WASHINGTON, DC.- Charles White (1918–1979) was a celebrated artist, teacher, and activist who magnified the power of the Black figure in drawings, prints, murals, and paintings.
The National Gallery of Art has acquired its first painting by the artist, I Accuse (c. 1950), which joins several prints by White in the collection. The acquisition was made possible by Patrons’ Permanent Fund and through the generosity of P. Bruce Marine and Donald Hardy.
I Accuse depicts a mother of one of the “Scottsboro Boys”—nine African American teenagers falsely accused and tried for rape in the 1930s—who traveled the country with other mothers to raise awareness of the unjust trials of their incarcerated sons. Inspired by Émile Zola’s account of the Dreyfus Affair of 1894, the title serves as an indictment of the US legal system.
The woman—in a stance reminiscent of the Statue of Liberty—holds a stack of paper in one arm and extends the other, pointing a finger to implicate her audience in the systemic racial injustices experienced by her son and other Black Americans. White’s image is a powerful reminder that the American ideals of freedom, progress, and opportunity have not pertained to all citizens.
The issues surrounding I Accuse concerned the artist for years. In 1966, White returned to the theme of racial injustice and oppression in the form of a series of drawings titled J’Accuse. I Accuse was one of four oil paintings he exhibited by ACA Gallery in a group show, .... Five Artists (December 24, 1951–January 5, 1952). White later donated the painting to an auction to benefit the American Communist Party. At the time, he was among many artists who supported the party, which sponsored the travels and appearances of the “Scottsboro Mothers” across the United States and Europe.
Acquisition: Doris Derby
Doris Adelaide Derby (1939–2022) was a pivotal photographer and activist of the American civil rights movement. She promoted the importance of African American photographers, filmmakers, and playwrights exploring Black culture and addressing Black communities. She focused on representing and empowering Black women, detailing the value of their work and activism and emphasizing their impact on American culture. David Knaus has generously given the National Gallery of Art 11 photographs by Derby. They are the first works by her to enter the collection and they strengthen the museum’s holdings of photographs by African American women.
From a young age, Derby witnessed her family’s participation and leadership in social justice organizations. Her father founded the New York State Careerists Society, which fought racial discrimination in the workplace. Derby also understood the incisive role that photographs made by African Americans could play in documenting, archiving, and representing Black culture. She joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and used her camera to document their work and her experiences in Mississippi and Louisiana communities from 1963 to 1972. Her pictures focused on SNCC’s support of community programs such as adult literacy, voting rights, Head Start–funded teaching in rural schools, health clinics, and theaters. Derby’s photographs primarily document women and children, centering civil rights activists, teachers, students, farmers, nurses, quilters, and craft workers, among others. As a field secretary, she organized SNCC workers and contributed to education, art, and media projects such as the first Head Start teaching program in Mississippi, the Free Southern Theater at Tougaloo College, and Southern Media in Jackson, Mississippi.
Southern Media was a documentary and filmmaking group that covered events for political campaigns and legal purposes. The organization trained Mississippi civil rights workers in photography and provided a facility to develop their photographs. Derby’s work with Southern Media gave her the opportunity to photograph emerging politicians, activists, and the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. Derby also began photographing candid scenes in and around Black communities in the Mississippi Delta, including the important Lowndes County voting rights campaigns.
After leaving Mississippi in 1972, Derby earned master’s and doctoral degrees in social anthropology and teaching at Georgia State University in Atlanta. She directed the office of African American student services and programs at Georgia State University. Toward the end of her life, Derby published two books of her documentary photographs from the South: Poetagraphy: Artistic Reflections of a Mississippi Lifeline in Words and Images: 1963–1972 (2019) and Doris Derby: A Civil Rights Journey (2021).
