Meanwhile, in the small New England town of Arlington, Vermont,
the country’s most popular magazine illustrator of the day, Norman
Rockwell, listened to President Roosevelt’s State of the Union address on
the radio. Several months later, he read a proclamation, named The At-
lantic Charter, co-written by Winston Churchill and Roosevelt. In it, the
two great leaders of the Western world endeavored to explain the four
basic freedoms entitled to every human being on earth. That December,
the United States entered World War II. As he described in his autobi-
ography, Norman was too old to enlist and his three sons were much too
young. Still, he watched his neighbors’ boys march off to war. Norman
Rockwell, like every American, wanted to do his part. He read and re-
read The Atlantic Charter. He wanted to show on canvas what those four
freedoms meant, and why Americans felt compelled to send their brave,
young men and women into harm’s way. However, the words were so
eloquent that the artist struggled for weeks, suffering sleepless nights,
trying to find the right visual concept.
Then, one evening, he attended an Arlington town meeting, His friend
and neighbor, a local “no nonsense” farmer, stood up and spoke. As the
artist explained it, “No one agreed with Jim; everyone wanted him to
sit down. But, we knew Jim was entitled to have his say.” At that very
moment, Rockwell realized he was watching freedom of speech in
“real time”. Suddenly, he knew what to do; he would paint everyday
scenes that people easily recognized and ask his Vermont neighbors to
be his models. In 1942, Norman Rockwell enjoyed what today we call
“rock-star status.” His paintings appeared regularly on the cover of the
nation’s leading magazine, The Saturday Evening Post. Indeed, Norman
was one of the kings of American pop culture. So, when he headed down
to Washington, DC to volunteer his services, doors opened wide. They
told him, “In the last war, we used illustrators, guys like you, but this time
around, we’re using fine arts men… you know, real artists.” Rockwell left
the nation’s capital thoroughly dejected. After all, not only did they not
like his idea, but the Washington bureaucrats didn’t even consider him a
real artist. When Norman shared the humiliating episode with his editor
at The Saturday Evening Post, Ben Hibbs immediately realized the idea’s
brilliant potential. On the spot, he commissioned Norman to create the
Four Freedoms, not as Post covers, but as features inside the magazine.
Each representation of freedom would accompany an essay about why it
was worth the fight.
In 1943, The Saturday Evening Post published the depictions. Four dis-
tinguished writers of the day (Stephen Vincent Benet, Booth Tarkington,
Will Durant, and Carlos Bulosan) all composed essays. The public went
wild! The images were hailed around the nation (and the globe) at a time
when the war was going against the Allied Troops. It just so happens that
at the same time, the U.S. Treasury was broke! Well-aware of the public’s
admiration for these four images, The Treasury Department asked the
artist to tour the country with his original Four Freedoms paintings to
sell war bonds. Those paintings, that no one in Washington originally
wanted, raised almost $133,000,000 (the equivalent of $1.7 billion to-
day). And it was that infusion of funds (at such a critical moment) that
By Eileen Bluestone Sherman
changed the course of events and helped the United States win the war.
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