I write from the High Museum of Art in Atlanta while I am experiencing the exhibit: History Remixed.  I write in the liminal space between “Road to Freedom: Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement 1956-1968” and “After 1968: Contemporary Artists and the Civil Rights Legacy.”   I am intentionally stopping here to write before I proceed to the next part of the exhibit so as to record my right now feelings, thoughts and impressions.  The experience is profound.  Any criticisms I had of the exhibit have succumbed to the images themselves.  

 

Steve Shapiro, photographer employed by Life Magazine, was flown by the magazine to Memphis after the assassination of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  He was the first photo journalist to gain access to the room in which Dr. King stayed at the Loraine Hotel.  The picture captures remnants of an eaten meal, a small opened milk carton, empty glasses, styrofoam cups – all on the hotel desk and attached suitcase stand.  On the suitcase stand is a crumpled shirt and an open suitcase what looks like “Magic Shave,” a paper called “Soul Force,” some file folders, a book with only the author’s name visible, “Martin Luther King, Jr.,” and another book titled, Strength to Love.  (author)  

When I entered into this exhibit, I became emotional.  My eyes filled up because the sheer power of the images presented to me was overwhelming.  I sought a way to characterize my experience, my feelings, my thoughts.  Then I came to the photograph by Shapiro.  It is helping me voice my emotions. 

 

What is so engrossingly powerful about the people in these photographs is their seemingly otherworldly strength to love.  Is this not, in essence, the only thing that could enable mere mortals to endure, even to triumph over the horrors of our history?  Under threat of humiliation, physical harm and death, these men and women, most of whom were very, very young, marched, protested and bore witness to the dignity of a people of color.

 

These “colored” folk who engaged the struggle were not just black.  There were brothers and sisters of all hues who engaged the struggle for civil rights in this country.  Certainly, the oppression of one group of people had great impact on all people.  Together, people of different, colors, communities, particularities of experience came together and found the strength to love. 

 

I believe we have strength to love.  Still, strength to love is what we need... 

We need strength to love those who are different from us

We need strength to love ourselves into the ability to confront our complicity with systems of oppression and exclusion and hatred at work in this country and in the world

We need strength to love the poor out of poverty

We need strength to love ourselves even after we have taken an honest look at ourselves

We need strength to love our way out of selfishness and self-centeredness

We need strength to love our country enough to criti que it and challenge is to be better

We need strength to love other human beings enough to sacrifice some of what we have that others who have nothing may have something

We need strength to love children who are aging out of foster care and entering the streets

We need strength to love violence out of the hearts of the violent

We need strength to love authority out of the hands of the unjust

We need strength to love the mentally ill

We need strength to love the mentally ill

We need strength to love the mentally ill

 

Love is not some emotional or ethereal abstraction.  Love is a verb, an action word. 

Love is struggle

Love is power

Love is courage

Love is sacrifice

Love is risk

Love is …

 

Finish these statements for me:

We need strength to love….

Love is…

 

I love you

Belin