The Town

1987

Thornton Dial became a sculptor while constructing railway cars for the Pullman-Standard Company in Bessemer, Alabama, where he remained despite the large-scale Great Migration of African Americans to Northern cities in the wake of the enforced segregation and widespread racialized violence of the Jim Crow era. In The Town, we see a parody of white America—colorful houses and clothes contrast with the violence of the figure who has gouged out their eyes, able to see the hidden truths of racism and brutality underpinning white society.