‘American Apartheid’ was Jack Whitten’s description of his painful origins. He came from Bessemer, a thoroughly segregated steel community outside Birmingham, Alabama. As a child, he enjoyed reading. As an African-American child, he was barred from entering the public library. To compress a life-story worth a novel: by 1959, at age 20, Whitten was in New York, soon to enroll in Cooper Union. In his new environment – a shock to him, an awakening – he could converse as an equal with whites who shared his interests. The Abstract Expressionist Norman Lewis, a black man, befriended and mentored him; and so did Willem de Kooning, a white man. Whitten continued to experience a racial divide, but art allowed him to bridge it.