Bessie Fontenelle en haar zoon Richard
The 39-year-old Bessie is shown lying on her bed with Richard, the youngest of her 10 children. She had been beaten by her drunken husband shortly before, and retaliated by throwing a pot of boiling water on him. The photograph brings Michelangelo’s Pietà to mind: the grieving Virgin with her son. In 1968 the photograph was printed in a large format in a special photographic essay in Life magazine highlighting 
poverty in America’s black ghettos.