"Rising Up" will be at the High through Sept. 2, 2012, after which it will travel to the 80WSE Gallery at New York University, the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American Culture and History in Washington, and four other museums.

WSJ: Rising Up: Hale Woodruff's Murals From Talladega College | High Museum of Art | From Mutiny to Harmony | By Karen Wilkin

"Up until then, the studios owned the artists and had unspoken agreements with celebrity magazines so they would tread lightly on people, " says Karen Steinheimer, a sociologist at the University of Southern California, and author of Celebrity Culture and the American Dream.

BBC: How Elizabeth Taylor redefined celebrity