To marry, from the "For My People" portfolio
Title
To marry, from the "For My People" portfolio
Creator
Elizabeth S. Catlett
Date
1992
Format
Color lithograph on cream wove paper
Signed, titled, dated and numbered 46/99
Signed, titled, dated and numbered 46/99
Label
The print To marry also illustrates a stanza in Margaret Walker’s poem For My People. Here, Catlett alludes to another common theme among women: marriage. The single print is arranged like a page in a family photo album. The top image depicts a happy African American couple on their wedding day. Below it, however, placed in stark contrast is an image of a lynched Black man sprawled on the ground against a blood-red background. That image, with color added, is a reprisal of one from Catlett’s The Black Woman series (previously the Negro Woman) from 1946 that was titled “And a special fear for my loved ones.”
To marry corresponds to the stanza:
For the boys and girls who grew in spite of these things to be man and woman, to laugh and dance and sing and play and drink their wine and religion and success, to marry their playmates and bear children and then die of consumption and anemia and lynching…
To marry corresponds to the stanza:
For the boys and girls who grew in spite of these things to be man and woman, to laugh and dance and sing and play and drink their wine and religion and success, to marry their playmates and bear children and then die of consumption and anemia and lynching…
Credit Line
Museum Purchase, 2021.19.3
Citation
Elizabeth S. Catlett, “To marry, from the "For My People" portfolio,” Museums at Washington and Lee University: Online Exhibits, accessed May 16, 2024, https://exhibits-museums.omeka.wlu.edu/items/show/392.