Smoke-Filled Sky (You Can Burn a Man's House but Not His Dreams)

Label

White puffs of smoke draw attention to a house flecked in red, while the charred wood and overall darkness of the scene further evoke its bleak subject. This is one of at least seven works by Ronald Lockett that depict the violence of the Ku Klux Klan during the civil rights movement. Born in 1965, Lockett lived his life in Bessemer, Alabama. He did not experience the height of the civil rights movement directly but grew up with stories as well as the triumphs and struggles that resulted from that fight. Lockett chose to show the violence of this scene without picturing the suffering. The house speaks for its owners, reduced to embers and swathed in darkness. But the end of Lockett’s title (You Can Burn a Man’s House but Not His Dreams) likewise leaves space for hope.

From the 2026 exhibition Inhabiting Historical Time: Slavery and Its Afterlives, curated by Amelia Kahl (Barbara C. & Harvey P. Hood 1918 Senior Curator of Academic Programming) and Alisa Swindell (Associate Curator of Photography)

Exhibition History

Black Codes: Art and Post-Civil Rights Alabama, Jules Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama, January 23-July 30, 2024.

Inhabiting Historical Time: Slavery and Its Afterlives, Jaffe and Hall Galleries, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, December 20, 2025 - July 11, 2026.

Provenance

Souls Grown Deep Foundation

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