Confrontation at the Bridge (Selma, Alabama)

about Confrontation at the Bridge (Selma, Alabama)

In this signed print by Black American artist Jacob Lawrence, a group of protestors marches across a bridge with expressions of fear and trepidation.

Below them churns a tumultuous river, and in the path before them stands a snarling black dog, its teeth bared at the oncoming crowd. This composition is a mythic reimagining of Black Civil Rights activists crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on March 7, 1965, also known as Bloody Sunday. This dramatic scene is emblematic of Lawrence’s signature use of flat shapes and bold colors. In 1965, hundreds of Civil Rights marchers left Selma, Alabama, on a peace march to Montgomery. Just outside Selma, at the Edmond Pettus Bridge, the marchers were met with resistance from local law enforcement officials and townspeople. The marchers led by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., John Lewis, and others were repeatedly turned back. After several days of stalemate and verbal and physical abuse, the determined marchers were allowed to continue. Lawrence commented: "I thought it was part of the history of the country, part of the history of our progress; not of just the black progress, but of the progress of the people."