Dana C. Chandler, Jr. (Akin Duro)
I’m Dr. Dana Chandler, globally-renowned social justice outsider artist, professor emeritus at Simmons University, and an artist advocate who founded AAMARP.
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There were multiple men in the community who acted as protectors of its women, children, and elders, since White people come into the community to violate them. Back then, White men still came into the community as salespeople and other "professionals", and when they did, they sometimes raped women or abused children.
Chandler has long discussed the reality that the Black community never has been safe from police as today's headlines show, and killing Black men (or providing drugs and guns, which Black people do not manufacture or distribute, to them to kill themselves and each other) also serves to remove a protective force from Black communities.
But, besides police murdering or incarcerating Black men during the 'War on Drugs',* Chandler argues another sinister method gets used to remove Black men from the community: "disappearing" them.
In 2006, Chandler said while describing this series and other figurative pieces of Black men in this series, "I did these during another time in history—in the 1960s and 70s—when a lot of Black men were disappearing." Chandler now is certain that the US government "disappears" Black men (and women sometimes) using legal structures like the National Defense Authorization Act.*
The NDAA allows federal law enforcement to them to black sites where their families don't know they've got taken and neither they nor legal counsel have access to them.
He is sure that was one way Black men in the North disappeared, since this was the time shortly after COINTELPRO—the FBI's covert operation against the Black Panthers, other Civil Rights movement luminaries, and anti-Vietnam War activists or "the left". (The FBI showed up at Chandler's home around that time to question him about his relationship to the Black Panthers.)
While they deny this,* Chandler and many in the community still believe the CIA, DEA, or other federal law enforcement injected opioids into the Black communities during the 'War on Drugs', which Nixon declared in 1971. Again, we don't manufacture or transport illegal drugs into the US.
During COINTELPRO, the FBI made sure Black activists had drugs to addict them, make them useless in the Black Power movement, and lead to their arrest for possession.
Please see the first image in this portfolio that describes the works in this series for information on this series.
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Artwork: (c) Dana C. Chandler, Jr. Written content: (c) 2022-2023. Dahna M. Chandler for The Celebrated Activist Artist, Inc. All rights reserved. Neither artwork nor content should be used for duplication, derivative works, promotion, or redistribution without permission.
* Sources:
"To Disrupt, Discredit and Destroy: The FBI’s Secret War against the Black Panther Party." (2001). Churchill, Ward in "Liberation, Imagination and the Black Panther Party:
A New Look at the Black Panthers and their Legacy"; Ch. 6. Editors: Cleaver, Kathleen; Katsiaficas, George. https://bit.ly/358N1YA
"The FBI’s Secret War." (2016). Jacobin. https://bit.ly/3qrK3FQ
"Nixon Adviser Admits War on Drugs Was Designed to Criminalize Black People." (2016). Equal Justice Initiative. https://bit.ly/3uo2vQK
"50-year war on drugs imprisoned millions of Black Americans." (2021). AP News. https://bit.ly/3NbwIex
"Occupy Wall Street Protests NDAA at Grand Central. (2012). The New Yorker. https://nym.ag/3ivgJdm
- Subject Matter: Still Life
- Created: 1976
- Collections: Afrifaces: People in My Neighborhood
Other Work From Dana C. Chandler, Jr. (Akin Duro)
