##chutz's Quot : Open Casket By Dana Schutz

Sharpton summarizes her decision, “She found the strength to say, ‘I’ll bear my pain to save some other mother from having to go through this’. And because she put the picture of this young man’s body on the conscious of America she might have saved thousands of young black men and women’s lives.” The Reverend goes on to say that through the media coverage of the funeral, “She was able to graphically bring home what a thousand speeches could not” therefore forcing America face it’s problem of racism.

The senseless murder of nine black church members by a self-proclaimed racist who feared America was being taken over by blacks (Robles, 2015), brought the community together. Soon after, images of Dylan Roof waving a Confederate flag surfaced, the conversations in Charleston turned to the lawmakers. For the victims and citizens of South Carolina, seeing the Confederate flag proudly displayed at their Statehouse was painful and

In Charleston, South Carolina during June of 2015, nine African-American church goers were murdered by a Caucasian young man, in what is now being called the Charleston Church Shooting. This murder has put new heat under an ongoing controversy over the Confederate flag, its symbolism, and brought debate over the flag to the forefront nationwide. In South Carolina, the House debate over removal of the flag from a Confederate monument at the Capitol Building picked up importance when pictures of the killer, posing with a Confederate flag, surfaced on the internet. The debate grew further in popularity nationwide, when Bree Newsom decided to scale the flag pole at the monument and remove the Confederate flag herself. Between the photos on the

The article that I read shows us that even though slavery was ended by the 13th amendment, life still was not fair or equal for former slaves. Reconstruction tried to give slaves the same rights as whites had, but the whites that lived in the southern states didn’t want this to happen they did everything they could to make the slaves live bad by ignoring the federal laws and passing new state laws. The end of Civil War in 1865 should have meant freedom for the slaves. But reconstruction gave them fake freedom. The painting shows in many ways the hardships that the former slaves ended even after they were no longer consider property. That era was one of the darkest era after the reconstruction. KKK was the one that raised the violent action

“Till’s mother kept her son’s casket open, choosing to reveal to the tens of thousands who attended the funeral the brutality that had been visited on her son”. Emmett’s body, in an open casket, stunned the people that attended his funeral. Jet Magazine and the Chicago Defender also brought the horrifying news and pictures to thousands of other people. This coverage encouraged many people to fight racism happening in the south. Even today, incidents such as the death of Trayvon Martin have been looked at along side the murder of Emmett Till .

In “A Protest Against the Burning and Lynching of Negroes” by Booker T. Washington, the author uses Rhetorical Strategies such as Logos, Pathos, and Ethos to show how he feels when many of his race were being common, he uses them in a way to show his perspective of what the government has done.To begin, the author uses Logos to show a logical statement of how white people can do anything they want, this made the lives of black people feel unfair and how the white people made others groups such as KKK to take the laws into their own hands.The law is only disregarded when a white person is concerned, and not a black person, it is used to show the inequality between these two group of people.“The laws are as a rule made by the white people and their execution is in the hands of the white people; so that there is little chance of any guilty colored man escaping.”White people has been controlling the environment ever since the black people arrived, this making it unfair for any black people to escape being found guilty.

In 1955 Emmett louis Till and his brother Wheeler were living in their uncle Moses’s house for the summer. Emmett allegedly wolf whistled at a white woman one evening, and later that night was taken from his uncles home. His mother Mamie Till was then notified that her son had been kidnapped. Emmett was brutally beaten, killed and then thrown into a river left to be found later by children fishing in the river. After they found Emmetts body the sheriff arrested Roy Bryant and his half brother J.W milam for murder. They say that there was a third person in the murder but no one else was ever put on trial for it. This act of violence shows what kind of society the blacks and the whites were living in. Black folk new that they had to keep their opinions and thoughts to themselves because their lives were at stake. At Emmetts funeral the

The history of the United States is bursting with instances of extreme racism, discrimination, segregation and prejudice. The gruesome murder of Emmett Till, a 14-year old, Chicago teenager shined a light on these subjects. The Mississippi Trial of 1955 which was the trial held for Emmett Till’s murder, became a sensational case that was watched and followed around the United States. The response followed by the trial would shape the history of racism in the United States, catalyzing many civil right movements, protests. Without massive coverage of the event through the Chicago Defender, the trial never would have become famous, leading to an enormous draw back in civil right movements both at the time and throughout history.

Right when the exhibition opened, it was not greeted well, especially by African - American artists. One of them, Parker Bright, stood in front of Open Casket, blocking it, but not that you could totally not see, with his back facing the viewer. On a back on his T-shirt was written “Black Death Spectacle”. Same afternoon, there was an open letter released on Facebook directed to exhibition curators Mia Locks and Christopher Y. Lew, by a british artist and a writer Hannah Black. In a letter Hannah Black demanded the picture taken down and even destroyed: “It is not acceptable for a white person to transmute Black suffering into profit and fun’. It was signed by 25 black artists. They felt that it is unfair for a white woman to exploit black history, because it is not her history and she never lived it. There was even a letter released by Dana Schutz, asking Whitney museum to take down the painting, which was later confirmed to be fake. In my opinion, these actions are too extreme and limiting the freedom of speech. I think, regardless of the color of the skin, this kind of act of violence towards a teenager brings out strong emotions in a lot of people. Expressing thoughts and feelings should not be

In August of 1955, a 14-year-old boy named Emmett Till traveled from his hometown, Chicago, to Money, Mississippi, to visit his great uncle, Mose Wright. Emmett was used to the laws in the north, and did not know that it was illegal to talk to a white person. So when his friends dared him to go into a shop and say bye to a white woman, he took the dare. Four days later, Emmett was taken and killed by the woman’s husband and his brother-in-law. The pair of them demanded to see the boy, and despite pleas from Mose, they forced Emmett into their car. Four days later, Emmett’s body was found beaten and lifeless in the Tallahatchie river. Emmett’s mother insisted on having an open-casket funeral, so the world could see what those mean had done to

For this assignment I chose to attend the Claudia Rankine reading that was hosted at MLK library. At the start of the event, Rankine explained that she would organize her reading around the images that are presented in her book, Citizen. From there, she dives immediately into the very first image, providing the audience with an explanation for the hoodie cut off that envelops the covers of her book. Rankine indicates that the hoodie was a piece of artwork that was created in 1993 by an African American artist by the name of David Hammons. What I found even more compelling, as Rankine explained the piece, was that Hammons created this hoodie a year after the beating of Rodney King. After she finished explaining the Hoodie piece, Rankine begins reading a piece from her book. Following the reading, Rankine showed another image, this time it was of Jim Crow road, she then points out the reasons as to why she liked this image in her book. Rankine explained that the example the image presented was something that she wanted to “watch over the book, as its first

With more than one monument of the brilliant “military tactician” (Brent Moore, 2015), a growing number of Americans, both black and white, call for the removal of the statues in public areas. Recently, the Nathan Bedford Forrest monument was vandalized by the spray painting of the words “Black Lives Matter.” This shows how many Americans do not support the statue because of Forrest’s pro-slavery values, but some southerners still see him as a hero. Time and time again, vandalism’s strike the statue, which was brought to the attention of a chairman of Memphis. He explains, “I think it's very symbolic and I wish that our city and our country can actually start having a conversation about "Black Lives Matter." (Taylor and Suriani, 2015). This shows how some white southerners’ opinions in the South agree that the statute should be

All three topics are for the public and tell our history over the years in a public way. One can see art as in a form of a memorial that helps society "in their rememory" in the words of Toni Morrison. When you think about memorials, one might ask themselves what are they for and what is the symbolic reason behind it? An artist named Marjorie Woodruff expresses the same questions that are being raised. Marjorie Woodruff dedicated an public art installation Spiral: The Lucy E. Parsons Memorial. One does not agree with the time frame of the memorial because a memorial is there to preserve the existence of the person who is being honored. So why was this particular memorial only up for two years, a very unusual time, allowed for remembrance. In

It is 1955, men are already flying around the world, but they are also stuck with foolishness from the past. They murder innocent kids unfairly for having a different color skin, claiming they were teaching a lesson. The Emmett Till Open-Coffin Open-Hearts Memorial is imperative to be built, it shows respect for Toll and those affected, symbolizes the strength it took to bring together our distressed nation in the wake of it, and is in a busy and populated yet peaceful environment.

It was a cloudy Saturday afternoon, when I, accompanied by a friend, went to Krannert Art Museum for the first time to see the social studies exhibition in relation to Brown v. Board of Education. Fifty years ago, the Supreme Court unanimously outlawed racial segregation in public school system. Although the decision is widely considered a major step towards a more equitable and integrated educational system, it did not fix all the racial problems in school system. Today, at the fiftieth anniversary of the High Court ruling, eight Americans artists share their works with the public at the Art Museum, both to commemorate Brown v. Board of Education and to ask the American