After the disappearance of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover remained indifferent until pressured by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Soon after, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy escalated the search for the three missing civil rights workers. One week after their disappearance, the FBI issued a missing persons poster. The images of the three men were obtained from the photographs they provided to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), as required of all volunteers for identification purposes should anything happen to them.
Philip Morsberger, former faculty in the Department of Art at Miami University in 1964, created a work in response to the FBI’s missing persons poster. Morsberger’s painting is on display in the Art History at a Glance exhibition in MUAM’s Phyllis Burkham Goodyear Gallery.
Register and Vote, 1964
Silver gelatin print, 20 x 16 inches
Partial Gift of Stephen Schapiro and Partial Purchase by Miami University Art Museum with contributions from the Kezur Endowment Fund
2019.23.17