WOW. I'd never seen that one before. Even if there had been a camera present on that night in Mississippi, no photograph could capture the truth of the moment more powerfully than Rockwell did.
It's obvious from his work that Rockwell loved America. What's less obvious -- and what so many people miss -- is that he loved not just an idealized version of it, but its reality. And he loved it enough to to get in its face when it was wrong.
I can't stop looking at the face of the one man (not sure if it's Schwerner or Goodman) who's left standing. At his courage and resolve as he stares down the men who, he must know, are about to kill him.
Rockwell was a splendid and moving painter. People don't know his work as well as they should.