Vincent Dacosta Smith

Smith wasa member of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s. The group espoused the importance of politically concerned art focused on the experience of African Americans. This print, from a series that examined the South during the mid-1960s, portrays African­American children on their way to school as they are taunted by a threatening crowd of whites across the street. It describes the continued resistance to desegregation even a decade after the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling by the Supreme Court.

I'm very much a student of history... I see the same things; what impels me to paint is still there, the issues are still the same.

The work of Vincent Smith is rooted in American history and African American life and culture. Smith, a painter, has made prints since the late 1960s. In First Day of School the viewer witnesses an historical event from the era of the Civil Rights Movement. Smith depicts children both as victims and survivors of the integration of public schools. They are overshadowed by symbols of social injustice: white men drinking corn whiskey, some armed with clubs and guns, one wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood, another carrying a sign that reads "Never." The etching resembles documentary photographs from the Chicago Defender, a black newspaper with national coverage.