Negroes, from the series The American Scene No. 1

José Clemente Orozco originally created Negroes to be shown at two competing 1935 exhibitions (sponsored by the NAACP and the Communist Party-affiliated John Reed Club) organized to provide an artistic commentary on the practice of lynching. He was inspired by a famous 1930 photograph of the charred body of George Hughes, a Texan agricultural laborer, lynched by a white mob after being falsely accused of rape and murder. The contorted pose of the figure in the foreground mirrors that of Hughes in the photograph, originally published in the Labor Defender. Diego Rivera declined the NAACP's request for a submission, dissuaded by the organization's more centrist politics. Ultimately, Orozco was one of only five artists whose work appeared in both exhibitions.