Save Willie McGee

Neel continued to draw subjects for her painting from contemporary events and issues around civil rights beyond the 1930s, reflecting her steadfast concern for social justice, particularly concerning race. Save Willie McGee depicts a rally on behalf of a Black man from Mississippi who had been convicted—unjustly, many believed—on charges of rape, attracting the attention of both Communists and civil rights advocates. McGee was memorialized as a political prisoner in the July 1950 issue of Masses & Mainstream, one of several leftist journals that Neel read, and his trial was covered extensively in both that periodical and the Daily Worker between 1950 and 1951, the year he was executed by the state of Mississippi. The statue of Benjamin Franklin places the demonstration across the street from New York’s City Hall.