A key moment in history
Paintings from children’s book recall Rosa Parks bus incident
In the dozens of children’s books he has illustrated, Floyd Cooper tells stories that are pertinent to young people and, especially African-americans.
His 2010 picture book, “Back of the Bus,” revisits the seminal event in 1955 when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama.
Cooper’s 17 original paintings from that book and seven preliminary drawings are all on view through March 3 at the Columbus Museum of Art in an exhibit timed with Black History Month in February and the 100th anniversary of the Harlem Renaissance.
In “Back of the Bus,” Cooper and author Aaron Reynolds imagine a boy, seated at the back of the bus with his mother, witnessing Parks’ arrest, which led to a 13-month boycott of city buses and, eventually, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that deemed segregation on public transportation unconstitutional.
In Cooper’s ambertoned illustrations, created in oil wash on paper, the unnamed boy plays with a marble that rolls to the front of the bus where Parks is sitting. Before her confrontation, she rolls it back.
The boy watches as Parks is then told to give up her seat and, later, led off the bus and handcuffed. When his mother tells him that “tomorrow all this’ll be forgot,” he isn't so sure.
“I got somethin’ in me, all pale and punchy, sayin’ it won’t be,” he says to himself.
Cooper’s realistic paintings are created through what he calls a “subtractive process." With a stretchy eraser, he removes areas of paint from the images, producing scenes that are softly textured but still full of detail.
Although Parks is the focal point of the story, the naturally exuberant boy and his worried mother become important, contrasting characters. At the end, the boy is both realistically concerned and optimistic for the future.
Cooper has used the boy and his marble as symbols for changes to come.
He has said that children are at the front line in improving society and that picture books play a role in counteracting violence and other negative images conveyed in the media, according to the museum’s curator-atlarge, Carole Genshaft.
Cooper, 62, is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma, who lives
with his family in Easton, Pennsylvania.
The paintings from “Back of the Bus,” in Gallery 5, are hung on a mustard-colored backdrop that reproduces the Montgomery skyline as portrayed in Cooper’s illustrations. All the works are on loan from the collection of Ron and Eileen Frisch of Tiffin, Ohio.
Genshaft called “Back of the Bus” an “important, straightforward story.” Like all of Cooper’s children’s books, she said, they are positive and valuable for children and adults alike.
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