NAACP Image Awards | Thursday February 12, 2009
Did You Know?
- 1909
On February 12th, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded by a multiracial group of activists, who answered "The Call," in New York, New York. They initially called themselves the National Negro Committee. - 1913
In April, Dr. Joel E. Spingarn instituted the Spingarn Medal, a gold medal that was to be awarded annually to an American Negro of ³highest achievement² for the proceeding year or years. - 1939
On April 9th, after the Daughters of the American Revolution barred Marian Anderson from performing at their Constitutional Hall in Washington DC, the NAACP successfully moved to have her appear at the Lincoln Memorial that Easter Sunday where more than seventy five thousand people attended the open air concert broadcast nationally by radio. - 1942
The Association worked with studio executives and politicians to establish an ad hoc committee with the major film studios to monitor the image and portrayal of African Americans on the silver screen. - 1960
Senator John F. Kennedy addressed an audience of seven thousand at the NAACP Civil Rights Rally at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, California, just four days before he secured the Democratic Presidential Nomination. - 1975
On August 6, President Ford signed H.R. 6219, amending and extending certain provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, culminating a two-year effort by the Washington Bureau and cooperating organizations. The 1974 Act extended protection of the right to register and vote to non-English speaking groups, especially Hispanics. - 1987
On the 25th anniversary of the use of federal troops to enforce integration of the Little Rock¹s Central High, the NAACP reunited the Little Rock Nine and NAACP leader Daisy Bates at ceremonies at the Arkansas Capital. - 1991
Following the victory in the Republican gubernatorial primary by former Klansman and neo-Nazi David Duke, the NAACP Louisiana State Conference launched a voter registration and Get-Out-The-Vote campaign resulting in Duke¹s defeat. - 2006
As part of our on-going efforts to the diversity of emerging talent in Hollywood, the NAACP united with several networks to create Master Degree Writing Fellowships. - 2009
On February 12th, the 40th NAACP Image Awards aired live celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the NAACP to the day.
Key of Life Award Recipients
Elizabeth Catlett
Elizabeth Catlett-Mora, born in Washington, D.C. in 1919, is a master sculptor, painter, printmaker, activist and warrior. Catlett-Mora has demonstrated a life-long commitment to fighting injustices and showing her support in the struggle for equality for the poor and oppressed and is renowned for her intensely political art.
The granddaughter of slaves, Catlett was born into a middle-class Washington family; her father was a professor of mathematics at Tuskegee Institute. Disallowed entrance into the Carnegie Institute of Technology because she was black, Catlett enrolled at Howard University (B.A., c. 1936), where she studied design, printmaking, and drawing and was influenced by the art theories of Alain Locke and James A. Porter. While working as a muralist for two months during the mid-1930s with the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration, she became influenced by the social activism of Mexican muralist Diego Rivera.
In 1940 Catlett became the first student to earn a master's degree of fine arts in sculpture at the University of Iowa. The Regionalist painter Grant Wood, a professor at the university at the time, encouraged her to present images drawn from black culture and experience and influenced her decision to concentrate on sculpture. After holding several teaching positions and continuing to expand her range of media, Catlett went to Mexico City in 1946 to work at the Taller de Gráfica Popular, an artists' collective. There, along with her then-husband, the artist Charles White, she created prints depicting Mexican life. As a left-wing activist, she endured investigation by the House Un-American Activities Committee during the 1950s. About 1962 she took Mexican citizenship.
Sam Gilliam
The career of painter Sam Gilliam has spanned decades and mediums, using paint, draped canvas and plastics to help influence numerous schools of art. Sam Gilliam, Jr. was born on November 30, 1933, in Tupelo, Mississippi to Sam, a railroad worker and Estery, a maternal engineer. The seventh of eight children, Gilliam and his family moved to Louisville, Kentucky shortly after he was born. As a child, Gilliam always enjoyed painting and was actively encouraged by his teachers.
In 1951 Gilliam graduated from Central High School and attended the University of Louisville. In 1955, he received his B.A. degree in fine art, and also held his first solo art exhibition. Gilliam entered the U.S. Army in 1956 and served for two years. Following his discharge, he returned to the University of Louisville. After three years of graduate school, Gilliam received his M.A. degree in painting in 1961. On September 1, 1962, Gilliam married Washington Post reporter Dorothy Butler in Louisville, and shortly thereafter moved to Washington, D.C.
In 1963, artist Thomas Downing introduced Gilliam to the Washington Color School, which was defined by bold colors. Two years later, Gilliam contributed his own innovation to the school by displaying unframed painted canvases, which allowed the work to flow naturally with the architecture of the display space. In 1971, Gilliam boycotted a show at the Whitney Art Museum in New York City in solidarity with the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition, in criticism that the museum did not consult black art experts in the selection of artists.
In 1973, Gilliam created the free-standing piece Autumn Surf for the San Francisco Museum of Art which consisted of acrylic sheeting hung over wooden support beams to give the impression of waves. By 1975, he had moved away from draped canvases to geometric collages most notably the Black Paintings and the White Collage Paintings. Also, in 1975, Gilliam created Seahorses, his first outdoor piece, for the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In 1983, Gilliam was featured in his first major retrospective at the Corcoran Art Gallery in Washington, D.C. In the new millennium, Gilliam has continued to work with birch plywood and metal forms as structural elements. Though his work is featured in galleries throughout the world and he is a self-sustaining artist, Gilliam is committed to teaching youth the foundations of art and has worked in numerous facilities including Washington, D.C. Public Schools, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Maryland.
Gilliam has received honorary degrees from Northwestern University and the University of Louisville, a Norman W. Harris Prize from the Art Institute of Chicago, two National Endowment of the Arts Awards and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Gilliam's studio is located in the historic Shaw neighborhood in Washington, D.C. He and his ex-wife have three daughters (Stephanie, Melissa and Leah) and three grandchildren.
Jonathan Green
Jonathan Green was born in 1955 in Gardens Corner, South Carolina and grew up in a small rural African-American community of Gullah heritage and traditions that stressed the values of work, love, belonging, and spirituality. He was deeply influenced by his grandmother Eloise, His mother Ruth, and the elders of his home community who taught him the oral traditions of his African and African-American customs and mores. Such traditions instilled in him a sense of value and purpose and a deep respect for the dignity and privacy of others as they all responsibly addressed the tasks and challenges of life.
Upon graduation from high school in Beaufort, South Carolina Jonathan Green joined and served in the United States Air Force. After leaving the Air Force he attended and graduated from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1982. He subsequently traveled widely – throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, the West Indies, and Europe. While his appeal and perspective are truly modern and cosmopolitan, Green looks to the familiar images of his ancestral home for the subjects of his paintings. In his art Green draws upon his own intimate personal experiences, steeped in the traditions of family, community and life in the Southern United States. Each of his paintings is a testament to the motivating power of place.
As a result of his tremendous and prolific talent, collectors and critics throughout the world have embraced Green’s work. His paintings can be found in major museum collections through the United States, Europe, Japan, and Sierra Leon. In recognition of his capturing and recording southern culture and traditions, he was awarded an honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from the University of South Carolina in 1996.
But the power of his work cannot be contained in museums and collections alone. In his deep sense of social interest, for the past thirty years Jonathan Green has used his art, personal talents, and networking skills to help support essential civic, cultural, medical, educational foundations and institutions throughout the United States. He has placed a special emphasis on support of Diabetes, Cycle Cell Research and Treatment, along with medical outreach, and educational programs in rural communities.
