NJ library displays drawing of slave having sex

Monday, January 21, 2013

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — A library that covered up a drawing of a black female slave having sex with a white man after workers found it inappropriate is displaying it again.

The drawing, created by black artist Kara Walker, shows the horrors many blacks faced after the Civil War and during reconstruction and includes a depiction of a slave performing oral sex. It initially was hung during Thanksgiving in the Newark Public Library’s second-floor reference room, but officials reluctantly covered it with a cloth after one day because some workers complained it was insensitive.

The Star-Ledger newspaper reported Sunday that library officials and staffers have since met to discuss the drawing and decided it could be uncovered.

Library employee Kendell Willis told the newspaper that he had a better understanding of the library officials’ position after the meeting.

“They said there are a lot of things in artwork we don’t want to talk about, and that made absolute sense,” he said.

Library officials plan to invite Walker to speak about the drawing, artistic freedom and the role of black artists in society.

“The library should be a safe harbor for controversies of all types, and those controversies can be dealt with in the context of what is known about art, about literature, democracy and freedom,” library trustee Clement A. Price, a Rutgers university history professor, told the newspaper. “There’s no better venue in Newark where such a powerful and potential controversial drawing should be mounted.”

Price noted that the portrayal of the black American experience is a sensitive issue.

“Should we be depicted sentimentally, romantically?” he said. “Should some of the grotesque realities be depicted in art or movies?”

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wow 3 months, 3 weeks ago

Ok...but don't get upset when people start discovering it wasn't just "Ole Thomas Jefferson that was a creepin through the slave quarter's".

connor 3 months, 3 weeks ago

Maybe a White artist can do a drawing or scene sketch of Christina Eilman being dropped off in Chicago by the police alone in a bad part of town followed by her being drug into a high rise, raped by a Black man and then jumping out a 7th story window to escape. Hard for her to sign the agreement though in the coma and all.

I find this whole forced sex slave fantasy that drives the Multi-Culters mouth foaming mad entertaining actually. White male rape of Black females is statistically non-existent in American society yet no one dares call attention to the massive numbers of Black male rapes of White females and also of White males for that matter.

Christian/Newsom portrait for the Jefferson City library anyone?

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