Jitterbugging in Negro juke joint, Saturday evening, outside Clarksdale, Mississippi – and – A Negro going in the Entrance for Negroes at a movie theater, Belzoni, Mississippi (pair)
Eighty-two miles of dirt roads and no more than a month’s time separated two of Marion Post Wolcott‘s most iconic photographs. She made them in Mississippi in the fall of 1939, during one of her long solo swings through the deep South on assignment for the photographic unit of the Farm Security Administration. In the first, A Negro going in the Entrance for Negroes at a movie theater, Belzoni, Mississippi, she transformed a mundane scene into a complex composition with deeply layered meanings. The second, Jitterbugging in Negro juke joint, Saturday evening, outside Clarksdale, Mississippi, captured a moment of sheer exuberant delight. It’s a much simpler image than the first, but just as powerful.
The word “iconic” is overused, but these photos are unquestionably American icons. Their beauty and visual sophistication are givens. What makes them iconic is their ability to show us deep and complementary truths about the experience of race in America. In them we can see reflections of our troubled past and present. Through them we can imagine a more democratic future.
— John Edwin Mason
Read John Edwin Mason’s full introduction to this pair of images on our blog!Â
