The Nine Drawings Portfolio is a strong example of Shahn’s commitment to the struggle for social justice and racial equity. It was “published and distributed as part of a fund-raising effort by the Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee of the American Civil Liberties Union. The Committee was founded early in 1964 by legal officers of various civil rights and civil liberties organizations to provide legal representation in civil rights cases in the Deep South." Each portfolio was accompanied by a poem written by Edwin Rosskam and includes images promoting interracial solidarity and brotherhood, as well as portraits and tributes to civil rights leaders and martyrs. One of the two largest images in the portfolio depicts the face of an unidentified young Black man, above which Shahn wrote in cursive script: We Shall Overcome.
