The Atlantic Explores King’s Legacy Through a Contemporary Lens
with Contributions From LaToya Ruby Frazier and Kara Walker
LATOYA RUBY FRAZIER’s aerial photographs of Memphis, Chicago, and Baltimore, are featured in a six-page photo essay exploring how the cities have fared through five decades of oppression since King’s assassination.
Culture Type
March 24, 2018
by Victoria Valentine
The year 2018 coincides with many historic milestones. It’s been a half century since the Studio Museum in Harlem was founded, the Chicago artist collective AFRICOBRA was formed, Olympic track athletes raised their fists at the Mexico City games in a stand for racial justice, and the Kerner Commission was released and declared the United States was “moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.” All of these occurrences spoke to the times and state of American culture.
This year also marks another clarion call: The 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The civil rights leader was killed April 4, 1968, in Memphis.
A special issue published by The Atlantic marks the anniversary. The magazine, whose early contributors included Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and W.E.B Du Bois, considers the legacy of King through a contemporary lens. The project was envisioned by two African American staffers—writer Vann R. Newkirk II and managing editor Adrienne Green.
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Contributors also include National Book Award-winning author Jesymn Ward; Pulitzer Prizie-winner Matthew Desmond, author of “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City”; filmmaker and activist Bree Newsome; and artists LaToya Ruby Frazier and Kara Walker, among others.
Integrating the work of Walker and Frazier with the contributions of journalists, scholars, historians, and authors, demonstrates how contemporary artists are interrogating socioeconomic issues with the same rigor as their counterparts and playing a valuable role in the discourse on the history of racial ills in America and the future of democracy.
In her practice, Frazier uses social documentary photography, video, and performance to shine a light racial justice and human rights issues. She is recognized for her images of Braddock, Pa., where she was born and raised. The town’s economic fortunes rose and fell with the steel industry, which also left the community, including her own family, reeling with health issues. More recently, she has documented how people in Flint, Mich., are coping with the city’s water crisis.
Courtesy of: Culture Type
