Civil Rights Movement
The Freedom Movement in Art

Art in Public Spaces
Atlanta GA
Birmingham AL
Memphis TN
Various locations
Paintings, Drawings, & Sculpture
Charlotta Janssen Art Works

See also:

Freedom Movement in Art Special Collections
Freedom Movement Posters
Pins of the Freedom Movement
Postage Stamps
Jules Feiffer: CRM-Related Cartoons

Freedom Movement Art in Public Spaces

Atlanta GA

 

John Lewis, SNCC
Atlanta street mural
Artist: Sean Garrett


We Shall Always March Ahead
(L to R) Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Hosea Williams, Martin Luther King, Coretta King, John Lewis
Atlanta street mural
Artist: Muhammad Yungai

 

Ruby Doris Robinson Smith, SNCC
Atlanta street mural
Artist: Charmaine Minniefield


Ella Baker, NAACP, SCLC, SNCC
Atlanta street mural
Artist: Charmaine Minniefield

 

Frank Smith, one of the architects if the Atlanta Student Movement and a founding Member of SNCC. By the Atlanta Student Movement Mural Project.


Hosea Williams (SCLC) Mural ~ Atlanta GA.
Artist: Not identified.

 

Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Park, Atlanta GA


The Three Pioneers, by Martin Dawe. 2019
Ford Greene, Ralph Long, Lawrence Williams
First Black students Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech).


The First Graduate, by Martin Dawe
Honoring Ronald Yancey, first Black graduate
Georgia Institute of Technology

Birmingham AL

 

Mural Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
Artist: Not identified
Birmingham, AL


Foot Soldiers of the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement
Kelly Ingram Park, Birmingham, Alabama
Sculptor: Not identified


Kelly Ingram Park, Birmingham, Alabama
Sculptor: Not identified


 

Detail of above.

 


The Kneeling Ministers by Raymond Kasky.
Kelly Ingram Park, Birmingham, Alabama Rev. John Porter, Rev. Nelson Smith Jr, Rev. A.D. King
Just before being arrested, April 7, 1963

 

Memphis TN

 

I Am a Man Plaza. Memphis TN.
Clayborn Temple, 1968 Strike Headquarters.



National Civil Rights Museum
Memphis TN
Sculptor: StudioEIS

 

National Civil Rights Museum
Lorraine Motel, Memphis TN
Artist: Not identified

 

Mural near National Civil Rights Museum
Memphis, TN
Artist: Not identified.


Wells Fargo Civil Rights mural, Memphis TN. Artist: Not identified

 

 

Mrs. Fannie Lee Chaney (mother of James Chaney)
Alabama Street, San Francisco
Shepard Fairey, 2016


Mission Street Mural, San Francisco

 

The Clinton 12
First students to desegregate a state-supported high school in the South
Sculptor: William F. (Bill) Duffy, 2007
Green McAdoo Cultural Center & Museum
Clinton, Tennessee (USA).

 

Testament by John and Kathy Deering
Little Rock, 2005


The Greensboro Four, Technical State University
Sculptor not identified.

 

Albany Civil Rights Memorial
Charles Sherrod Civil Rights Park, Albany, GA
Sculptor not identified.

 

Durham Civil Rights Mural
By Brenda Miller Holmes and Dr. Benjamin Speller, 2015.
Arts Council, Durham, NC.


 

Ella Baker
Poor Peoples Campaign banner
Created by Phoebe Rotter of Black Lives Matter
Vermont 2018


 

A New Dawn
By Ben Keller, 2021
WAPJ building, Torrington, CT
Martin Luther king, Amanda Gorman, John Brown

 

Virginia Civil Rights Memorial, Richmond VA
Stanely Bleifeld, 2009


Barbara Johns & Moton High student strikers
Stanely Bleifeld, 2009
Virginia Civil Rights Memorial, Richmond VA


Civil Rights Martyrs Memorial, by Maya Lin. 1989
Southern Poverty Law Center
Montgomery, AL


Mural commemorating "Bloody Sunday," artist unidentified
Building at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge
Selma, AL


A Mighty Walk From Selma. Sunny Paulk and Corey Spearman. 2015
186 Lee St, Montgomery AL.

 

Wells Fargo Civil Rights mural, 2014
Artist: Vincent Morgan
Montgomery, AL


 

Changemaker of Oxford
By Ella Cope
Oxford, OH. (site of Freedom Summer training).


Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer, Ruleville MS. By Brian Hanlon, 2012

 

MLK39 Racial Equity Mural by Corey Pane. 2016.
West Hartford Public Library.

 

Street mural, artist unidentified
Philadelphia, PA


Three-panel mural in Jacksonville FL about the "Ax-Handle Saturday" sit-in of 1960
By Nicole Holderbaum.

 

NAACP Leader Rutledge Pearson
Jacksonville, FL.
By Nicole Holderbaum, shown with the students who
helped her create the mural.

 

NAACP Leaders Rodney Hurst and Rutledge Pearson
duPont Center, Jacksonville, FL
by Celso Gonzalez of Puerto Rico


St. Augustine Foot Soldiers Monument
Brian Owens, 2011
St. Augustine, FL


Mural, Alabama State University, Montgomery. Artist: Not identified


Dream, by Michael Florin Dente. Portland Oregon


The Chain Breakers by Sabrina Howard. COFO Bldg. Jackson, Mississippi
L-R: Alyce Clarke, Fannie Lou Hamer, Bob Moses
Rose Robinson, Louise Marshall, Albert Powell

 

Could You Get On The Bus?
Freedom Riders National Monument, Anniston, AL
By Joseph Giri, 2017.


 

Tribute to Freedom Riders and CORE leaders Jerome Smith and Dodie Smith-Simmons. New Orleans RTA bus, 2021
Artists: Ceaux Young, Taylor Ashby, Cierra Johnson and Camron Irvin


 

Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth (left), Dr. Martin Luther King (below). The SCLC Memorial Walkway Pavilion in Central New Orleans (near church where SCLC was founded in 1957). By artist Jessica Strahan


 


Septima Clark Mural, College of Charleston.

 

Un(re)solved: Say their names. Know their stories Touring installation using augmented-reality to bring civil rights era killings, often racist murders, out of the shadows of the past. Tribeca Film Festival installation. 2021.

 

James Farmer memorial, University of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg VA.


 


Mural honoring Deacons for Defense and Justice
Port Gibson, Mississippi

 

Daisy Bates, NAACP
To be placed in the Staturary Hall
U.S. Congress building


Icons of the Civil Rights Movement, 2021
by Eddie Mendieta, Nate Dee, Dahlia Perryman, and Tracy Guiteau
West Palm Beach, Florida
L-R: Fannie Lou Hamer, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcom X, Harriet Tubman,
John Lewis, Kathleen Neal Cleaver, and Ella Baker.


 

Statue of NAACP leader Vernon Dahmer, Forrest County courthouse, Hattiesburg MS.

 

Freedom Movement Paintings, Drawings, & Sculpture


The Return Of The Soldier by Charles White. 1946

 

Awaken from the Unknowing, by Charles White. 1946

 

 

Pools of Defiance, Colin Bootman. 2001.

 

Walking, Charles Henry Alston. 1958

 

 

Racism/Incident at Little Rock
Domingo Ulloa, 1957

 

Soldiers and Students, by Jacob Lawrence. 1962

 

Civil Rights Movement by Kalammeh


Birmingham Jail 1963. Joe Minter.

 

The Golden Rule, Norman Rockwell, 1961.
Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, MA

 

The Problem We All Live With, Norman Rockwell. 1964.

 

Based on the sign in the Hattiesburg MS voter registration office.
Artist: Unidentified.


We March for Civil Rights, by Tuwanda Harmon. 2013

 

Stand up for the Freedom Democrats

MFDP or SNCC poster
Artist name illegible.

 

 

Claudette Colvin
Artist: Not identified
Elizabeth Street, New York City

 

Rosa Parks
Artist: Lava Thomas
Mugshot Portraits: Women of the Montgomery Bus Boycott

 

Jo Ann Robinson
Artist: Lava Thomas
Mugshot Portraits: Women of the Montgomery Bus Boycott

 

Teacher & Civil rights leader Septima Clark
NAACP, SCLC, Highlander
Artist: not identified.

 

Drawing of Septima Clark teaching literacy in citizenship classes
Artist: Not identified


 

Emmett Till: How She Sent Him and How She Got Him Back
Lisa Whittington 2012. Mississippi Civil Rights Museum
Jackson, Mississippi.


Open Casket by Dana Schutz. 2016. Emmett Till.

 

Freedom Now!
Artist: W. Smith, 1966


Unite by Barbara Jones-Hogu

 

Oretha Castle Haley, New Orleans CORE
Artist: Jessica Strahan

 

 

Maya Angelou, by Stan Herd. 2022.
Atlanta's Freedom Park.


"We Shall Overcome"
Artist & date unknown.

 


Homage To My Young Black Sisters, Elizabeth Catlett. 1968

 

Fill the Jails, by Claire O'Connor. 2014
Freedom Rider mug shots
Collection of Claude LeFrambois, Montreal Quebec

 

Painting & poem created by Freedom School teacher Bill Light in Starkville MS, 1964

 

The Prints of Elizabeth Catlett

 

Crusaders for Justice
(Thurgood Marshal)


 

I Have Studied in Ever Increasing Numbers


 

I Have Special Reservations


My Role Has Been Important in the
Struggle to Organize the Unorganized


 

My Reward Has Been Bars


 

Civil Rights Congress


And a Special Fear for My Loved Ones

The Art of Clara Lang-Ezekiel

 

John Lewis, SNCC
by Clara Lang-Ezekiel, 2020
(High-res version suitable for poster-printing
available at the artist's website.)

 

March poster by Clara Lang-Ezekiel, 2020.

 

Gloria Richardson, SNCC.
Drawn by Clara Lang-Ezekiel for Womens History Month series, 2021.

 

Please send images of Civil Rights Movement art to webmaster@crmvet.org.

 

Copyrights © to these images and sculptors belong to their creators. Commercial use is prohibited without the express written permission of the copyright owners. To identify the copyright owners (if known), simply let your cursor hover over the image to display the photographer's name, or view the image metadata.


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