It Wasn’t Little Rock. Clarissa Sligh, Visual Studies Workshop, 2005, 68 pages, 8.5 x 11 inches, spiral bound, laminated covers, Indigo Digital Press, edition of 250, US $75.00.
The Supreme Court’s historic ruling, in the 1954 case of Brown vs. Board of Education, that state-sanctioned segregation of public schools was unconstitutional, provided a judicial framework for desegregation that needed to be tested, community by community– often school by school. This is the story of Ethel Mozell Thompson, the daughter of a sharecropper from North Carolina, and her children, including Clarissa Sligh, who were sent to white schools and became participants in civil rights lawsuits. This book is written in the voices of those children and a grandchild. It is a personal story of struggle, anger, pride– and the revelation of a family tragedy that led Ethel to her activism.
Clarissa Sligh is an artist/photographer living and working in New York City. Her work is based on personal narratives and community stories made using photographs, artists’ books and mixed media.
Supported in part by a grant from the Nimoy Foundation made during an artist residency at Visual Studies Workshop
