Jackie Fonetenelle Cleans The Bathtub Analysis

The photographs on display at Ulrich Art Museum are both shocking, and enlightening. Gordon Parks was able to successfully display multiple issues affecting the World – not just the difficulties African Americans face in the United States. However, the photographs of the African American community are just that much more difficult to view – since they are so close to home. The photograph Rosie Fonetenelle Cleans the Bathtub and the photograph United were a couple of my favorite images that I viewed. For my first photograph, I viewed Rosie Fonetenelle Cleans the Bathtub. This image entails a woman cleaning a bathtub in an extremely small bathroom. There are clothes all over the floor – even trash. This photograph gives us a view into the deplorable conditions of the Slums African Americans were forced to occupy – as described by Malcom X. The …show more content…
The photograph has an African American man holding a sign that says “we are living in a police state” meanwhile, the man also has a distressed look on his face. This image makes me think of, in the Malcolm X book, where African Americans would be searched for no reason for drug possession. The idea of a police state, where officials monitor their citizens constantly, is exactly what African Americans went through – and what they wanted to escape. In this image, Gordon
Parks successfully shows us what African Americans were living through. Today, no sane person would want a police state, the fact that African Americans felt like they were is extremely shocking. Both of these photographs show the start reality of the color line – introduced by W.E.B. Du Bois. White Americans would not be as expected to live in the conditions of the slums as Africans Americans, and whites did not face police brutality. The color line expands to many other photographs that Gordon Park captured, and successfully captured the attention of many who were