Murdered by the Company, 1939

Artist: Philip Tipperman (American, 1916 -1969)

Oil on canvas board, 16 x 20 inches

Gift of Tipperman Family

The Brooklyn College Library Collection

Five white men with expressions of fear and horror are carrying a dead Black man. The picket sign being carried by one man and another sign on the ground suggests the men were picketing one of the factories in the background. Was the brick in the right foreground thrown at the workers and then killing the Black man? Or was he killed in an industrial accident where there were unsafe working conditions? The surging shapes, churning rhythms, ominous clouds, including tornado-like funnel clouds, convey an unsettling mood of force and violence.

Placing the dead African American man front and center in the painting draws attention to the fact that no group during the Great Depression was harder hit than African Americans. By 1932, approximately half of African Americans were unemployed. In some Northern cities, many whites called for Black men to be fired from any jobs as long as white men were out of work. Racial violence became more common, especially in the South, and the large tree branches in the upper left segment of the painting raise the history of lynching. Here, however, Tipperman, portrays white workers supporting the Black man and in solidarity with him.