The Invisible Man

I love listening to audiobooks while I paint - usually in the morning - before switching to music in the later hours. I'm usually a fan of the political thrillers and detective stories (the Bourne series by Robert Ludlum read by Scott Brick were fantastic). In my previous post on the 'Precious' essay by Darryl Washington, he referenced the novel 'The Invisible Man' by Ralph Ellison. It's one of those books that I had always intended to read but never got around to. I decided to kill two birds with one stone and downloaded the audiobook which was read by the actor Joe Morton. I have to tell you that it was by far the best audiobook that I have listened to in a long time. Joe Morton's ability to bring to life a myriad of characters was phenomenal. He vocally painted a picture and infused the dialogue with so much emotion that you felt as though you were a part of the narrative and watching it being constructed in front of your eyes. I was so impressed with his treatment of the material that I plan to see what other books he has read and download them for future listening.

On the painting front, I am currently working on five more individuals and will post the progress in a day or two. This weekend I have to make a report to the School of Government on my progress. I spoke with Ann Simpson a couple days ago and she mentioned that they plan to have a meeting with the Federal credit Union officials to begin discussions on plans for the unveiling. The meeting will be on the 29th and I'm planning to attend. I need to head back to Chapel Hill and take a look at the wall where the painting will hang to verify a couple measurements and determine what color it should be. They had a museum expert come in and advise them on the proper lighting for the piece based on the location and dimensions. I yielded to his advice since such things are beyond my periphery. What I am most concerned with at this time is the physical construction of the wall (surface material, stud location, etc.). I need to gather as much information for the carpenter (Jim Hale) who I will be calling in soon to begin building the frame and figuring out the mounting process. This is one of those one shot deals that I need to go as smooth as possible after transporting the painting and stretching it on location.  

Fear...the Great Motivator

If there was one portrait in this whole mural that made me take a deep breath and move carefully it was that of John Hope Franklin. He was the last name added to the list of participants because at the time when I first met with the selection committee, he was still alive. Due to legal issues the historians would not allow anyone still living to be in the mural and actually preferred they be deceased at least 25 years. I'm not a lawyer but I think it has something to do with ownership of image - ask a copyright lawyer. The only reason I was allowed to include the Greensboro Four is because they are basically in the public domain - I think - ask a lawyer. Dr. Franklin unfortunately passed away a couple months before I started planning the mural and was immediately added to the mix. 


Anyone familiar with Dr. Franklin knows that he had quite the distinguished career. He is a literal legend in North Carolina - read his bio (below) and you'll see why. If there was anyone that would be easily recognizable in the whole painting, it is he. In other words, don't screw this one up!

Dr. John Hope Franklin (select for larger view)

John Hope Franklin was the James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of History, and for seven years was Professor of Legal History in the Law School at Duke University. He was a native of Oklahoma and a graduate of Fisk University. He received the A.M. and Ph.D. degrees in history from Harvard University. He has taught at a number of institutions, including Fisk University, St. Augustine's College, North Carolina Central University, and Howard University. In 1956 he went to Brooklyn College as Chairman of the Department of History; and in 1964, he joined the faculty of the University of Chicago, serving as Chairman of the Department of History from 1967 to 1970. At Chicago, he was the John Matthews Manly Distinguished Service Professor from 1969 to 1982, when he became Professor Emeritus.

Professor Franklin's numerous publications include The Emancipation Proclamation, The Militant South, The Free Negro in North Carolina, Reconstruction After the Civil War, and A Southern Odyssey: Travelers in the Ante-bellum North. Perhaps his best known book is From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African-Americans, now in its seventh edition. His Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities for 1976 was published in 1985 and received the Clarence L. Holte Literary Prize for that year. In 1990, a collection of essays covering a teaching and writing career of fifty years, was published under the title, Race and History: Selected Essays, 1938-1988. In 1993, he published The Color Line: Legacy for the Twenty-first Century. Professor Franklin's most recent book, My Life and an Era: The Autobiography of Buck Colbert Franklin, is an autobiography of his father that he edited with his son, John Whittington Franklin. His research at the time of his death dealt with "Dissidents on the Plantation: Runaway Slaves."

Essay on the movie Precious

Darryl Lorenzo Washington is not only a friend but one of the most powerful essayist's I have ever read. In this issue of Dissent Magazine he turns his lens on the movie Precious.

Sex, Race, and Precious

Darryl Lorenzo Wellington - March 6, 2010

“IN THE beginning was not the shadow, but the act.” Ralph Ellison’s cause and effect dictum is applicable to any cinematic adaptation of a literary work: Before there was the movie, there was the book. But today—given the power of film, publicity, and celebrity—the cinematic shadow often takes precedence. The very title of Lee Daniels’s film Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire points viewers toward the original novel, but the great majority of viewers will never take the opportunity to compare film and text. They will never fully appreciate what was lost, gained, or rearranged, and they will never grasp where the narration has become dialogue or monologue. If the film is a major success, the cinematic visualization may become so dominant that the reader of the novel will lose the capacity to imagine the story. Staring at the written word, you will see the screen adaptation.

This will certainly be the case with Daniels’s visualization of the lead character of Sapphire’s novel—Claireece Precious Jones, who is portrayed (unforgettably) by Gabourey Sidibe. Harking back to the tradition of neorealist filmmakers like Vittorio De Sica (whose film Two Women is knowingly snippetted in Precious), Daniels cast an unknown with no professional acting experience. But Sidibe is more than an unfamiliar face. She mumbles, reluctantly makes eye contact, displays little expression and even less vocal dexterity. Sidibe doesn’t “portray” a character as much as embody her. Her performance isn’t an amazing piece of acting; it’s amazing for precisely giving the impression that she isn’t acting at all.

Gabourey Sidibe is surely one of the unlikeliest personages in American movie history. Call her big-boned, ample, bodacious, or plain fat, but her lead role in a major motion picture is in itself a critique of the one-dimensionality of Hollywood body images—which have become a parade of beautiful and handsome stars supposedly portraying alcoholics, drug addicts, or ordinary people. Precious is a depressed and abused sixteen years old, and Sidbe looks the part.

There she goes—in a movie poster that achieves a certain shock effect merely by brandishing Sidibie’s unfamiliar presence: sulky, head lowered, sneakers oversized. Sidibe’s physique is an image that beauty-conscious America works against. Her character seems to carry the burden of the extent to which society has belittled her. In the background of the poster hover a pair of butterfly wings, and a glorious imaginary crown tops Sidibe’s head. The earliest advertisements were captioned Life is Precious. Sentimental, yes, but a little is okay for a story that is so brutal and deadly.


Price and Spaulding

Joseph Price and Charles Spaulding

Joseph Charles Price, founder and first president of Livingston College, in North Carolina, was born free on February 10, 1854 in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. His mother, a free black woman named Emily Paulin, moved with her son to New Bern, North Carolina which was then occupied by Union forces, to escape the violence of the Civil War. Shortly after, she married David Price and Joseph took his stepfather's name.  In New Bern Joseph Price studied at St. Cyprian Episcopal School founded for the children of ex-slaves by Boston educators.  He later attended Shaw University in Raleigh in 1873 but transferred to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania in 1875.  Price graduated as valedictorian in 1879 after winning several oratorical prizes.  Impressed with the young Price, Bishop James Walker Hood of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church appointed him to its delegation to the World Ecumenical Conference meeting in London, England.

In London, Price amazed audiences with his powerful speaking.  Called "The World's Orator" by the British press, Price was encouraged by the delegation to stay in England and raise funds for the reestablishment of Zion Wesley Institute, later to be Livingston College.  The original school was founded in 1870 as a seminary for training A.M.E. Zion ministers, but closed after only three years in operations.  Over the next year, Price was able to raise $10,000 for the school, and returned to North Carolina in 1882.  The town of Salisbury offered the school $1,000 and 40 acres called "Delta Grove" belonging to J.M. Gray.  The school opened later that year with 28-year-old Joseph Price as its president.

For the next ten years Price served as president of Livingston College. In 1890 he became involved in the Afro-American League and was elected president of the National Protective Association.  That same year he was voted one of the "Ten Greatest Negroes Who Ever Lived." Price advocated education to help ameliorate the damages done by generations of slavery and discrimination for whites as well as blacks. He died in Salisbury, North Carolina in 1893.

Charles Clinton Spaulding, an African-American business leader, was born in 1874. He built the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company into the nation's largest black-owned business by the time of his death in 1952, when it was worth about $40 million.

Spaulding was born in Columbus County, North Carolina, and left his father's farm at the age of 20. He moved to Durham, N.C.,, where in 1898, he completed what was equivalent to a high school education and became the manager of a black-owned grocery store. In 1899, the recently established North Carolina Mutual and Provident Association hired him as a part-time agent. The following year, he was promoted to full-time general manager, the companies’ only full-time position.

Spaulding was an early proponent of saturation advertising, inundating local businesses with promotional items bearing his company's name. In the first decade of the century, the company prospered, establishing subsidiaries and supporting a variety of local businesses. Spaulding was elevated to vice president in 1908, and then to secretary-treasurer in 1919, when the firm officially changed its name to the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company. By 1920, the company had over 1,000 employees and several offices along the East Coast. In 1923, Spaulding became president, a position he held until his death in 1952. North Carolina Mutual continued to grow and to establish more black-operated subsidiaries in the 1920s. His financial reorganization of the company insured its survival during the economic depression of the 1930s.

Although he was best noted for his business leadership, Spaulding was also involved in political and educational issues. As national chairman of the Urban League's Emergency Advisory Council in the 1930s, he campaigned to secure New Deal jobs for African-Americans. As chairman of the Durham Committee on Negro Affairs, he engaged in voter registration efforts and convinced city officials to hire black police officers. Spaulding also supported education for blacks while serving as a trustee for Howard University, Shaw University, and North Carolina College. He died in 1952.

This is where I am right now.

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Back in the Saddle Again

I am always amazed how long it takes for me to get back into a painting after leaving for a couple days. I got back in town late Friday night and tried to paint on Saturday and Sunday but the canvas wasn't having any of it. It took until Monday afternoon for the paint to start to flow right. Yeesh. I'm sorry, I'll stay home from now on. I'm chilling some Champagne for this weekend. Three more faces and hands to complete and I'm at the halfway point. I'm shooting for Friday night with some clean-up on Saturday and mimosa's to celebrate half-way on the porch Sunday afternoon (It better be a beautiful day). Feel free to join me.

Today's line-up include Dr. Aaron Moore and Reginald Hawkins, Sr. 

Dr. Aaron Moore and Reginald Hawkins, Sr. (select to enlarge)

Dr. Aaron Moore was the first African-American physician in Durham. Born in 1863 to free African-American, land-owning parents in Elkton, NC, he came to Durham in 1888, after graduation from Medical School at Shaw University in Raleigh. He was a preeminent force in building the foundations of Hayti and a strong African-American community in Durham.


Moore was the principal mover behind the establishment of Lincoln Hospital. When George Watts considered adding a wing for African-Americans to the Watts Hospital in the late 1890s , Moore evidently persuaded Watts that the African-American community needed its own hospital, where African-American physicians could minister to their patients. Watts conveyed Moore's sentiments to the Duke family, who agreed to fund the construction of a hospital at the corner of Cozart Street/Alley and Proctor Street. The cornerstone of the original Lincoln Hospital was laid on July 4, 1901.

Moore was superintendent of the hospital, as well as treasurer and medical director of North Carolina Mutual.

In 1913, Moore founded a Sunday School library at White Rock Baptist Church which would, in 1919, become the "Durham Colored Library", later the Stanford Warren Library. Moore also co-founded the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company in 1898; founded North Carolina’s second black library (today known as the Stanford L. Warren Library) in 1913; and helped establish Mechanics and Farmers Bank, the Merrick-Moore-Spaulding Real Estate Company, the Durham Drug Company, and the Durham Textile Mill.

Reginald Hawkins, Sr. was as an obstreperous and often confrontational desegregation activist of the 1950s and 60s. His passionate avocation for racial equality propelled him to the national civil rights spotlight and helped to dismantle segregation in North Carolina and the South. In 1968, Hawkins ran on the Democratic ticket in the North Carolina gubernatorial election making him the first African American to run for a Southern statewide office since Reconstruction. He was also an ordained minister.  Though misunderstood, nearly forgotten, and labeled by some as, “militant,” Hawkins’s endeavors to end racial injustices and his ability to inspire others to join the cause place him as one of North Carolina’s most significant leaders of the Civil Rights Era.

Following his studies at Howard University, Hawkins opened a dental practice and dedicated himself to civil rights.  Wanting to actively participate in desegregation, Hawkins joined the Charlotte chapter of the NAACP to work alongside Kelly Alexander, a man whose leadership helped lay the foundation for the landmark ruling in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1971).  During the Korean Conflict, Hawkins’s pursuits were interrupted when he was drafted into the U.S. Army to serve as a dentist at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.  After Hawkins’s return, he learned that NAACP leaders disagreed strongly regarding protest strategies--in particular, the means to end school segregation.  Kelly Alexander favored suing the city of Charlotte over civil injustices--a method that was often interminable, if successful at all.  Hawkins, on the other hand, desired a confrontational approach that used media coverage to highlight injustices so that discontented black Charlotteans might be mobilized and abrupt, immediate change might be realized.

John Adams Hyman

This will be the last posting of the week. I will be in Charlotte for the next couple days and may have another portrait ready to post by Sunday night. Next week after I finish this current grouping of individuals, I will post an updated image of the entire mural.

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John Adams Hyman was born into slavery on July 23, 1840 in Warren County, North Carolina. Hyman's thirst for knowledge resulted in him being sold away from his family for attempting to read a spelling book that was given to him by a sympathetic white jeweler. He continued to seek knowledge at his new residence in Alabama and was sold again for fear that he would influence other slaves. Hyman was sold eight more times for his attempts to educate himself.  

At the age of 25 Hyman was freed by the Thirteenth Amendment and returned to his family in North Carolina. He quickly enrolled in school where he received an elementary education. Hyman also became a landowner and merchant.  Hyman, a Mason, soon emerged as a leader of the post-Civil War North Carolina black community.  

By 1868 John Hyman was an active member of the Republican Party. Despite intimidation attempts by the Ku Klux Klan, Hyman and 132 other Republicans were elected to a constitutional convention which crafted a new constitution for the state of North Carolina. The Constitution called for public education available to all students and voting rights for African-American men.   

Following the 1868 Constitutional Convention Hyman was elected to the North Carolina State Senate from Warren County. He served in the State Senate until 1874. In 1872, Hyman was unsuccessful in a bid to become North Carolina’s first black congressman when he campaigned in the state’s heavily African American Second Congressional District.  He ran again in 1874, winning against a white Democrat. Hyman was the only Republican elected to Congress from North Carolina that year. The election was contested, however, and Hyman’s term ended before he was officially seated. Hyman ran again in 1876 and 1878.  Both times he was unsuccessful partly because of accusations of corruption.

While in Congress, Hyman proposed federal funding for Civil War-related damages in his district. He also called for the reimbursement of the freedmen and women who had lost money in the Federally Chartered Freedman's Bank. However, because his seat was challenged his entire term, Hyman was unable to fully make his presence felt in Congress.   

In 1878 Hyman returned to North Carolina to farm and run a grocery and liquor store in Warrenton. He continued to attract controversy. When members of the Warrenton Colored Methodist Church accused him of embezzling church funds, he assaulted the church’s minister and was arrested and fined for assault.  As he was increasingly ostracized by the local community, Hyman left Warrenton and returned to Washington D.C. where he obtained a series of minor appointive posts including special deputy collector of internal revenue, the U.S. Post Office and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. John Adams Hyman died at age 51 on September 14, 1891.

Henry Plummer Cheatham

Born into slavery in Henderson, North Carolina, Henry Cheatham was the child of an enslaved domestic worker about who little is known. An adolescent after the American Civil War, Cheatham benefited from country’s short-lived commitment to provide educational opportunities to all children. He attended public school where he excelled in his studies. After high school Cheatham was admitted to Shaw University, founded for the children of freedmen, graduating with honors in 1882. He earned a masters degree from the same institution in 1887.

During his senior year of college, Cheatham helped to found a home for African American orphans.  In 1883, Cheatham was hired as the Principal of the State Normal School for African Americans, at Plymouth, North Carolina. He held the position for a year when his career as an educator gave way to his desire to enter state politics.  Cheatham ran a successful campaign for the office of Registrar of Deeds at Vance County, North Carolina in 1884, and he served the county for four years.  He also studied law during his first term in office, with an eye toward national politics. In 1888 Henry Cheatham ran for Congress as a Republican in North Carolina’s Second Congressional District. He defeated his white Democratic opponent, Furnifold M. Simmons.

Cheatham entered the Fifty-first U.S. Congress and would be returned to office again in 1890.  As a United States Congressman, Cheatham supported Henry Cabot Lodge’s Federal Elections Bill sponsored by representatives who wished to end election violence against African American voters.  Although Cheatham’s efforts helped the measure pass in the House of Representatives, the Lodge bill was killed in the U.S. Senate. Later, Cheatham sponsored an unsuccessful bill requiring Congress to appropriate funds for African American participation at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893.  Cheatham wanted the fair’s visitors to see the demonstrable progress African Americans had made since the end of slavery.

More effective at winning political concessions outside of the halls of Congress, Cheatham used his political clout to win federal posts for Republicans. In all he secured over eighty jobs for members of his party. His efforts were controversial, however, as African Americans and whites alike, complained that too many positions went to the “opposite” race. Cheatham ran for Congress for a third time in 1892 but lost. In 1897 he accepted a position as Recorder of Deeds for Washington D.C.  In 1907, Cheatham returned to North Carolina where he served as the superintendent of the African American orphanage that he had co-founded two decades earlier. Henry Plummer Cheatham died on November 29th, 1935 in North Carolina. He was survived by his six children, three from his first marriage to Louise Cherry Cheatham, and three from his marriage to Laura Joyner Cheatham.

James Benson Dudley

I was trying to relax today but my conscience got the better of me and I decided to go in and get a little work done. I'm glad I did, finished yet another portrait.

Select to see larger image

Wilmington native James Benson Dudley (1859-1925) was for twenty-nine years the president of North Carolina Agricultural and Mechanical College, the predecessor institution of North Carolina A. & T. State University. His contributions, arguably the most important of any individual to that school’s history, are commemorated on campus through the name of a street and a building. In Wilmington, where he is buried, a monument was erected in the 1980s to his memory.

Dudley was born into slavery, the son of John and Annie Dudley, the property of the family of Edward B. Dudley, the state’s governor from 1836 to 1841. Young Dudley was educated by private teachers and in the freedmen’s school in Wilmington. He graduated from Shaw University and in time received an M.A. from Livingstone College and LL.D. from Wilberforce University. His first teaching position was in a first grade classroom in Sampson County in 1880. The following year he assumed the principalship of Peabody Graded Normal School in his hometown, where he remained for fifteen years. In that period he also served terms as editor of the weekly Wilmington Chronicle and as register of deeds.

In 1896 John O. Crosby, who had since the founding of A. & M. College five years earlier served as its president, resigned. Dudley, who had for those five years been on the board of trustees, was named as his successor. During Dudley’s long tenure the college expanded considerably and achieved national recognition. President Dudley’s particular interest was in emphasizing the agricultural aspect of the curriculum. As an outgrowth he helped establish farmers's institute for Negroes across the state. In matters of race relations he counseled patience and nonresistance. He served as president of A. & M. until his death in 1925.

The wave is cresting

I'm fast approaching the halfway point. I had planned to be there by the end of the month, but it looks like the end of the first week of March. Even though I have more than half of the 38 individuals completed, there's still the counter images and the background to consider. There are nine faces that I need to finish before I will allow myself to say that I'm halfway and the one below is only the third. I have to go to the McColl Center for Visual Art in Charlotte on Thursday and Friday for another session of the Innovation Institute and hope to have another 5 completed and posted by then. 

I have a steady stream of visitors coming by the studio these days. In keeping with my open door policy, they stop by to monitor the progress and tell others which leads to more visitors. I'm happy to share with them what I am working on and needless to say, I think they are more excited about seeing this finished than I am. I'm growing more and more attached to this piece and dread the day that I have to part with it. My good friend Tony Bell is a teacher at the Art Institute of Charleston and brought his entire class in on Tuesday. They were covering the topic of depth of field in photography and art and he wanted them to talk with me about ways visual artists use perspective and other techniques to create visual depth in their paintings. They were quiet at first but soon opened up and we had a great time. 

Today's image is that of Anna Julia Haywood Cooper.  

Anna Julia Haywood Cooper

Anna Julia Haywood Cooper was a civil and women's rights pioneer. She was one of the earliest black women activists in the realm of higher education. She was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1858, the daughter of a slave, Hannah Stanley Haywood, and her white master, George Washington Haywood.

She showed great academic prom­ise from an early age, receiving a scholarship at age nine to attend St. Augustine’s Normal School and Collegiate Institute; in 1877 she married an instructor at the school, George Cooper. She was widowed in 1879 and never remarried. Cooper entered Oberlin in 1881, where she earned a B.A. in 1884 and an M.A. in mathematics in 1887.

She delivered her paper "The Negro Problem in America" at the Pan-African Conference in Lon­don in 1900 and was subsequently named to the Pan-African Execu­tive Committee. She did graduate work at the Sorbonne, in Paris, during 1911-12 and at Columbia in 1913-16. She received a Ph.D. from the Sorbonne in 1925. Dr. Cooper taught, or served as principal, at Dunbar High School (formerly M Street High), long the only aca­demic high school for blacks in Washington, D.C., for thirty-nine years. She died in 1964, in her life spanning ante-bellum slavery to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

The March Toward the Center

The halfway point is in sight. By the end of this week I will be ready to start on at least 9 faces that I will try and have completed by the end of the month. That will make 24 out of 40 participants. That should put me at the halfway point with the meat of the painting to come. The right side of the painting is more dense in it's layout but with the momentum of reaching midway, I'm looking forward to it.

Word is starting to get out and visitors are starting to come by more frequently. My open door policy on the studio grants anyone access (thanks McColl!) and I'm happy to share with them what I'm doing. Stop by if you're in the area.