It was racial injustice that set Joe Schwartz off.
A black friend took him to a bar where Schwartz learned about two young black men who were wrongly accused of raping a white woman. He decided to fight back – with his camera.
“Gettin’ Along: A View of Racial Integration in America,” this month’s Union Art Gallery exhibit, showcases his effort to capture racial injustice and racial integration in the 1940s.
The 52 black and white photographs are the result of Schwartz’s frustration with social injustice.
“When I found out about those two boys, I told my friend, ‘That’s unfair,'” Schwartz said. “And my friend said, ‘You ought to walk around this neighborhood – there’s lots that’s unfair here.'”
As Denelle Walker, a communication studies sophomore, walked through the gallery, browsing the photographs, she stopped and said, “This just hurts my heart.”
She was looking at a picture of four young black girls playing in a street.
The cement wall behind them read “dirty niggers.”
Walker remembered a time in her hometown, Many, La., when she was called the same name.
“I went into a restaurant with a white friend in Natchitoches,” she said. “I was the only black person there. Everyone stared. One man whispered, loud enough so I could hear, ‘I can’t believe she brought a nigger in here.'”
Schwartz began capturing moments of insight into race relations by default. He was in an art class and was instructed to cut magazine clippings to paint.
“I thought, ‘Well gee, why cut it out of a magazine?'” he said. “I wanted to make it my own. So, I bought a small box camera and took some pictures instead.”
He had grown up in a poor neighborhood, so he identified with the plight of poor men and women. And he began to photograph them.
The pictures showcased in the Union gallery reflect Schwartz’s compassion for the poor and his belief that good race relations can foster world peace, said Judy Stahl, Union Art Gallery director.
One photograph shows a young black woman with a sign hung around her neck in protest that she can’t be hired at Woolworth’s Department Store.
But there are also pictures of black and white children sitting together on park benches, playing together in the streets of New York and in community playgrounds.
A picture of two girls – one white, one black – swinging from a jungle gym holding hands almost brought Walker to tears.
“The situation in Baton Rouge is much better than at my hometown,” she said. “It’s more like this picture.”
Walker’s emotional reaction to the exhibit is exactly what the Union Art Gallery Committee hoped for, said Joanna Biglane, an art history senior and chair of the committee.
The committee chooses exhibits to come to the gallery by viewing samples of art.
“When we saw the slides of Schwartz’s pictures, we knew we had to have this exhibit,” she said. “It was the overwhelming choice of the committee.”
Michael Smith, a history senior, spent part of his morning in the gallery.
“Not to be sentimental,” he said, “but I’m touched by it.”
Smith said he thinks, had pictures been taken in Louisiana during the same time, they would have been different.
“I think it’s sort of under the surface,” he said. “But we still have the tension here.”