WELL BEFORE THE IOWA CAUCUSES vaulted Barack Obama into the lead in the Democratic presidential primaries, West Philadelphia artist Joe Tiberino completed this oil portrait of "Change" candidate Obama flanked by the three progressive Democratic and Civil Rights icons of the 1960's, John and Robert Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King. Tiberino calls his painting, "Is He The One?"
As heroic as Obama looks in this portrait painted from photographes, I find the trio of ghosts behind him as unsettling as much as inspiring. It's one thing to associate the charismatic senator from Illinois with these heroes from an era of hope and despair during an era in America that started with Camelot and ended with My Lai. But you can't look at those faces without contemplating their tragic end, all identical , all killed by a bullet in the head fired by an assassin.
It's been 40 years since Bobby fell in Los Angeles during the presidential primary campaign in June 1968, just three months after Martin had been gunned down in Memphis, and not quite five years after JFK's murder in Dallas. And 40 years later the memory is fresh and painful for those of us who lived through that national nightmare.
"Is He The One?" can be seen at the Ellen Powell Tiberino Musuem at 3819 Hamilton Street in Powelton Village. For information and tour availability, call 215-386-3784.
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