Celeste Marie Bernier’s African American Visual Arts: From Slavery to the Present (University of North Carolina Press, 2009) has an important part in scholarship on Charles White. Rather than present her subjects solely within the context of a by now relatively well-established historical chronology, Bernier’s chapters consisted of perhaps unexpected groupings of several artists. Through this delightful and surprising strategy, Bernier was able to convincingly amplify not only points of commonality between the artists she grouped together, but just as importantly, points of difference, thereby creating a new history that not only respectfully challenged, but also built on, the art histories that had gone before.

Charles White was predominantly discussed in Chapter 4 - "'Images are Weapons': History, Narrative and a People's Art', a chapter that grouped together Charles White - the sculptor and printmaker Elizabeth Catlett and the photographer and filmmaker, Gordon Parks. Extracts as follows:

‘[T]he Negro fight for freedom, is the motivating impulse underlying all my works’

… Critics have repeatedly interpreted Charles White’s opposition to an abstract style as meaning that he had no interest in aesthetic issues. This was far from the case. White’s anger was directed towards Abstract Expressionism artists, in particular, not for their experimentation but for “thumbing their noses at society and speaking in an esoteric language”’ (UCVWP, White in Janice Lovoos, ‘Remarkable’, 1962: 119). He dismissed their work on the grounds that it was ‘”devoid of anything to believe in”’ rather than because it favoured abstraction (Ibid.). In one handwritten note, White doodled phrases such as ‘THE MAN SAYS, SAYS THE MAN’ and ‘WHY INTEREST IN BLACKNESS’ (CWP 3190, White, ‘Untitled’, n.d.: n.p.). These broken statements illustrate White’s preoccupation with the pressures facing black artists who sought to use their work to debate aesthetic as well as political issues. As he explained, ‘If we accept the premise that this is a racist society then there can be no Black art or scholarship thst can be non political’ (CWP 3190, White, ‘Address to Negro Artists’, 1959: 1). Despite his commitment to the politics of art , the experimental properties of White’s work betray his refusal to lose sight of artistic debates. As he insisted, the ‘question of craft is an important one to resolve, as well as the question of concept’ (CWP 3190, White, ‘Memo’, 1965: 3). While the ‘mastery of the tools of a craft often seem to elude us’, he urged, ‘skill must not, for if it does, the esthetic qualities are lost too’ (Ibid.). Given his dual belief in ‘craft’ and ‘concept’, White fought for freedom on aesthetic no less than political and social terms in his works. Under no illusion that the ‘quest’ for ‘abstract truths’ came with ‘enormous social responsibilities’, he remained convinced that all artists had a moral obligation to ‘deal with ideas as an educator or philosopher’ (UCWP, White, ‘Statement on Personal Philosophy’, n.d.: n.p.: UCWP, White, ‘Statement by the Artist’, 1975: n.p.). As this chapter shows, while White was caught up in didactic imperatives to create a politically relevant art, he also used his works as a platform on which to explore ‘abstract truths’.

The book contained a full-page colour reproduction of White’s mural, The Contribution of the Negro to Democracy in America, 1943