Other Models

Septima Poinsette Clark (May 3, 1898—December 15, 1987)

Septima Poinsette Clark was a civil rights and education activist. Originally barred from teaching in Charleston, SC schools because she was Black, Clark petitioned for that right in 1920. She won. And she did it while teaching children during the day and adults at night in a nearby town. MLK Jr. refers to her as “The Mother of the Movement”. 

Mae C. Jemison (October 17, 1956)

Mae C. Jemison was not only the first Black woman in space, she was the first Black female astronaut for NASA ever. She launched in the Endeavor in 1992, just 25 years ago. 

Maria Weems (1840—?)

Above is Anna Maria Weems, a woman who escaped slavery by posing as a male. With a $500 reward for her capture, Weems spent over two months on the road until she found freedom in Canada. This art comes courtesy of the Smithsonian Libraries’ (@smithsonianlibraries) yearly celebration of BHM, which includes stories, art, personal histories, and lots more from their massive collection.

Follow these too:

Black Women Art (@fyblackwomenart​) has been around since 2012 (!), giving anyone who follows them a regular dose of art featuring Black women.

Badass Black Women History Month (@bbwhm​) is a brand new Tumblr celebrating badass Black women every day for Black History Month. Hell yeah.

Several projects in Agitprop! reflect the continued urgency, across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries of asserting that black lives matter. When the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded in 1909, one of its immediate goals was to end the lynching epidemic that, between the 1870s and the 1950s, is believed to have taken as many as 4,000 African American lives. Knowing that sympathy across racial lines would be needed to change this situation, NAACP leaders made a cultural campaign to increase awareness of these unprosecuted mob-driven murders and change hearts and minds an important part of their strategy. To this end—from 1920 through 1938—the NAACP used the strong visual symbol of a black flag flying from the windows of its headquarters on Fifth Avenue in New York City to mark whenever a lynching occurred. The text says simply, “A Man Was Lynched Yesterday.”  This practice ended abruptly in 1938, not because there were no more lynchings, but because their landlords threatened to evict them. Even so, with their simultaneous focus on art, popular culture, and creative interventions alongside direct political activism, the NAACP helped to shift the national consciousness and make lynching rare by the 1950s.

Referencing the Civil Rights and Black Power movements that came after that, the television series, Message to the Grassroots took its title from a speech by Malcolm X and was conceived and produced by Michael Zinzun, a former Black Panther Party member and chairperson of the Coalition Against Police Abuse in Los Angeles. This live monthly program aired between 1988 and the early 2000s via the Pasadena Community Access Corporation. Nancy Buchanan, a fellow community and media activist, worked with Zinzun as associate producer, videographer, and editor. While certain episodes—like the one devoted to the 1992 truce between the Bloods and Crips in Watts, L.A.—are important documents of their time, many episodes address the struggles of disempowered communities against police brutality, homelessness, and the lack of affordable housing, that is, issues that remain strikingly relevant today.