Tomashi Jackson: Brown II
Author: Rachel Vogel (Editor)
Publisher: Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University
Year: 2021
Pages: 92
ISBN: 978-1733497411
Tomashi Jackson combines a practice based in painting and printmaking with archival research in the histories of law, urbanism, and social justice. Her work plumbs the intersections between the formal languages of visual art (color, composition, layering) and the political languages driving the histories of segregation, voting rights, education, and housing in the United States. By activating these shared motifs of art and policy, her work brings the full power of both traditions to bear on historical engagement and critical action.
Commissioned by Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Jackson explores the challenges of implementing the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Supreme Court decision. Her research and work centers specifically on the 1955 case (referred to as Brown II) that followed the 1954 Brown decision. Brown II asserted that the effort to desegregate schools in the United States was to be undertaken with “all deliberate speed.”
This research-based volume, produced for the exhibition, animates the legal, social, contemporary, and historical movements that flow from the Brown v. Board of Education decision.