Joe Jones, We Demand, 1934

Barbara Haskell: The fist is a dominant image that you see over and over in the '30s that represents the solidity of worker power, workers’ strike, and in the Joe Jones,  it is almost pushing forward into the viewer's space.

Narrator: Barbara Haskell. 

Barbara Haskell: Roosevelt came into office and one of the first things he did was he passed a bill that allowed for workers to unionize and to protest working conditions. And it unleashed a series of strikes all across the country during the 1930s because labor conditions were so terrible. In the Joe Jones picture, he depicts one of these labor protests. 

The man in the front of this picket line is carrying a sign that says, “we demand,” with some numbers, HR75, with some of the numbers blocked out by his hat, but it refers to a bill that had been proposed in Congress by a Minnesota congressman, that would allow for unemployment insurance.

Narrator: Jones knew Orozco. He also showed his paintings in exhibitions with works by Rivera and Siqueiros.

Barbara Haskell: He was one of the people who looked to the Mexican muralists and really spoke about them as the artists that showed him that working with social issues in a way that the public could understand was something that artists were obligated to do.