Rev. Bennett, Mt. Zion Church, Holt Street
Date1956
Artist
Harvey Dinnerstein
(American artist, 1928–2022)
MediumGraphite on paper
Dimensionscomposition: 10 1/2 × 9 1/16 in. (26.7 × 23 cm)
sheet: 11 1/4 × 9 1/2 in. (28.6 × 24.1 cm)
sheet: 11 1/4 × 9 1/2 in. (28.6 × 24.1 cm)
Credit LineF. V. du Pont Acquisition Fund, 1993
Object number1993-13
On View
Not on viewClassificationsDRAWING
Label TextIn 1956, New York artist Harvey Dinnerstein and his fellow artist Burton Silverman recorded events of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, initiated when Rosa Parks, an African American woman, refused to give up her seat to a white man on the racially segregated city bus system. Together Dinnerstein and Silverman made over 90 reportorial drawings of the activities and people involved in the Boycott, including the twenty‑six year old Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Several of the drawings were published in magazines and exhibited in museums. The artists stated: “Our decision to record the events, as artists, was motivated in part by the virtual absence of photographic recording of the Boycott. We felt that this was the first real opportunity to show the efficacy of the artist's eye in evoking the emotional as well as factual realities of an important human event.”This drawing depicts Rev. L. Roy Bennett speaking to a group assembled at Mt. Zion Church on December 5, 1955, four days after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give her bus seat to a white person, and the day of her trial, at which she was found guilty and fined for having violated Alabama's segregation laws. Rev. Bennett led a discussion about whether or not to continue the one-day old boycott of Montgomery's buses.
