Murder in Mississippi

Yesterday morning in this California beach town, where most people seem only interested in their cell phones, I found a few scenes on the public beach that surprised me: a woman in a bikini swimming fearlessly out in the cold water, and a long-haired beautiful man assuming carefully planned erotic poses for a photographer, jeans below his hips, handsomely muscled chest thrust forward. I have been looking at such posed photographs of women for years but this man surprised me; at one point he seemed about to drop his jeans but thought better of it.

Walking back, I passed a humble yard sale and picked up, for fifty cents, a battered and dusty copy of a Reader’s Digest picture book, Norman Rockwell’s America, published in 1976.

I know what to expect of Rockwell’s art, or I thought I did: homey sentimental depictions of an America that no longer exists and perhaps never did.

I hadn’t known that in 1965 he’d painted the murder of three Civil Rights workers in Mississippi. Organized by the Klan and the local sheriff, these three young men, two white and one black, were taken to a remote spot and murdered for their roles in organizing and encouraging black voters. Their bodies were hauled away and buried under a dam, only to be discovered years later.

This reminded me of how important it is not to dismiss books and paintings that we assume no longer correspond to or support our contemporary views. We are in danger of succumbing, in our eagerness to expunge our guilt, to a modern version of the various book-burnings that have haunted and distorted history. To dismiss Tom Sawyer for its racist language without allowing for its literary excellence or for the truth of its portrayal of the society of that time (and not just in the south) is a grievous mistake. No expunging will make up for our past errors; every politically incorrect statement, joke, and statue stands as glaring witness to aspects of our history we cannot ignore or try to forget.

Rockwell’s painting, commissioned by Look and printed as a cover, caused some vicious rejoinders, as all stark and straightforward art always will. The hateful aspects of our thoughts and imaginations exist, and are shown in many forms that cannot be deleted without doing harm to history.

[For more on this painting, visit the Norman Rockwell Museum’s Murder in Mississippi Exhibition page where the following video is presented.]

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