These two featured works on paper, Neshoba and Angry Dog, poignantly respond to one of many dark moments during the Civil Rights era.
In 1964, three civil rights activists went missing in Neshoba County, Mississippi during the Freedom Summer initiative. The bodies of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were found months later. They had been lynched by members of the Ku Klux Klan, including Neshoba County Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price. Price and two other Klansmen were accused of murdering them and stood trial, however, all three were found not guilty, including Edgar Ray Killen who frequently bragged about his involvement in the killings after the trial. Public outrage over the heinous crime and lack of justice influenced the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. The murders, trials and sociocultural aftermath inspired the 1988 movie Mississippi Burning.
In response to the murders, Kriesberg began to draw angry snarling doglike figures, which he often aptly called 'angry dogs.' Neshoba is in the collection of the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Johnson County Community College, Overland Park, Kansas (@nermanmuseum); and Angry Dog is in the collection of the Estate of Irving Kriesberg.