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This book was made to mark the 50th anniversary of the Little Rock incident, a key moment in the civil rights movement when nine black students attempted to attend an all white school. A race riot quickly began as a lot of inbred American Bible Belters got seriously angry because their pure bred, Aryan children had to go to school with the black folk. It was the first heavily mass-mediated event of the civil rights movement and is of relevance because it showed the rest of the world, and maybe more importantly middle America, just what sort of a free democratic country they were living in.
Concept
The images from this event are absolutely shocking. What hit me the most was how childhood innocence could be manipulated for such hateful purposes. I found in a history book a rhyming circular that went round the area at the time describing the events. And using this as the base I created a kind of subverted children’s story book. Rhyming couplets and a classical book of verse aesthetic contrasted with images of white mobs beating lone black men and shouting racist abuse at fifteen year old girls. If it wasn’t dark enough, I added a lynch rope page finder and a gollywog patterned pouch to cap it off.
(By the way, whoever stole my copy of this book from Freerange, you’re lucky I’m a pacifist - The means make the ends they do not justify them which in this case is a shame.)
