Race Relations

Prisoner

by Julius T. Bloch

Bloch was well known for his portraits of Depression-era subjects especially the African-American man. The Negro History Bulletin (December 1956) announced that Bloch is “widely recognized for his psychological character studies of the Negro.”

The anguish of the figure here is clearly evident in the face and hands. What about the way the hands are depicted helps you understand the prisoner’s stress and pain? 

During the 1930s Bloch’s lithographs regularly appeared in the political magazine New Masses.  When poet Langston Hughes saw Bloch’s The Prisoner in New Masses, he asked him to donate a copy of the lithograph to help raise money to defend blacks in the trials of the Scottsboro Boys.  Bloch did so.  The trials concerned nine young black youths who were falsely accused and convicted by all-white juries of raping two white girls in Alabama. (Eisen 21-28, Landau 17)