Black Pride Whitewashed

Norman Parish promoted voices from the African diaspora throughout his career while also working as a longtime gallerist. Over the course of forty years in Chicago, Parish developed, and became best known for his “stylized realism” approach to his subject matter.
After graduating from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Parish was one of the artists who contributed to the Great Wall of Respect, a public mural at East 43rd Street and South Langley Avenue (1967–71). He completed his contribution to the mural, only to have it painted over by his peers who, responding to his fine-art training, felt that the work was too “westernized.” Black Pride Whitewashed is Parish’s record of his excised portraits of political figures H. Rap Brown, Stokely Carmichael, Marcus Garvey, Adam Clayton Powell, and Malcolm X. It was originally part of a diptych; the second panel (later destroyed by the artist) showed the same view after his work had been whitewashed over.