When the naiveté of the 1950s gave way to the clamoring of change in the ’60s, even the stodgy traditionalist Norman Rockwell grew.
For decades, Rockwell painted what we considered our greatest American values. But in the early 1960s, he began exploring our American struggle for freedom—and it made the editors at The Saturday Evening Post nervous.
They feared he was stepping outside the boundaries of traditionalism. As a result, Rockwell moved to Look Magazine, where he had more latitude to depict public life in this country.
The lasting power of a single story involving a 6-year-old girl selected to integrate New Orleans schools is startling, because it still pulses with meaning 65 years later. What happened in New Orleans—and across the Southern states—became the thematic narrative of Rockwell’s painting, “The Problem We All Live With.”
His text? Art. Swirls and dabs of oil paints, mixed with precision for color and shading.
Each stroke was purposeful in the creative hand of one of the world’s most beloved masters. There were no wasted elements; every inch of canvas served the artist’s intent, creatively imagined for a larger purpose. Rockwell’s painting is a study in intent.
Robert Coles, a Harvard professor of child psychiatry, offered his services as a counselor to Ruby Bridges, the subject of Rockwell’s painting. They met weekly to explore how she was experiencing the twice-daily ritual of being escorted by federal marshals through the racial hatred of protesters.
“I watch her walking with those federal marshals, and you can’t help but hear what the people say to her,” Coles said. “They’re ready to kill her. They call her the worst names imaginable. I never wanted integration, but I couldn’t say those things to any child, no matter her race. She smiles at them, and they say they’re going to kill her. There must be 40 or 50 grown men and women out on those streets every morning and every afternoon—sometimes more.”
Coles was present for the worst of it, researching this remarkable young child.
“For days that turned into weeks and weeks that turned into months,” he said, “this child had to brave murderously heckling mobs, there in the morning and there in the evening, full of threats and slurs and hysterical denunciations and accusations.”
That is the power of the painting. Four federal marshals walked with Bridges to school, but it was actually the authority of the United States of America accompanying her.
We see the men’s “Deputy U.S. Marshal” armbands—and that is what matters. The painting tells us that this country may have its flaws, but when right and wrong are on the line, the nation, in the end, usually chooses to stand for what is right.
Today, political prisoners are reduced to white cotton briefs, T-shirts and shackles. They are hunched over with their hands on their lowered heads, each accompanied by two federal officers. They are not headed to a courtroom where evidence will be presented to justify the state’s charges.
Instead, they are placed on a bus and taken to the airport, where they are jetted off to El Salvador. There, they will remain for the rest of their lives—in an American gulag with no charges, no legal representation and no due process. These political prisoners are victims of a president whose only loyalty is to himself, making his pledge to the Constitution meaningless.
Rockwell held a high view of the powers of the state to support the authority of the Constitution and the rule of law. The primacy of our constitutional laws is now being tested by the lawless one holding the law in his hands. And there seems little more to say than: This is not Rockwell’s image of America.
Perhaps, we can draw faith from the imagery of another painter—this one painting with words: “Let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream” (Amos 5:24).
Gravity pulls the waters of the earth downward to the low places until they join the sea. It cannot help but seek out the lowest elevations. Drawn there by the laws of God, it is relentless—grinding, working its way to the bottom of things until it loses itself in the sea.
Justice demands we respond with courage. Our national system of justice and our belief in the constitutional rule of law are under threat. The question of conscience demands the issue: Who will stand up to this threat to our democracy?
If Rockwell were alive today, what would he paint? How would the symbols of federal power and authority appear in support of the rule of law?
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Aauthor of Living a Narrative Life, Exploring the Power of Stories (Smyth & Helwys, 2019).
