Charles Wilbert White

Heritage Gallery, Los Angeles, California
Acquired by the present owner from the above, 1969

Los Angeles, Heritage Gallery, November 1967
Washington, D.C., Howard University Gallery of Art, September-October 1967
Tallahassee, Florida, Florida A&M University, January 1969
Santa Ana, California, The Charles W. Bowers Memorial Museum, March 1969

Charles White, Images of Dignity: The Drawings of Charles White, New York, 1967, p. 109, illustrated

This work is in very good condition. The sheet is hinged to the mat at the upper corners. There are 2 small repaired tears at the upper right corner and one small tear at the upper left edge. There is some slight distortion to the sheet that is inherent to the artist's materials.
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The present work belongs to a significant series of 18 charcoal and ink drawings that Charles Wilbert White executed in 1966. White is best known today for his incisive, often searing, portrayals of the African-American experience throughout history. Born in Chicago in 1918, he spent the early years of his artistic training at the Art Institute of Chicago. After moving to New York in 1942, White turned his attention away from painting to focus increasingly on drawing. He developed a highly exacting style of execution and meticulous eye for draftsmanship, and his work became increasingly rooted in the social causes of the day, particularly the burgeoning Civil Rights movement.

On the eve of the first public showing of these works at the Heritage Gallery in Los Angeles in November of 1967, White decided to rename nearly every work in the exhibition with the title J’Accuse!. The new title references an episode in late 19^th century French politics known as the Dreyfus Affair, an event that has come to exemplify judicial malpractice driven by racism. In 1894, a Jewish officer in the French Army, Alfred Dreyfus, was wrongly accused of providing military secrets to Germany and convicted of treason. Emile Zola summarized the ensuing scandal in his 1898 essay, “J’Accuse,” a public letter to the French president that denounced the endemic racism of the country’s military and charged all officials who did nothing to stop it as complicit.

J’Accuse! No. 3, is a striking example from the series, one of several executed as a roundel. Like most of the figures White depicts in J’Accuse!, the female protagonist's eyes do not meet the viewer’s but are instead closed. Her face is uplifted and proud, resilient against the currents that literally and metaphorically swirl around her. White intended the J’Accuse! series to be a celebration of the strength and character of the figures who fought for African American civil rights. By appropriating the title of Zola’s essay and applying it the context of 1960s America, White speaks to the ongoing struggle for civil rights, and the enduring discrimination and oppression faced by African Americans.