Robert Templeton sketched on napkins and on his hand and from memory in covering the Black Panthers trial in 1970-1971 for CBS News because the courtroom was closed to artists and photographers. Watch video
HOLYOKE -- Malcolm X looks right at you.
Across the room, softer, hangs the portrait that Rosa Parks sat for in 1970, 15 years after the department store seamstress made history by refusing to give up her seat on a bus.
The paintings are among over 30 works by Robert Templeton (1925-1991) displayed in the exhibit "Bending Towards Justice: The Art of Robert Templeton and the Struggle for Civil Rights" at Gateway City Arts, 92-114 Race St.
The exhibit is free and runs from Feb. 3, 2018 to March 3.
"My father was inspired to do this after covering the Detroit riots for Time magazine. He felt that there might be a need in the future to put down on oil these people who struggled for civil rights," said Kevin Templeton, the artist's son, who gave The Republican a tour of the exhibit Thursday.
"He loved history but he was an ardent supporter of the civil rights movement and he didn't like the treatment that people were getting, felt the laws were unjust," he said.
The exhibit includes sketches Templeton drew for the CBS news with Walter Cronkite in late 1970 and into 1971 of the Black Panther trials from New Haven, Conn. The court room was closed to artists and photographers, but Templeton got the job done.
"My dad sketched on napkins, he sketched on his hand and he did the rest from memory and from what he could get. The judge caught him once and he almost sent him to jail," Templeton said.
Templeton did some of the drawings on helicopter rides from New Haven to CBS headquarters in New York.
Others depicted in the exhibit are Frederick Douglass (1818-1895), an author, orator and former slave; Booker T. Washington (1856-1915), author and founder of what is now Tuskegee University in Alabama; and Martin Luther King Jr., (1929-1968), a pastor, the most famous figure of the 1960's civil rights movement and Nobel Peace Prize recipient. King was assassinated with a bullet to the neck while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee.
Templeton grew up on a farm in Iowa during the Great Depression. He studied under Thomas Hart Benton, a painter and muralist, and upon moving to Miami, Florida, saw the effects of segregation and racism, Kevin Templeton said.
Ralph McGill, Pulitzer Prize-winning editor of the Atlanta Constitution, put Templeton in touch with people like Benjamin Mays, former president of Morehouse College, and that led to a meeting with Coretta Scott King in 1973. The widow of Martin Luther King Jr. offered Templeton a favorite photo of her slain husband from which Templeton painted a wall-sized portrait featured in the exhibit here, he said.
The paintings and sketches by a man whose work intersected with people and events that shaped the nation are on exhibit Tuesday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.; Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Saturday, 4 to 8 p.m.; and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
The phone number for Gateway City Arts is 1-413-650-2670.