Art of the Civil Rights Movement

 The art of the Civil Rights movement was usually bold, and used a lot of warm colors, often chosing reds as the focal color. This you can see on the National Civil Rights Museum website. The art was supposed to be dramatic and shout out a statement for the world to see. This is what that dramatic coloring did. It often portrayed African Americans as more human, or as doing work, possibly to get unsupporting white people to support the movement.

More information can be found here. This is a paper that someone wrote about African American art in the 1950s. They often told tales of the ways of old slavery and how we are moving forward. The artists used a style of color blocking as I mentioned above, placing complimentary colors next to each other to make them more and more eye catching. It is a reminder to everyone of the pain and suffering that the African Americans went through. I think it was a very good way of gaining support for the African Americans to escape from such severe oppression.

   

pictures taken from here and here.