"The Problem We All Live With"

The Truth about Rockwell's Painting

By Ken Laird Studios

The Problem We All Live With done by Norman Perceval

Rockwell is arguably the single most important image ever
done of an African-American in illustration history. This
piece is the most requested work at the Norman Rockwell
museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. What makes this
piece so monumental? Why is this piece so popular and
even controversial? First and foremost, it was done by
Rockwell, the pitchman for conservative imagery for almost
fifty years.

“A painting like this depicting this subject matter, done by

somebody who is embraced by the most conservative Norman Perceval Rockwell (1894-1978)
elements in our country would make these people stop and "The Problem We All Live With", 1963,
think that maybe there is a problem. And the problem is Look, January 1964 Story Illustration Oil
racism. Purely and simply.”-Murray Tinkelman, Chairman of on Canvas 36 x 58 inches Collection of
the Hall of Fame Committee, Society of Illustrators the Norman Rockwell Museum,
Stockbridge Massachusetts
No other artist was as well known by the masses as
Rockwell for forty-six years people looked forward to
Rockwell’s perfect small town scenarios on the cover
of The Saturday Evening Post. All had grown to love
Rockwell, as well as his art. He received mail by the
bagfuls from adoring fans. "What a shock it must have been
to open up Look Magazine and see a double page spread
with the words Norman Rockwell paints “The Problem We
All Live With.” "The public, as well as the critics, must have
been floored." Maureen Hart Hennessey points out with the
Norman Rockwell Museum.

“What a shock it must of been for the Post as well.”

The African-American, for the first time in Rockwells career,

did not take a back seat in order to keep advertisers in a
magazine. Norman Rockwell was released from the
unwritten law that no blacks should be shown unless in
subservient roles and the chains of artistic freedom where
taken off in this piece. Norman Rockwell’s beloved and
controversial painting will be the focus of this thesis.

My first introduction to this piece came in the early 1980s.

Although as a small boy I had no clue what historical
significance this piece held, my mother would take me to
the public library to visit my favorite book, Norman Rockwell
Artist and Illustrator by Thomas Buechner. This book, that
proudly sets on my shelf today, contained a complete three
page fold out of this painting. Each time I saw this piece, I
vividly remembered feeling sorry for this little girl. My
mother, Linda Laird, told me recently while discussing this
Detail: "The Problem We All Live
painting:
With", 1963, Look, January 1964
Story Illustration Oil on Canvas
“ I could not look at this book without flipping through to see 36 x 58 inches Collection of the
Rockwell’s painting of the little black girl getting tomatoes Norman Rockwell Museum,
thrown at her. It is such a heart-provoking piece” Stockbridge Massachusetts
Much debate goes on regarding this most famous Rockwell
image. Was the piece inspired by reported story of Ruby
Bridges, or directly illustrated based on the words of John
Steinbeck in Travels with
Charley? In Ruby Bridges’ own
book, Through My Eyes,several indicators lead me to
believe Rockwell was all too familiar with this incident that
took place at Franz Elementary School in New Orleans,
Louisiana. If this is the case then the wild notion by some in
the academic community that Rockwell was actually saying
the problem we all live with is the little girl or black people
are the problem can be tossed out a window. Even the
crazy idea that the white dress held some racist symbology
will be dissolved upon this research.

If one educates himself about the historical events of 1960

the assumption could easily be made that Rockwell was
simply illustrating a story, as he so powerfully did
throughout his career. The main difference is the story
illustrated here is bitterly hard hitting and raw. It was not Norman Perceval Rockwell (1894-1978)
Rockwell’s all so familiar perfect America, but rather a one Study for "The Problem We All Live With"
hundred and eighty degree departure, as he depicts Oil 1963
segregation and prejudice in its ugliest form. This reality is
more provoking because he uses a harmless, innocent
African-American child that just so happens to be wearing a
white starched dress that most all children wore in the early
1960s.

In November 15, 1960 The New York

Times reported: “Some 150 white, mostly housewives and
teenage youths, clustered along the sidewalks across from
the William Franz School when pupils marched in at 8:40
am. One youth chanted “Two, Four, Six, Eight, we don’t
want to segregate; eight, six, four, two, we don’t want a
chigeroo.” Norman Perceval Rockwell (1894-1978)
Study for "The Problem We All Live With"
“Forty minutes later, four deputy marshals arrived with a Oil 1963
little Negro girl and her mother. They walked hurriedly up
the steps and into the yellow brick building while onlookers
jeered and shouted taunts.”

“The girl, dressed in a stiffly starched white dress with a

ribbon in her hair, gripping her mother’s hand tightly and
glancing apprehensively toward the crowd.”

Ruby Bridges in her award winning childrens book Through

My Eyes writes: “The author John Steinbeck was driving
through New Orleans with his dog, Charley, when he heard
about the racist crowds that gathered outside the Franz
Study III Norman Perceval Rockwell
school each morning to protest its integration.
He decided
(1894-1978) Study for "The Problem We
to go see what was happening.”
All Live With" Graphite 1963
“He especially wanted to see a group of women who came
to scream at me and at the few white children who crossed
the picket lines and went to school. (At this time, I didn’t
know that there were other children in the building. We
were kept apart.) The women were known as the
Cheerleaders, and their foul language even shocked a man
as worldly as Steinbeck.”
“I never met John Steinbeck, but he seemed to sympathize
with what I was going through. He wrote about me in a
book called Travels With Charley. Steinbeck left his dog
and his truck in a parking lot. He didn’t want to take them to
Franz, where his dog could get hurt or his car could get
damaged. Instead, he took a cab. Fearing that protesters
would wreck his car, the driver didn’t take Steinbeck all the
way to the school, but left him a few blocks away.”

“Steinbeck never knew my name. My name and the names

of the girls at the McDonough school were never mentioned
on television or in the newspapers. The press tried to
protect us.”

John Steinbeck wrote: “The show opened on time. Sound

the sirens. Motorcycle cops. Then two big black cars filled
with big men in blond felt hats pulled up in front of the
school. The crowd seemed to hold its breath. Four big
marshals got out of each car and from somewhere in the
automobiles they extracted the littlest negro girl you ever
saw, dressed in shining starchy white, with new white
shoes on feet so little they were almost round. Her face and
little legs were very black against the white.”

“The big marshals stood her on the curb and a jangle of

jeering shrieks went up from behind the barricades. The
little girl did not look at the howling crowd, but from the side
the whites of her eyes showed like those of a frightened
fawn. The men turned her around like a doll and then the
strange procession moved up the broad walk toward the
school, and the child was even more a mite because the
men were so big. Then the girl made a curious hop, and I
think I know what it was. I think in her whole life she had
not gone ten steps without skipping, but now in the middle
of her first step, the weight bore her down and her little
round feet took measured, reluctant steps between the tall
guards. Slowly they climbed the steps and entered the
school.” -Travels With Charley

One must wonder if Rockwell was influenced by these recorded incidents. He must have been. It would
be hard to believe that the elements he shows are just coincidence. It also would be totally out of
ignorance not to factor in this story of Ruby Bridges either from print or television, as inspiration.
Rockwell’s piece includes four marshals, a yellowish colored building, a little black child in a starched
white dress, and the final detail of the bow in her hair. It would be fair, however, to say that Rockwell
took artistic license and was able to take the given historical elements and mold them, into his own
interpretation. Just as Howard Pyle, who had in “the golden age” depicted historical events, Rockwell
was America’s favorite story teller and as show, his earliest concept was to depict the incident as it had
happened with the little girl in a white dress and he never changed this. Why are the suits of the
marshals not black or dark grey as they were at this time? Rockwell had to take the darkness away from
them not only for effect but to pull off a good painting. It is obvious that Rockwell wants the emphasis to
be on this little black girl and her story, not on the marshals. He uses a old trick used by his
contemporaries to solve the problem. Murray Tinkelman states:

“The cropping of the marshals’ heads I think is inspired. These guys become symbols of all law
enforcement and how law enforcement stands above racism.”

Norman Rockwell does not name the little girl, nor does he use a model that is a mirror image of Ruby
Bridges, so yes, he was not one hundred percent accurate. I do, however, feel that he used Ruby
Bridges story as his inspiration with no doubt in my mind. Rockwell might have died not even knowing
the child’s name because it is said that they kept Ruby Bridges name out of there media to protect
her. Travels With Charley cannot be found in the Rockwell library, so one may discredit the notion that
he used this novel as inspiration. I conclude that he might have heard of the story on the news or read
about the incident through the earlier excerpt from The New York Times.

Walter Cronkite reported the incident in 1960 for the evening news so the national coverage gave the
American people, including Rockwell, all the horrible details. Including eggs being thrown by
segregationalist housewifes, words that were so bad that the sensors had to muffle the crowd noise and
blot these hurtful, horrible words out of their coverage.

“No newspaper had printed the words these women shouted. It was indicated that they were indelicate,
some even said obscene, On television the sound track was made to blur or had crown noises cut to
occur. But, I heard the words, bestial and filthy and degenerate -John Steinbeck. Travels With Charley

To be so dead set on believing that Rockwell meant anything other than showing the terrible problem of
racism in America in 1964 would mean you could not believe the story of Ruby Bridges and her plight
four years earlier. Rockwell’s painting is probably the mostly widely used image in school books today as
Mareen Hart Hennessay quoted earlier.

“One should note that it is not -necessarily -Norman Rockwell’s politics or religious views that are so
often attacked or disdained. He was what in any milieu one would have to call ‘a decent man,’ and in
many instances, courageous. His painting, The Problem We All Live With appeared on the cover
of Look magazine on January 14, 1964. It infuriated some, heartened the hopes of others, shamed
many, and was met with indifference or scorn by the Art Establishment. The Problem We All Live
With strikes directly at the heart and exemplifies Rockwell’s hallmark approach: strong horizontals, close
foreground, and, especially, telling details which draw the viewer into concluding a narrative, one
orchestrated to move him. The perceptive viewer notes not only the confident posture and countenance
of the young girl- her escorts are cropped and anonymous agents of the law -but the writ in the pocket of
the advancing guard, the contrast of schoolbooks with the graffiti on the wall, the smashed tomato (the
least of projectiles launched in those times). It is an approach common to centuries of fine art,
emblematic and immediate. But Rockwell’s concern at this date is not doctrine, or delight: he stirs a
decent empathy, a quietly powerful outrage.”

“Further, none in the Art echelons particularly condemn art when it scrapes the ‘political,’ at least, not if it
supports their brand; nor are artists generally disdained for being ‘apolitical,’ which, in many senses,
Rockwell was not. He was most assuredly a Constitutionalist, certainly by sentiment. (That latter term is
important.).” -From The Norman Rockwell Museum Norman Rockwell: Pictures for the American People

I will conclude by again sighting these words by Dr. Manning Marable:

“It would be better to feel ourselves unsettled by the full truth of these historical horrors before we
commend ourselves for having buried the past. As we peer into the unmarked graves of the ghosts that
haunt America still, perhaps the path to peace lies not only in dreaming a better future for black children
but in awakening white Americans to their own history . . . .” -“Along the Color Lines,White Supremacy in
Dixie,” February 2000