Bridges says the work conveys a message of integration and “bringing people together,” but on its surface, Rockwell’s painting depicts jarring cruelty, hatred and fear.

“The N-word there — it sure stops you,” said William Kloss, an art historian and expert on the White House collections. “There’s a realistic reason for having the graffiti as a slur, [but] it’s also right in the middle of the painting. … It’s a painting that could not be hung even for a brief time in the public spaces [of the White House], I’m pretty sure of that.”

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Urban League President Marc Morial, who viewed the painting during a recent visit to see the president, said Rockwell’s use of the racial slur conveys the hostility Bridges faced.

“It gives people an opportunity to see that she wasn’t walking to Sunday school and, in fact, she faced the jeers, she faced the hate,” Morial said.

“It is jarring to see it in this piece of art, but … it provides the context of the time,” said Roland Martin, an African-American radio and TV host and political commentator for CNN. “When you see that word, you see her, you see the soldiers, you realize, ‘I really get this.’”

Despite, or perhaps because of the groundbreaking nature of his presidency, Obama’s handling of issues of race has been subdued. He has hosted Black History Month events, but the civil rights page on the White House website makes little mention of racial discrimination. When eight surviving members of the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers strike came to Washington in April, Obama received them privately in the Map Room. A still photo of the meeting with Obama was posted on the White House blog.

“I don’t believe Obama’s uncomfortable talking about race. I do know it’s a politically charged issue with hypersensitivity on all sides of the equation,” said April Ryan, who is African-American and a longtime White House reporter for American Urban Radio Network. “I’ve been told by people here they don’t want to deal with a lot of ‘race’ because it overamplifies. … One thing that will always follow this president is race, so they have to, in my estimation, downplay it.”

Despite signs that at least some tea party events last fall were racially tinged, Obama has repeatedly told interviewers that he doubts race plays any significant role in the angry reactions of some Americans to his policies or in the long-festering claims that he was born outside the U.S.

Ryan said Obama and his aides also have brushed aside calls for programs targeting sharply higher unemployment rates in the African-American community.

“I can’t pass laws that say I’m just helping black folks. I’m the president of the United States,” Obama told Ryan in a December 2009 interview. “What I can do is make sure that I am passing laws that help all people, particularly those who are most vulnerable and most in need. That, in turn, is going to help lift up the African-American community.”

Ryan also noted that while Obama has never displayed any race-related artwork as provocative as the Rockwell painting, he does keep emblems of the civil rights movement near him. A small bust of King is in the Oval Office, and a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation hangs on the wall. Obama also has a pamphlet from the 1963 March on Washington sitting nearby, said Laurie Norton Moffatt, director and CEO of the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass., where “The Problem We All Live With” is displayed when it’s not on tour.