page_title: Robert Templeton (artist)
section_title: Civil rights period
hierarchical_section_title: Robert Templeton (artist) / Civil rights period
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait by the artist Robert Templeton to showcase his Lest We Forget - Images of the Black Civil Rights exhibit
context_page_description: Robert Templeton was an American artist. His work includes the civil rights collection "Lest we forget...Images of the Black Civil Rights Movement", highlighting seminal figures from the movement. Templeton painted the portrait of former President Jimmy Carter that is displayed in the Hall of presidents of the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery.
context_section_description: Templeton continued to add paintings to his Machine-Man series, but in 1967, he was an unwitting participant in an event which inspired him to take his art in a new direction. In the summer of 1967, Templeton was in Detroit painting private portrait commissions, when riots broke out. Templeton recorded the chaos in his sketchbook, observing looting, fighting National Guardsmen, firefighters battling blazes, and even the governor's press conference. His sketches of the events became the cover art for the August 4, 1967 edition of Time magazine, the second cover he had done for the news magazine.
  In 1971, Templeton was commissioned by CBS News to be the courtroom artist for the New Haven murder trial of Bobby Seale, founder of the Black Panther Party. Because the court was closed to artists and reporters, Templeton had to create his sketches secretly.  The resultant images are perhaps the only visual record that exists from the trial. Templeton was flown with his sketches to New York City, where the images were shown by Walter Cronkite on the CBS Evening News. In 2007, Templeton's Black Panther trial sketches were acquired by Yale University and exhibited at the Beinecke Library.
  After his experience in the Detroit riots, Templeton devoted more time to paint a record of the leading figures in the Civil Rights Movement. He disdained inequity and felt that with the profound change in race relations, the nation owed the participants recognition for their devotion to the cause. For nearly twenty years he arranged portrait sittings with leaders in the movement with the help and advice of Dr. Benjamin Mays, mentor and friend of Martin Luther King Jr.
  The resulting collection of over thirty paintings was first shown at Emory University with a grant from the Georgia Council of the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. The title "Lest we forget... Images of the Black Civil Rights Movement" came out of a conversation Templeton had with Dr. Mays, who worried that so many people, their work and sacrifice, might be forgotten someday. Since its first showing in 1986, the collection has toured the country.
caption: Portrait showcasing the collection Lest We Forget: Images of the Black Civil Rights Movement
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