National Portrait Gallery | Face to Face blog

The Scottsboro Boys

In the long struggle for civil rights and racial equality in America, few episodes had the impact of the infamous Scottsboro Boys case. When nine black teenagers falsely accused of raping two women on a freight train were tried in Scottsboro, Alabama,in 1931, white juries found eight of the nine guilty, and they were sentenced to death.

The widely condemned verdicts and the subsequent reversals, retrials, and hearings—including two successful appeals to the United States Supreme Court—mobilized protests across the country and the world. The International Labor Defense (ILD), the legal arm of the Communist Party, hoping to recruit black workers to their cause, led the defense instead of the more deliberate NAACP. Their involvement rallied protests from whites and minorities alike around the world.

As the nine youths languished in the brutal Alabama prison system, their lives were largely destroyed; together, they spent 130 years in jail, despite the recantation of one of the alleged victims. Clarence Norris (1912–1989) and Haywood Patterson (1913–1952), the subjects portrayed in NPG’s pastel by African American artist Aaron Douglas, were prominent figures in the case. Norris was paroled in 1944 and pardoned by Governor George C. Wallace in 1976; Patterson spent sixteen years in prison and escaped to Michigan in 1948, where the governor refused to extradite him.

Aaron Douglas’s moving portrait (above) provides the opportunity to pair a critical historical story with a powerful work of art. The Kansas-born artist, armed with a BFA from the University of Nebraska, settled in New York City in 1925 and became the leading visual artist for the Harlem Renaissance. After publishing his drawings in Alain Locke’s The New Negro and in national magazines, Douglas illustrated thirteen books by such acclaimed authors as Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, and James Weldon Johnson. In his illustrations and painted murals, Douglas created new, modernist prototypes to express the African American experience, incorporating influences from Egyptian art, West African sculpture, cubist painting, and Art Deco design.

Ultimately, he became an influential professor at Fisk University. Douglas made this portrait in a more realist manner, avoiding any hint of modernist stylization. His mentor, German artist Winold Reiss, had drawn imposing pastel portraits of Harlem authors. Like Reiss, Douglas focused on the essential humanity and dignity of his subjects.

This drawing was probably made around 1935, when the Supreme Court unanimously overturned the convictions in the Norris and Patterson cases because of Alabama’s exclusion of blacks from the jury rolls. By this time, a one-year fellowship had exposed Douglas to the modern European and African art collected by Albert C. Barnes, and he had spent another year studying in Paris. He was also newly politicized. He had joined the Communist Party in the early 1930s, and as head of the Harlem Artists Guild, he was demanding more black participation in the WPA’s art program.

Douglas was undoubtedly moved by the cover of an ILD pamphlet that featured photographs of Norris and Patterson surrounded by the phrases “save our lives,” “they must not burn,” and “join the fight to free them.” Even more powerful is Douglas’s wordless copy of the two likenesses. The stark, isolated faces, drawn in beautifully blended pastels, mutely confront their audience. The picture speaks to the profound response to this soul-chilling miscarriage of justice and the seriousness of racial prejudice in America.

—Wendy Wick Reaves, Curator or Prints and Drawings, National Portrait Gallery

Further reading: James Goodman, Stories of Scottsboro (New York: Vintage, 1994); Amy Kirschke, Aaron Douglas: Art, Race, and the Harlem Renaissance (Jackson, Miss.: University Press of Mississippi, 1995), and Jim Miller, Moments of Scottsboro: The Scottsboro Case and American Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009).

Clarence Norris and Haywood Patterson / Aaron Douglas  / Pastel on paper, c. 1935 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Presidents’ Day Math: The Case for an October Presidents’ Month

February is an excellent month to host President's Day because it is the month in which George Washington (February 22, 1732) and Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809) were born. February also claims William Henry Harrison on the ninth day (1773) and Ronald Reagan on the sixth (1911).

However, October could easily call itself “Presidents’ Month.” Six presidents were born in October—John Adams, Rutherford Hayes, Chester Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and Jimmy Carter. November is second on the list of presidents born within its days, with a total of five. Like February, the months of January, March, April, July, and August each host the birthdays of four presidents.

Seasonally, the distribution of presidential births is as follows: winter, thirteen; spring, eight; summer, ten; autumn, twelve. Why does the total number of that seasonal birthday distribution only come to forty-three when there have been forty-four presidents? Grover Cleveland was president twice, but he was not born twice. The last three presidents—Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama—were all summer babies. The only other time three consecutive presidents were born in the same season was in the string of Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield, and Chester Arthur who all arrived in the autumn.

Coincidences and anomalies: Andrew Johnson and Woodrow Wilson share the same birthday (December 29) as do James K. Polk and Warren G. Harding (November 2). Jimmy Carter is the only president born of the first day of the month (October). George H. W. Bush is the only president born in June, while William Howard Taft was the only president born in September.

As the crow flies, George Washington, the first president, was born closer (Pope's Creek, Virginia) to Washington, D.C., than any other president; Barack Obama, was born farthest away (Hawaii). The irony is that Washington never lived in Washington, D.C. It is also interesting to note that the birthplaces of the presidents have marked American expansion westward since the nation's birth, and that the current president was born in both the westernmost state and the most recently admitted state.

—Warren Perry, Catalog of American Portraits, National Portrait Gallery

Special thanks to Nadia Mahmassani for her assistance in preparing this article.

Abraham Lincoln / George Peter Alexander Healy/ Oil on canvas, 1887 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; transfer from the National Gallery of Art; gift of the A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, 1942

George Washington / Rembrandt Peale / Oil on canvas, 1853 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of an anonymous donor

NPG Staff Profile: Lizanne Reger, Rights and Reproductions Coordinator

As part of our ongoing effort to share the operation of the National Portrait Gallery with our readers, here is a short Q and A with one of our staff members, Lizanne Reger.  

Q: As the National Portrait Gallery’s rights and reproductions coordinator, what does your job entail?

A: I primarily license the reproduction of images from the collection for scholarly publications, film, and the web. I work with the public on requests for reproduction for personal/research images and with our licensing agent in New York, who handles the large-scale print reproductions (textbooks, etc.). I also work with artists whose work is in the collection—and with their representatives—when handling requests that have copyright issues. I also work with NPG’s photographer to ensure that we have record photography of our collection. Occasionally, I’ll work with Smithsonian Enterprises on products featuring NPG collections for the gift shop.

Q: Where did you go to college and what is your training?

A: I graduated from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, where I received a B.A. in art history. I do have a photography background, but primarily my training comes from working in the R&R office before taking over as the R&R coordinator. I’m the only one in the office so I’m the coordinator as well as my own assistant. Thankfully, I’ve had several interns over the years who’ve helped me. Actually, I need a new one for the spring, if anyone is interested!

Q: How long have you lived in Washington?

A: Eight years this summer.

Q: What is your favorite portrait in our collection and why?

A: I have several “favorites” depending on which exhibition or department, but my new favorite is Ben Bernanke by Mark Wagner (shown at right, S/NPG.2010.57). The piece is a currency collage of $1 bills. You have to see it in person. A reproduction does not do it justice; plus it is copyright restricted.

Q: What is the most unusual or interesting request you have had come across your desk?

 A: Several years ago, I received a request to use one of our images as a hologram in U.S. passports. It required that we provide very large digital files of multiple views of the object. The image was then encrypted for security purposes so that it could not be forged. They didn’t tell me much more than that; it was TOP SECRET!

 

Ben Bernanke / Mark Wagner / Currency collage on panel, 2009 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; © Mark Wagner

Michael Jordan: Driving Force in the Paint and in the Marketplace

Few individuals have had such effect on their sport as Michael Jordan did his.  Mark Spitz brought about a renewed interest in swimming after his seven-gold medal performance in the 1972 Munich Olympics, and Tiger Woods, the first African American to win a major tournament in golf, introduced that sport to an entire generation of kids worldwide. Mark McGuire and Barry Bonds each revitalized baseball with their towering numbers of home runs in the 1990s, only to succumb to steroid-use allegations in the early 2000s.

Michael Jordan, however, increased the fan base and the viewership of the National Basketball Association. Sure, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson’s classic Celtics-versus-Lakers confrontations preceded the Jordan era and dovetailed into the great period of the Chicago Bulls’ dominance of the game. But Michael Jordan put basketball into the forefront of American athletic culture. It was the hang-time. It was the ball-handling. It was Jordan’s sheer athleticism that captivated the world. One of the iconic moments of his game was the drive toward the basket, bursting past whatever futile defense was thrown at him—maneuvering the ball left to right, right to left—all the while having his tongue flicking out from his mouth as if he were caught in the act of thinking through his penetration strategy.

Beyond the court, though, Jordan rode the vehicle of basketball to the heights of early globalization. Walter La Feber discusses the phenomenon in his book Michael Jordan and the New Global Capitalism:

The magic words were “packaging” and “synergy” (that is, the cooperative working together of many more goods to make much larger profits than the goods could make alone). Michael Jordan stood apart as a global symbol of synergy’s magic. He and his agent, David Falk, had begun in the 1990s to use a global communications company for selling not just one of the products Jordan endorsed, but a bundle of them linked together. Thus Jordan could suggest that his fans watch the ‘Space Jam’ film while sitting in their Hanes underwear, eating Big Macs, washing those down with Gatorade, and preparing to buy Jordan’s videos over their Jordan-endorsed cell phone.

Michael Jordan in the 1990s, it seems, was capitalism’s greatest voice. Jordan’s performance in world trade was only outdistanced by his performance on the basketball court, though, and he is widely regarded as the greatest player of all time. With an NCAA championship (with the North Carolina Tar Heels in 1982), as well as multiple NBA and Olympic championships under his belt, Jordan also has the distinction of holding the NBA regular season scoring average (30.1) among his many, many other superlatives.
 - Warren Perry, Catalog of American Portraits, National Portrait Gallery

Cited: Walter La Feber, Michael Jordan and the New Global Capitalism (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999)

On Thursday, February 10, NPG historian David Ward will discuss Michael Jordan’s career during a Face-to-Face Gallery Talk at 6:00 p.m. Admission is free; meet in the F Street lobby of the Donald W. Reynolds Center a few minutes before the talk begins.


Michael Jordan / Annie Leibovitz / Cibachrome print, 1991 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; © Annie Leibovitz