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An essay is presented on civil rights photography in the U.S., covering issues such as the subliminal psychological effects of photography, scholar Eve Sedgwick's theories of photographic aesthetics, and faces in photography. Documentary photographs of protests, racial aspects of art, and the gaze theories of philosophers such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty are discussed, as well as psychoanalytic philosophy, identity in photography, and gender roles in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

The history of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s provides ample opportunity to understand how groups use mass media to build and sustain social movements. This article examines an understudied but important piece of movement literature, the "Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story" comic, which simultaneously provided an "origin story" for the modern movement and a step-by-step guide to nonviolent action. Young activists such as Congressman John Lewis, a college student when "The Montgomery Story" was published in 1957, called the comic the "Bible of the movement." The comic would later surface in South Africa, in Latin America translated into Spanish and, after a translation into Arabic, on Tahrir Square in Egypt in 2011. Through letters and archival documents, the article explores the creation and distribution of the comic and its usefulness as a compact and simplified "movement narrative" that was adapted to use in other social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visual arts play an important role in understanding the Black experience in American History. This article examines various ways in which African American artists reinterpret ideas related to freedom, emancipation and equality. This discussion will include three historical periods: 1) The Civil War era and the fight for freedom and emancipation; 2) The Civil Rights movement, Freedom Summer, and Assimilation in the workplace; and 3) The continued struggle for social and political change in American society today. Various works of art have been selected to accompany this significant discussion that marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers an analysis of the popular oil painting "Big Bo" by James Rosenquist. The painting's depiction of the face of black musician Big Bo McGee is discussed, the connection between "Big Bo" and another Rosenquist painting "Painting for the American Negro" is explored, and the impact of the Civil Rights movement on art by Rosenquist and other American artists is examined. Generational differences in social aspects of colors like pink in mid-20th-century U.S. are analyzed and social conflict between the pink color of Rosenquist's painting and the black color of McGee's skin is described.

This essay offers a broad introduction to the representation of black athletic bodies in film. It explores how black athletes, from Jack Johnson to Jackie Robinson, from Muhammad Ali to Tiger Woods and Cathy Freeman, are depicted - and speak for themselves - in their encounters with the media. The focus of this essay, however, is on the 1996 docu-drama When We Were Kings. It offers a critique of Muhammad Ali's standing as a figure of the global black struggle by juxtaposing Ali's outspokenness in the USA with his too often unremarked-upon reticence in the post-colonial world. This essay explains how Gast's When We Were Kings plays Ali off against his opponent in the 'Rumble in the Jungle', George Foreman, while simultaneously denying both boxers the right to speak for themselves in a documentary first screened some two decades after the original event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explores the interplay between feminism and performance from an interdisciplinary perspective. Movement of feminist critique into traditional academic departments; Relationship of post-disciplinary and interdisciplinary with different fields of study; Theatrical elements in protest movements.

The author discusses the inclusion of art rights into human rights. Over the years, visual artists, writers, musicians, dancer, playwrights and poets have used their talents to reveal and impart the human experience the facts it cannot reveal and which official truths will not reveal. Some of the notable artists who sought to express their thoughts and feelings regarding the situation of their times were Charles Dickens, Dmitri Shostakovich and John Cleese. The author asserts that art has the right to be just what it is and it has the duty to sustain and support its companion rights.

This article reports on the experience of being a visitor at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (BCRI). The museum's galleries include a Jim Crow streetcar, a black newspaper office, and models of two segregated classrooms. Interactive exhibits depict events of the Civil Rights Movement in the American South, accompanied by video and audio presentations. The article also describes the Richard Arrington, Jr. Resource Gallery where visitors can use the multimedia learning center to access archives and watch interviews and civil rights news. The article also provides information on the BCRI's video about the Birmingham, Alabama and several photographs on display.