“The Problems We All Live With”

MANY PEOPLE WERE RATHER SURPRISED when this Norman Rockwell painting appear in Look magazine. Rockwell was not a person the public associated with controversy, and the question of school integration—which is the subject of this work—was one of the most inflammatory issues of the day. Why, then, had he chosen to tackle it?

We must recognize, of course, that Rockwell is a commercial artist and often works on assignment, so the idea for this painting probably originated with the editors of Look rather than with the artist himself. At the same time, Rockwell is free to refuse assignments if he finds them unsympathetic, or if he feels he cannot make a good job of them, so we can assume that he did not embark on this project without having thought about it a good deal beforehand.

Rockwell's work shows him to be a natural egalitarian and a man who respects the dignity of every citizen, however humble. Given this, it was in fact very logical for the editors of Look to make him their choice to cover this confrontation. Rockwell's sympathy is entirely with the neatly dressed black girl, her situation made all the more poignant by the anonymity of the U.S. marshals assigned to protect her.