In 2017, Museum of Modern Art, New York, published Charles White: Black Pope. Written by Esther Adler, the 72-page book took as its starting point a renewed consideration of one of Charles White’s works in the collection of MoMA - Black Pope (Sandwich Board Man) (1973) 

From the rear of the book jacket: "The Chicago-born artist Charles White (1918–79) was celebrated during his lifetime for depictions of African-Americans that acquired the description “images of dignity. His application of his extraordinary draftsmanship to address a lifetime of social and political concerns made him a vital influence on both his contemporaries and later generations; visually compelling and intellectually ambitious, his art engages audiences on many levels. Beginning with his early days in Chicago, moving through his time in New York in the late 1940s and ‘50s, and closing with his final decades as a revered artist and teacher in Los Angeles, Charles White: Black Pope offers a detailed exploration of his practice, focussing in particular on his late masterwork Black Pope (Sandwich Board Man), in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art."

Though a more substantial monograph on White was  to follow, Charles White: Black Pope was an important and considerable introduction to White's practice, which sought to place his work in a variety of art and visual culture contexts. The book contained important archival photographs and other material, including that which pointed to the source or inspiration for the figure that was the subject of White's intriguing "masterwork" Black Pope.