Norman RockwellDepicting American Life

Analyze the following paintings for Speaker, Audience, Purpose, and Tone.

The Saturday Evening Post (the magazine Rockwell worked for) restricted the portrayal of blacks to showing them only in service industry jobs. This is a 1962 Rockwell quote, "I was born a white Protestant with some prejudices that I am continuously trying to eradicate. I am angry at unjust prejudices in other people and myself."  

What can you tell about Rockwell from this quote?

After hearing this quote what can we see differently when we re-examine the “porter and beauty queen” painting?

His last painting for the Post was published in 1963, marking the end of a publishing relationship that had included 322 cover paintings. He spent the next 10 years painting for Look magazine, where his work depicted his interests in civil rights, poverty and space exploration.

The Problem We All Live With Rockwell’s focus is on the desegregation of school’s in New Orleans.

What can we tell about the situation, and what was happening in the community?

What is the TONE of the painting, and how is that tone achieved?

What is happening in this painting?

What is going to happen?

Painting Title: Murder In Mississippi

In 1964, three young civil rights workers—a 21-year-old black Mississippian, James Chaney, and two white New Yorkers, Andrew Goodman, 20, and Michael Schwerner, 24—were murdered. They had been working to register black voters and had gone to investigate the burning of a black church. They were arrested by the police on trumped-up charges, imprisoned for several hours, and then released after dark into the hands of the Ku Klux Klan, who beat and murdered them. No one was tried on the charge or murder. The contemptible words of the presiding federal judge, William Cox, give an indication of Mississippi's version of justice at the time: "They killed one ni---r, one Jew, and a white man. I gave them all what I thought they deserved."

What is the purpose of this painting? We have to remember that people who fight to make change often end up as martyrs. When they are murdered, or assassinated, or lynched, they become symbols for the struggle. In the Civil Rights movement white and black were killed by people who wanted to terrorize others: Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, etc.