Bloody Sunday

Copied Sharon Kerry-Harlan, Bloody Sunday, 2020, cotton fabric and cotton batt, 49 3⁄8 × 49 1⁄4 in. (125.4 × 125.1 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Fleur S. Bresler, 2023.40.8

Artwork Details

Title
Bloody Sunday
Artist
Date
2020
Location
Not on view
Dimensions
49 3⁄8 × 49 1⁄4 in. (125.4 × 125.1 cm)
Credit Line
Gift of Fleur S. Bresler
Mediums
Mediums Description
cotton fabric and cotton batt
Classifications
Subjects
  • Occupation — other — reformer
  • History — United States — Civil Rights Movement
  • Figure — fragment — face
  • Landscape — Alabama — Selma
  • African American
  • Figure group
Object Number
2023.40.8
Linked Open Data
https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/2023.40.8

Artwork Description

Sharon Kerry Harlan
born 1951, Miami, FL; resides Hollywood, FL

Bloody Sunday
2020
Cotton fabric and cotton batting

 
This quilt by Sharon Kerry Harlan connects to the artist’s consciousness of the Southern Freedom Movement as a high school student in Louisiana. Harlan recalls how on March 7, 1965, a group of community organizers, community members, and religious leaders marched to protest the killing of activist Jimmie Lee Jackson by an Alabama state trooper. The march was led by John Lewis of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Reverend Hosea Williams of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The group of nearly six hundred marchers committed to nonviolence even after they were met with violence from state and local police as they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. The day became known as Bloody Sunday.

Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Fleur S. Bresler, 2023.40s.8


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