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By Shantay Robinson <\/span><\/pre>\n <\/p>\n
At no other time was the country as divided as it was during the Civil War. The Union soldiers from the North fought for the abolition of slavery and the Confederacy fought for states\u2019 rights to uphold the institution. \u201cThe Battle of Gettysburg\u201d was the battle that ended the war, and it was fought for three days in July of 1863. The Union army won the war, but the principles they were supposed to defend fell short of what, in reality, would be the fate of the country. The romanticized notions of what the Civil War stood for are what we read about in textbooks and history classes when in reality the fight didn\u2019t end slavery. One hundred and fifty-four years later, black people in this country are under similar duress and the country is divided once again because African Americans have still not been granted their full humanity. <\/span><\/p>\nIn Mark Bradford\u2019s 400-linear foot homage to these very divided times, <\/span>Pickett\u2019s Charge, <\/span><\/i>an appropriation of the Civil War cyclorama, he rips, tears, glues, overlays, manipulates billboard-sized reproductions of scenes from Gettysburg and asserts a new narrative. <\/span><\/p>\nThe images taken from the cyclorama are distorted in their reproduction and only slightly recognizable. But I think that\u2019s the point. \u00a0As two Union soldiers are depicted in their dark colored uniforms, their position in the Civil War is today still not realized. Black people in this country are still treated as less than human. The war was to be integral to the livelihoods of the black population, as Abraham Lincoln ordered the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. But following the end of the war enslaved people, especially in the west, didn\u2019t hear about their freedom until June 19, 1865.<\/span><\/p>\nCheck out What's new with Black Art In America: Art Show Production<\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/pre>\n