Today we celebrate the birth of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968)

In 1964, King received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work as a civil rights leader and minister.

In Let My People Free, [William H.] Johnson has his own way with history, placing Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass on opposite ends of a table, both facing nightmarish vignettes of fettered, lynched, and escaped slaves.

Johnson also created a series of paintings called Fighters for Freedom, depicting famous men and women who were in the forefront of the struggle for racial equality in America.

Source: Richard J. Powell, with an introduction by Martin Puryear. Homecoming: The Life and Art of William H. Johnson (Washington, D.C. and New York: The National Museum of American Art and Rizzoli International Publications, 1991).

Pictured: William H. Johnson (1901–1970), Let My People Free,about 1945, oil, 38 1/4 x 30 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Harmon Foundation.