Mixed Media
The Visual Cultures of Racial Integration
1st Edition
Published on 24. February 2026
328 pages
978-0-520-41760-1 (ISBN)
Description
Mixed Media investigates Black and white artists' efforts toward racial integration, from the infamous 1931 Scottsboro Boys trial until Brown v. Board's 1954 desegregation of public schools. Each chapter attends to a distinctive visual ecology fostered by institutions and individuals committed to desegregation to varying degrees, including the nationwide public art initiatives of the New Deal, the imagery and cultural programs of the multiracial Popular Front, graphics produced for CIO-member labor unions, Jacob Lawrence's war paintings and other visual propaganda of the armed forces, and the struggle of New York abstract painters of African descent to navigate the criticism, museums, and markets of the mainstream art world. Together, they explore the divergent approaches to conceptualizing and implementing racial integration along the liberal-radical axis.
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Person
John Ott is author of Manufacturing the Modern Patron in Victorian California and coauthor of Muybridge and Mobility.
Content
Contents
Introduction
1. "The Whites Do Rule": The New Deal Imagines Racial Mixing
2. "The Strongest Social Weapons": The Visual Cultures of Racial Unity on the Left
3. "Graphic Consciousness": The CIO's Visual Cultures of Interracial Solidarity
4. Battle Station MoMA: Jacob Lawrence Desegregates the Armed Forces and the Art World
5. Formal Unity: Black Abstractionists and Integration at Mid-Century
Conclusion: "Sidetracked"
Acknowledgments
List of Illustrations
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Introduction
1. "The Whites Do Rule": The New Deal Imagines Racial Mixing
2. "The Strongest Social Weapons": The Visual Cultures of Racial Unity on the Left
3. "Graphic Consciousness": The CIO's Visual Cultures of Interracial Solidarity
4. Battle Station MoMA: Jacob Lawrence Desegregates the Armed Forces and the Art World
5. Formal Unity: Black Abstractionists and Integration at Mid-Century
Conclusion: "Sidetracked"
Acknowledgments
List of Illustrations
Notes
Bibliography
Index
