I picked up this wonderful eight-by-ten reproduction of Alton Tobey’s Brothers United last week, with the intention of framing it and hanging it in my bedroom.
Then last night I was walking to the store to pick up some ingredients to fix cookies for Lula, and passed a “Hair Shoppe” off Meadowbrook. These huge beauty supply stores are often cornerstones in African-American communities, and the window of this store featured a t-shirt I hadn’t seen before: Martin Luther King, Jr., shaking the hand of Barack Obama, with the slogan “dreams do come true.”
I’ve seen buckets of similar shirts—often featuring Obama included in some fashion with greats of the past—but for some reason this particular Photoshop left me touched. Perhaps it was the physicality of the handshake, a surmised meeting of our Moses and Joshua; one that never happened, here—the President-Elect was too young, with Martin murdered before he was ten years old.
So then looking at this painting it struck me—President Kennedy and Senator Kennedy would like Barack. Were they alive, they’d be right behind him, much as their younger brother, their children, and their friends were. Barack’s glorious words of hope echo none more than these brothers, save for Martin, and Barack’s true spiritual predecessor, Abraham Lincoln.
The clumsy and blinkered Sasha Frere-Jones got it wrong for the millionth time when he recently dismissed will.i.am’s legendary “Yes We Can” work, in my mind the ultimate musical expression of that perfect conjoining of people and candidate, the words of Barack blending with the exhortations of Americans of all shapes and colors and sizes.
There is no reason for the grand work of Shepherd Fairey and hundreds of other artists to be confined to the campaign. This is a new America; a new day. There should be art celebrating it, indeed must be art to celebrate it, as there was when we broke the back of the Axis, walked on the Moon, and fulfilled the promise of our Constitution by achieving universal civil rights.
There is something happening in America. Give thanks. Give thanks!
If you want a large printable file, just e-mail me.
Tags: Alton Tobey, Barack, JFK, RFK, Yes We Can
This is really outstanding. I’m glad optimism seems to be becoming cool again. I don’t know if we’ll be putting people on the moon again anytime soon, but I’m hopeful that the same spirit of ambition and possibility will animate the Obama administration and the nation.
Also, good use of “blinkered.”