Another one of my Washington DC commissions, entitled Hope is the Highest Form of Courage. This one is for a former colleague, also a Binghamton graduate, who has helped me a lot as I was starting out in my academic career. I was meant to pick the monument depicted in it, and, left to my own devices, as a scholar of social movements, I picked The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and Dr. Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream Speech, set against the background of the Washington Monument. I tried, however, while paying homage to an event from 1963, to give the crowd a contemporary feel, in order to illustrate how the Civil Rights movement has continued and how it is the young generation, today, as it was in 1963, that will shape the future of social justice. The painting expresses faith in this young generation, the kind of faith educators such as my former colleague must have in order to teach with passion and enthusiasm.
