Inspirational piece by Alice Walker at her site on the banning of the Gaza children’s art by the children’s museum in Oakland (which has drawn wide scorn). Excerpt (thx, Henry Norr):
There was no museum in the tiny, segregated, Georgia town closest to where we lived; though I could be wrong. I was fifty before I understood there was, somewhere hidden in the white part of town, a public library. I do remember that the art of Jimmy Lee Brundidge, a young black folk artist, was shown on the walls of the local shoe shop.
The decision by the Museum of Children’s Art in Oakland not to show the work of Palestinian children from Gaza makes me sad. But not discouraged. The art will be shown. The walls of a shoe shop will be found. We will all – those of us who care about these children, whose pain our tax dollars assured – go to see it. Furthermore, we will write to the children to let them know we’ve seen their work and what we think of it. This is the least we can do.
Such banning as this usually backfires.
I don’t think I was born yet, but I “remember” that, in 1939, Marian Anderson, the great black contralto, was refused venue at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. by the Daughters of the American Revolution because (gasp) the audience would be integrated! Anderson supporters, including president Franklin Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt, rallied to the cause and Anderson sang to a crowd in the tens of thousands while standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
We will find a Lincoln Memorial. We will eventually, on this issue of freeing the Palestinians, find a Lincoln.
