenaged narrator Holden Caulfield’s account of a weekend in Manhattan continues to speak to disaffected adolescents kicking against the “phonies.” It has sold more than 65 million copies worldwide and is still occasionally banned by education administrators who fear its corrupting impact on alienated youth.

Here, in a way that Salinger (and Caulfield) would have appreciated, artist Robert Vickery interprets the book’s title literally and paints the author against an amber wave of grain. The portrait was created for the September 15, 1961, edition of Time magazine.

J. D. Salinger by Robert Vickrey, 1961, tempera on board; National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Time magazine