Local Artist’s ‘Icons Of The Civil Rights Movement’ Exhibited In Washington During Inauguration, M.L.K. Day

by Jennifer Sexton

            HARWICH PORT--- Local artist Pamela Chatterton-Purdy’s life has been touched by racism and defined by dedication to racial equality for almost as long as she can remember. The timing couldn’t be more appropriate for her series, “Icons of the Civil Rights Movement.” The works are currently on exhibit at The Methodist Center in Washington, D.C. during two events of great personal and historic significance: Barack Obama’s inauguration and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday in the 40^th year after his assassination.      

Artist Pam Chatterton-Purdy at the Washington, D.C. church where her "Icons" are on display.

       The 16 icons are painted wood assemblages that incorporate gold leaf and meaningful found objects. For example, the icon of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African-American boy who was brutally murdered in 1955 by a group of white men for saying, “Bye, babe,” to a white woman, incorporates yardsticks that have been severed at the number 14 to symbolize a life cut tragically short. All of the icons also include passages of scripture that the artist found meaningful for each event or individual being honored. 

“Frankly I could do 50 of these,” says Chatterton-Purdy. “There are all kinds of things I could do.”

To say that Chatterton-Purdy is passionate about issues of racial equality is an understatement. As mother of two adopted sons, one African-American and one of mixed Vietnamese and African-American ethnicity, you could say that racism really gets under her skin.

            Recalling an event that took place with her young children nearly 40 years ago, Purdy-Chatterton still trembles with anger.

            “We took our three-year-old son to get shoes, along with my two-and five-year-old daughters, and a woman in the store grabs me by the shoulder and starts dragging me. I said, ‘What are you doing?’ And she said, ‘What am I doing? What are you doing? Do you see your two daughters? There’s going to be incest in your family when they get older!’ This was in Springfield, Mass. We weren’t in Mississippi. I mean, my heart is pounding as I’m telling you this, and my son is 40 years old now. It still makes my blood boil.”

            Purdy-Chatterton, who experienced what she describes as a “lily-white upbringing” in Connecticut, recalls an incident when she was 12 years old which may have set the tone for her entire personal, professional, and artistic life. Her father, an agent for a moving company, arranged a move to Stamford, Conn. for Jackie Robison, the first African-American baseball player in the Major Leagues. 

            “We were all excited, because he was this famous baseball player,” Chatterton-Purdy recalls. “ But no sooner had my father made out the contract, but the next day there were hate phone calls made to our house, saying, ‘You have four daughters, don’t you Mr. Chatterton? You’d better think twice about moving that n_____ into Stamford.’ That was my first experience of racism.”

            After earning her M.F.A from the University of Massachusetts in 1966, Chatterton-Purdy married husband David, a Methodist minister, and the two moved to Chicago, where she landed her first job: as an art director at Ebony Magazine. In a manner of speaking, she had the opportunity to experience life in the ethnic minority at Ebony, where she was one of two white employees in a staff of 150 African-Americans. Soon after she began working at Ebony, in 1963, the bombing of the 16^th Street Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. resulted in the deaths of four young African-American girls, rocking the black community and igniting Chatterton-Purdy’s passionate support of civil rights.

            “People understand my dedication to civil rights when they learn that I worked at Ebony Magazine when those four little girls were killed,” she says. “In a sense, you become black because you’ve lived through that experience. I became so involved in what it was like to be constantly rejected and discriminated against… once that happens, you just can’t let it go.”

            The artist got another taste of what it’s like to be on the receiving end of racism when she and her husband adopted their two sons.

            “The kind of racism that we ran into after adopting black kids was a shocking event,” she says. “White folks who say there’s no such thing as racism –all I can say is you try adopting a black kid and bringing that child into your family. It’s like putting a lightning rod on top of your house for racism. You’re gonna get hit.”

            In 2004, Chatterton-Purdy traveled along with 100 high school students on a tour of historically significant locations of the Civil Rights Movement. The idea of creating a series honoring civil rights icons had already formed in the artist’s mind, and she was deeply inspired by the experience of visiting the places where so many iconic events took place.

            “We stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel where King was killed. We stood in the driveway of Medgar Evers, where he was assassinated. We met Reverend Kyle at the 16^th St. Baptist Church, who was with King the night he was assassinated,” she says. “I came back raring to go on these icons, which I had wanted to do for a long time, and I knew that this would galvanize my whole thinking on these. I started working on them on Oct 1, 2007, and finished the last one on Jan. 19, Martin Luther King Day, 2008. The 16 icons were done in three and a half months. I was in my studio at 6 in the morning and working all day to get these accomplished, and I have to say that without my husband’s help cutting the major big shapes, there would have been no way I could do it. He really was and continues to be totally involved in this project.”           

 The artist is looking for a permanent home for the collection.

“I would love to have some institution acquire them and then commission me to do one or two more a year and continue to add to the collection. I could probably do 10 a year.”

There is a complete permanent giclee exhibit of “Icons of the Civil Rights Movement”at the Zion Union Heritage Museum in Hyannis. The original series is now on exhibit at the Methodist Center in Washington, D.C through Jan. 30, and will move to the Frederick Douglas Museum, also in Washington, D.C., from Feb. 1 to 28.  The artist is thrilled to have her work on exhibit during the inauguration of Barack Obama.

“My feeling is that Barack Obama is the metaphorical resurrection of the Civil Rights Movement. People did not die in vain. We are now, I think, heading into full brotherhood, and I’m just so thrilled and excited about it.”