Tales from The b.a.SKET: Black Art Sketches for the Contemporary Art Lover

By D. Amari Jackson

This week, we reach into the b.a.SKET and pull out David Hammons’s The Door…

Ironically, schoolgirl Linda Carol Brown attended the excellent all-Black school, Monroe Elementary, in Topeka, Kansas in 1951. Nonetheless, Oliver Brown—her father and the lead plaintiff in what would become the historic Brown v. Board of Education suit against Topeka—knew his daughter’s school was far from the norm and hoped, like many African American families, that all children had access to well-trained teachers, well-equipped facilities, and adequate educational resources.

The Brown case ultimately incorporated five separate class-action lawsuits brought by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) on behalf of Black schoolchildren and their families in Kansas, South Carolina, Delaware, Virginia and Washington, D.C. The landmark case, commonly regarded the most significant aspect of the civil rights movement, pushed to desegregate schools across the country and, in this process, sparked a violent and physical backlash to the opening up of schools to Black students. This response was literally embodied by elected leaders and threatening white mobs physically blocking the doors of educational institutions in numerous states to prevent students of color from entering.

Renowned artist-activist David Hammons effectively captured this historical moment with his 1969 offering, The Door (Admissions Office). In his compelling piece, Hammons contextualizes the tumultuous civil rights era by depicting a wooden door labeled “Admissions Office” on an acrylic, transparent center with two inked hands, a face, and a body pressing against it.

The poignant work symbolizes the inequitable tactics of a nation challenged by its own hate and years of legal discrimination through the struggling Black imprint of an excluded African American student.

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Amari Jackson is a creator, author, TV/web/film producer, and award-winning journalist. He is author of the 2011 novel, The Savion Sequence; creator/writer/coproducer of the 2012-2014 web series The Book Look; writer/coproducer of the 2016 film Edge of the Pier; and current writer/coproducer of Listen Up! on HBCU GO/Roku TV. He is a former Chief of Staff for a NJ State Senator; a former VP of Communications & Development for the Jamestown Project at Harvard University; and a recipient of several writing fellowships including the George Washington Williams Fellowship from the Independent Press Association. An active ghost writer, song writer, martial artist, and journalist, his writings have appeared in a wide variety of national and regional publications.

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