Interpretation of Bingham's Order # 11
charcoal on canvas by James Joe Froese, not for sale
"After receiving his Masters of Fine Art from Wichita State University which began in Cranbrook, James Froese took a teaching position at Jacksonville State University in Alabama. I must have been about 2 years old when we moved there so most of my memories are vague. At about 4 or 5 years of age I begin to remember things about growing up in Alabama. I remember blacks not walking on the sidewalks and I remember blacks not being allowed in the white swimming pool but what I remember most of all is just not interacting with blacks. My Alabama remembered experience was very “White”.
The racial Alabama world was very different for James Froese. He always felt the part of the outside “Yankee” and did not agree with the ways of “Jim Crow”. Given his “fuck em'” attitude and rebellious nature, friction built. According to the stories James Froese started inviting neighboring black community college members to sit in on his classes in Jacksonville. As time went on the general public became more hostile to James and his family. Threats and vandalism entered the scene. When Sarah and I started coming home from school we referred to blacks in derogatory term so in 1968 James Froese made a decision to leave. He set up some interviews, loaded up every thing he could into a station wagon with an attached trailer and headed north. He left quite a bit of Art behind – forever lost. " Ethan Froese (son)