Patrick urges Obama to display Rockwell painting

By Glen Johnson, Globe Staff

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick reportedly played a role in President Obama’s decision to hang a searing civil rights painting - by the state’s own Norman Rockwell - outside the Oval Office.

Politico reports today that the governor was among the group that personally lobbied the president to give such prime display to Rockwell’s “The Problem We All Live With.”

It shows US marshals escorting Ruby Bridges, a 6-year-old African-American girl, into a New Orleans elementary school in 1960 as area whites reacted angrily to a court-ordered integration plan.

“The thrust of the painting is not subtle,” writes reporter Josh Gerstein. “America’s vilest racial epithet appears in letters several inches high at the top of the canvas. To the left side, the letters `KKK’ are plainly visible. The crowds, mostly women who gathered daily to taunt Bridges as she went to a largely empty school, are not shown in the picture. But the racist graffiti and a splattered tomato convey the hostile atmosphere.”

Gerstein adds: “Despite the historic nature of his election, Obama has rarely dwelt on racial issues. His speech Sunday dedicating a memorial to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. near the National Mall will be an exception to the pattern, a rare public embrace of the civil rights movement.

“His choice of the Rockwell painting was a more private statement. Obama has never mentioned it in a speech or public event. And while White House aides confirmed that Obama approved bringing it to the West Wing, they declined to discuss how the decision was made or why,” reports Politico.

Patrick, the first black governor of Massachusetts and only the second popularly elected in the country’s history, formerly served as civil rights chief in the Clinton administration’s Justice Department.

He shares Chicago roots, a Harvard Law School degree, and political advisers with Obama.

The two have become close friends, and Patrick plans to be one of the president’s primary surrogate speakers next year - especially if former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney becomes the Republican presidential nominee.