Women Free Angela

Faith Ringgold (American, born 1930)
Women Free Angela, 1971
Lithograph, 30 x 20 inches (76.2 x 50.8 cm)
33.8 x 24.5 matted

***

This is one of the 4 posters Faith Ringgold made in the early 70s as a form of black feminist activism. The others in the series were "Woman Free Yourself" in purple and green, "America Free Angela" in red, white and blue and "Woman Free Angela" in red black and green, the Black Nationalist Colors. Of course, two of the posters were honoring the case of the arrest of Angela Davis, who was for a time on the FBI's Most Wanted List for allegedly having conspired in an attempted escape from a California courthouse. The gun that was used was registered in her name. Angela Davis was subsequently freed with all charges dismissed.

The posters were meant to be distributed at public meetings, displayed at spontaneous protests, and were conceived as art for the people in the egalitarian spirit of the times. The posters were formally utilizing once again the BaKuba design from Kuba of the Congo (although Faith had not yet been to West Africa, she was already incorporating elements of West African designs into her work), and incorporating poster lettering of words popular at protest marches then.

All words such used were equally and simultaneously inflected as affirmative demands, statements: Freedom, Woman, Now with the order changeable at will in any direction: Freedom Woman Now, Now Freedom. Now Woman. From every direction conceivable.

In this regard, Faith was proposing visual means of reflecting the current use of language among a movement of Black Cultural Nationalist Poets represented by the Last Poets and Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones), Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, Gwendolyn Brooks and someone once called Don L. Lee. Their poetry was as much performance, oration, political advocacy and flamboyant rhetoric as it represented a uniquely African American approach to aesthetics. Faith's work was consistent with their lead with two very important differences:

she was a visual artist first and always, and the Black Cultural Nationalism of the 1970s never really found their comfort zone with the Visual Arts.

Second, from 1970 onward, she was a feminist.

— Michelle Wallace (Faith Ringgold's daughter)