AL.com Article: T. Marie King curates exhibit at the Birmingham Museum of Art honoring unnamed women of the civil rights movement.
Published May 30, 2019 by Shauna Stuart | sstuart@al.com
A guest-curated exhibit in the American gallery at the Birmingham Museum of Art recognizes two women from the civil rights movement.
Curated by activist, community leader, and speaker T. Marie King, a pair of black and white photographs depicts two women during 1963.
One photograph shows Parker High School student Mattie Howard being arrested by two police officers outside of Birmingham’s Carver Theatre during the 1963 Children’s Crusade. Located in the fourth avenue business district, the Carver Theatre was the preeminent movie house for African-Americans to watch first-run movies in the segregated city, as well as the stomping grounds for visiting black jazz legends such as Duke Ellington. The theatre was also a location for many events of the civil rights movement. In the photograph, the officers grip Parker’s arms as she looks to the side. Known for his emotionally charged work that often depicts his subjects in isolation or with expressions of determination, documentary photographer Bruce Davidson also captured the Carver Theatre’s marquee in the background.
The words on the marquee announce the run of the 1962 French Revolutionary War movie “Damn the Defiant!” but they also offer somewhat of a commentary on the events in the photograph, narrating the young woman’s act of protest. In the other photograph, taken by an unknown photographer, a woman blocks a bulldozer during a school segregation protest in Chicago. The woman’s face is fixed in a grimace. Nearby, a group of black children look on with worried expressions.
King selected both of the images from the Birmingham Museum of Art’s extensive collection of civil rights photography. Beneath the two photographs, a panel with a quote from King offers a glimpse into her vision for the exhibit, explaining how “from slavery to present day, black women have put their bodies on the line in order to save, protect, and sacrifice themselves for their families or the larger community.”
The community organizer and speaker is often invited to host conversations that help audiences navigate activism through a lens of visual art. In 2018, she led a discussion about art, loss, and gun violence at the BMA with local community leaders and conceptual artist Hank Willis Thomas about his work “Priceless,” a take on MasterCard ads which depicts his family grieving at the funeral of his cousin Songha Willis, who was robbed at gunpoint and shot execution-style in 2000.
King further explained the connection between activism and her exhibit during ArtBreak, the BMA’s free monthly speaker series where museum curators and special guests lead a 30- minute exploration of the museum’s galleries. While King said she was fortunate to be known for her activist work in Alabama, many contributions of her foremothers have gone undocumented, unnamed, or unsung. “Too often when we talk about civil rights, we don’t know who those names are,” said King. “There are women who have done the work who are not so visible.” The exhibit, said King, is also a testament to the fact that black women, while many haven’t experienced the same level of notability as Coretta Scott King and Rosa Parks, have been doing the work, dating back to laying the foundations of the civil rights movement. “Too often,” said King, “black women don’t have the opportunity to lean out of social justice.”
At the same, said King, phrases from some of the nation’s most visible black women have become some of the most recognizable phrases in contemporary American culture. She noted that Michelle Obama’s campaign slogan “when they go low, we go high,” Rep. Maxine Waters’ declaration “reclaiming my time” and Queen Latifah’s U.N.I.T.Y lyrics demanding “who you calling a b**ch” — all proclamations used by the women to firmly set their boundaries while asserting their presence and commanding respect — have become part of the lexicon of American vocabulary.
And for King, those examples and the exhibit are a testimony to black women’s power to shape America’s culture while simultaneously being written out of its history. She noted the events on December 12, 2017, when Doug Jones won the Senate election in Alabama, beating Roy Moore and making him the first Democrat to win an Alabama Senate seat in 25 years. Exit polls showed that black women largely pushed Jones to victory. Of the 30 percent of black people who voted for the former federal prosecutor, 98 percent were black women. In Lowndes County, a black woman named Perman Handy continued her decades-long tradition of driving voters to the polls.
Around the nation, news organizations such as the Washington Post, The New York Times, and NBC reported the story of how black women came out in droves to vote for Jones. On Dec. 13, #BlackWomen trended on Twitter as praises rang out in honor of black women as the true victors of election night, and post-election think pieces flooded internet explaining that black women — yet again— saved America in an effort to take care of themselves. For those not well versed in history, the work of black women to secure Jones’ victory seemed like a phenomenon. But Dec. 12 was yet another example of Black women historically showing up for themselves and their communities.
“We have always been here,” said King. “Why do (people) think we just woke up?” Companies are finally starting to see the benefit in quantifying and publicly presenting data that shows how the influence of black women translates to votes and buying power. In September 2017, global measurement company Nielsen released a study that found black women are increasingly influencing mainstream culture across a number of areas, including civic engagement.
“Black women not only vote at the ballot box, they vote at the cash register and with their highly influential voices on social media,” reported the study’s foreward, titled “What is #BlackGirlMagic and Why Should You Care?”
The study is a contemporary reaffirmation of the history T. Marie King told the audience at ArtBreak: black women in the past have always shown up.
The pair of photographs will be on display in the modern section of the Birmingham Museum of Art’s American gallery for the next six months.
Kate Crawford, the BMA’s William Cary Hulsey curator of American Art, says the exhibit is part of the museum’s ongoing efforts to keep a rotating presence of its civil rights photography. She says the museum also plans to continue with guest-curated exhibits similar to King’s in an effort to expand its civil rights photography collection.
“Women of the civil rights movement” is currently on display at the Birmingham Museum of Art in the American Gallery.