EIGHTY YEARS IN THE BLACK CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
Oil, charcoal, etc., 58 x 50 inches
The unifying theme
of this multiple image is the hourglass that contains the many
faces of the movement. Those of the formative years in the bottom
half of the hourglass include Douglass, Washington, Ovington,
and Du Bois among the individual portraits created by Templeton
for this exhibition and it also includes others, black and white,
who were active in the earlier days of the civil rights movement.
At the neck of the hourglass is the image of the young minister,
Martin Luther King, Jr., being taken away by white policemen from
one or another of his nonviolent protests, likely to spend some
time in jail as a consequence. In the upper chamber of the hourglass
are the figures of the latter half of the twentieth century, drawn
from Templeton's individual portraits of Mays and Wilkins and
Abernathy and McGill and Malcolm X and Whitney Young and Rosa
Parks. The young blacks of the sixties are there also, the new
generation ready to accept the challenges that their predecessors
had faced and fought.
This image of the hourglass with its unstoppable flow of individual
grains of sand, or people as here, brings to mind the shared concern
of Benjamin Mays and Robert Templeton that the appropriate title
and fitting theme of this exhibition be "Lest We Forget."
This collection helps us to become more determined that we shall
not forget, for the artist and his subjects deserve to be remembered
for all of their separate efforts.
End of tour. Thanks for visiting!
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