Faith Ringgold Catalogue by Avis Larson

American People, Black Light

Faith Ringgoldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Paintings of the 1960s

American People, Black Light

Essay by Michele Wallace Edited by Thom Collins and Tracy Fitzpatrick

American People Black Light

Faith Ringgoldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Paintings of the 1960s Neuberger Museum of Art

Purchase College State University of New York

American People, Black Light: Faith Ringgold’s Paintings of the 1960s Essay by Michele Wallace Edited by Thom Collins and Tracy Fitzpatrick Neuberger Museum of Art Purchase College State University of New York Published in conjunction with the exhibition American People, Black Light: Faith Ringgold’s Paintings of the 1960s organized by the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York, September 11–December 19, 2010.

Editors: Thom Collins and Tracy Fitzpatrick Essayist: Michele Wallace Designer: Beverly Joel, pulp, ink. Copyeditor: India Cooper Printed and bound by: Print Craft, Inc., Minneapolis, MN

7 Curators’ Statement 9 Acknowledgments 13 About the Artist

American People, Black Light

Cover image: Faith Ringgold, Black Light Series #1: Big Black, 1967 (plate 34); back cover image: Faith Ringold, American People Series #1: Between Friends, 1963 (plate 14)

Faith Ringgold’s Paintings of the 1960s Michele Wallace

ISBN 978-0-9795629-3-8

Plates 52 68 94 110 122

Neuberger Museum of Art Purchase College State University of New York 735 Anderson Hill Road Purchase, NY 10577 www.neuberger.org First Edition, American People, Black Light: Faith Ringgold’s Paintings of the 1960s: © 2010 Neuberger Museum of Art Main essay: © 2010 Neuberger Museum of Art, Michele Wallace

Early Works American People Series Black Light Series Posters For the Women’s House

128 Chronology 131 Bibliography 134 Catalog of the Exhibition

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Except for legitimate excerpts customary in review of scholarly publications, no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechan ical, including photocopying, recording, or information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. Published in the United States

aith Ringgold began her autobio graphy, We Flew over the Bridge (written 1980, published 1995),

with these words. Those who know

I have always wanted to tell my story, or, more to the point, my side of the story. We Flew over the Bridge, ix

Ringgold’s work, even those who know it well, likely link the advent of her storytelling to the advent of the story quilts she began producing in the late 1970s, her revival of the tradition of African and African American quilts that told stories and preserved memories. The visible manifestation of Ringgold’s storytelling emerged earlier than the production of either her story quilts in the 1970s or her autobiography in 1980, however. It began when she developed her first mature body of work, the American People Series, in 1963. This is the moment when Ringgold began to tell “her side of the story” through her art, the story of her own experience of racial integration, of what it felt like to be a black woman in 1963: “James Baldwin had just published The Fire Next Time, Malcolm X was talking about us ‘loving our black selves,’ and Martin Luther King Jr. was leading marches and spreading the word. All over the country and the world people were listening to these black men. I felt called upon to create my own vision of the black experience we were witnessing . . . I had something to add—the visual depiction of the way we are and look. I wanted my painting to express this moment I knew was history. I wanted to give my woman’s point of view to this period.” With hindsight, 1963 may seem like an obvious time to begin such a body of work, considering the tragic events of that year. But looking back at Ringgold painting on her mother’s friends’ front lawn during that summer, in the black enclave of Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard, before the June assassination of civil rights worker Medgar Evers, before the August March on Washington for Jobs and

CURATORS’ Statement

and

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 6

Freedom during which Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, before the September bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, and before the November assassination of John F. Kennedy, we see how truly courageous the work is. The first painting of the series, Between Friends, acquired by the Neuber ger Museum of Art for its permanent collection on the occasion of this exhibition, evidences the daunting task that Ringgold tackled. In what the artist described as an “uneasy meeting between a black and white woman,” Ringgold made visible that which no one wanted to see, what no other visual artist, of any color, was

observing in his or her work. Some tackled civil rights and racial prejudice, but chose not to out themselves, not to reveal their own feelings surrounding the palpable “uneasiness” of the project. As she wrote in We Flew, “The older artists were

his exhibition and accompanying catalogue would not have been possible without the ingenuity of Thom Collins, former Director, and Tracy Fitzpatrick, Curator, and a true network of friends and colleagues lending their support.

cautious—‘half-stepping,’ as they used to say in the sixties—trying to get by in the

Thom had long been aware of Faith Ringgold and specifically the paintings in her

art world and not drawing attention to their blackness. ‘Art is art. Quality is the

American People and Black Light series. A call to Dorian and Jeffrey Bergen of ACA

important thing. It doesn’t matter what color you are’ was their message. They

Galleries, a gallery that the Museum’s founder Roy R. Neuberger has often patron-

knew there was little or no support for artists in the black community—so what

ized, facilitated the conversations with Faith that led us here. Our sincere thanks

could be gained by alienating friends and contacts in the white art world? On the

to Dorian and Jeffrey for their invaluable assistance and insight, and for their de-

other hand, I was not concerned with friends or enemies. Being unknown and a

votion to the artist’s work. Many others took part in this project. Faith’s daughter, scholar Michele

newcomer, I had neither. I was concerned with making truthful statements in my

Wallace, not only has contributed a remarkable text to this catalogue, one that re-

art and having it seen.” And making truthful statements cost Ringgold. No one wanted to show

defines our understanding of the artist’s formative period, but has also contribut-

the work. No one wanted to buy the work. To date, the majority of the work remains

ed many personal photographs of the artist, and her family and friends, which are

with the artist for these reasons. Then again, at that time, making your truths visi-

published here in the catalogue for the first time. Sincere thanks to Faith’s assis-

ble was not fashionable, as it would become in the following decade. A dramatic

tant Grace Matthews who facilitated this project in more ways than I can count.

artistic gesture in 1963, making visible that which most preferred remain invisible,

Special thanks too to the artist’s husband Birdie Ringgold and daughter Barbara

was not a commercially successful enterprise.

Wallace for their support of this project.

So now, in 2010, we look back at this body of work, at the American People

So many people from the Neuberger facilitated this exhibition. Chief Pre-

Series, the Black Light Series, and at the political posters and mural works that fol-

parator David Bogosian, Associate Preparator Jose Smith, Registrar Patricia

lowed, and see a bold and risky endeavor. It was through these that Ringgold found

Magnani, Assistant Registrar Alison Lowey, and Assistant Curator Avis Larson safe

her political voice. It was also through these works that she discovered artistic

guarded and installed the works, ably assisted by crew members: Greg Beise, Jun

methods to express that voice, methods key to understanding all that the artist

Ishida, Katie Karkheck, Matt Harle, Melissa Skluzacek, Alexandra Theodoropou-

has since created.

los, and Dennesa Usher. Conservator Elizabeth Estabrook of Amann + Estabrook

More broadly, these works are critical to reconceptualizing our under-

Conservation Associates gave extraordinary special attention to these works.

standing of artistic production in the 1960s. It is incongruous that the art of a

Designer Beverly Joel, as always, produced a beautiful exhibition catalogue for the

period defined by the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War, the women’s

museum. Photographer Jim Frank took new photography of almost everything in

movement and first-wave feminism, has become defined by the rather sterile

the exhibition, providing an updated record of Faith’s works from this period.

movements of pop art and minimalism, movements that generally fail to connect

Since the Neuberger is a teaching museum, many students also worked

with the social and political circumstances of the time. Faith Ringgold’s work

on this project under the guidance of Tracy Fitzpatrick, who also serves as an

offers not only clear insight into that important moment in the history of our coun-

Associate Professor of Art History at Purchase College. These include Chelsea

try, but also insight into what it meant to be an African American woman making

Spengemann who provided research assistance on the project and the students

her way as an artist at the time.

participating in the 2010 spring Purchase College Art History Exhibition Seminar:

Thom Collins

Tracy Fitzpatrick

Former Director Neuberger Museum of Art

Curator Neuberger Museum of Art and Associate Professor of Art History, Purchase College, SUNY

Rosanna Azzara, Karen Bachman, Luis Baez, Tatyana Demuns, Chloe Drew, Lisa Finger, Jarrett Lykins, Melanie MacCaskie, Tyler Mahowald, Casandra Maniotis, Danielle Probert, Karen Riddell, Janine Rissewyck, Yana Rolnik, Andrea Seltzer, Margaret Smyth, Danielle Sweeny, Aemi Thorne, and Jessica Whittam.

On September 7, 2010 just days before the opening of the exhibition, Tracy Fitzpatrick secured approval to release a key Ringgold mural, For the Women’s House, from Rikers Island, New York City’s main jail complex. The mural occupies a key place in the artist’s career and takes a step beyond the focus on race seen in her American People and Black Light series. This aspirational mural, Faith’s first public commission, is also the last painting she ever produced on stretched canvas. It was her way of inspiring those who would spend time with it— incarcerated women, many of whom were young mothers separated from their children—to look beyond their current lives and to set themselves on what one inmate observed to Faith as, “the long road” out of there. Deepest thanks to Dora B. Schriro, New York City Commissioner, Department of Corrections, and her staff. And special thanks to Mobius Fine Art Service, which assisted the Museum staff in the canvas’ furlough. Others still have supported this project in so many important ways. We thank longtime Neuberger Museum of Art partner Morgan Stanley Smith Barney for their sponsorship of the exhibition. Also, special thanks to the JPMorgan Chase Foundation for funding the exhibition’s associated education programming, helping us to teach lessons on emotion, friendship, social movements, and civil rights to grades K–12 through Faith’s art and writing. The combined efforts of all of these people on the project can be matched only by the efforts of the artist herself. As Faith has observed, many of these works haven’t been shown in 40 years, but it wasn’t because she didn’t try. She tried and tried, again and again. Now, in 2010, we are so glad to be able to reassemble these Series and to provide a venue for Faith, now 80 years old, to voice her message, so consistent over the years, that although being true to your vision might be difficult and might wind up being a “long road,” over time “anyone can fly.”

Lea Emery Acting Director Neuberger Museum of Art

aith Ringgold, born in 1930, is a painter, mixed media sculptor, performance artist, writer, and teacher. She received her B.S. and M.A. degrees in visual art from the City College of New York in 1955 and 1959. Ringgold began her

career as a painter in the 1950s. She created her first political paintings, the American People Series, between 1963 and 1967 when she had her first one-per-

son exhibition at the Spectrum Gallery in New York. In the early 1970s, Ringgold began making soft sculptures, masks, and tankas, inspired by a Tibetan art form of paintings framed in richly brocaded fabrics. She later utilized these media in her masked performances of the 1970s and 1980s. Although her art of the 1960s was inspired by African art, it was not until the late 1970s that she traveled to Nigeria and Ghana to see the rich tradition of masks that has continued to be one of her greatest influences. Ringgold made her first quilt, Echoes of Harlem, in 1980, in collaboration with her mother, Mme. Willi Posey, another of her greatest influences. Ringgold’s first story quilt, Who’s Afraid of Aunt Jemima?, was written in 1983. It is for these painted story quilts that she is best known today. One of her story quilts, now in the collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, inspired her first children’s book, Tar Beach, published by Crown Publishers in 1991. It has won over 20 awards including the Caldecott Honor and the Coretta Scott King Award for the best illustrated children’s book of 1991. Ringgold has since published ten other children’s books and an autobiography, We Flew over the Bridge: The Memoirs of Faith Ringgold (Duke University Press, 1995). Ringgold has exhibited in major museums in the United States, Europe, South America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. She is in the permanent collection of many museums including the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. She has received more than seventy awards, fellowships, citations, and honors, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Fellowship for painting and two National Endowment for the Arts awards. Recently retired as Professor Emeritus of Art at the University of California in San Diego, Ringgold has received twenty-two honorary doctorates, one of which is from her alma mater, the City College of New York.

About the Artist 12

Michele Wallace

American People, Black Light Faith Ringgold’s Paintings of the 1960s

AMERICAN PEOPLE

hen she began the American People Series in 1963, Faith Ringgold (my mother) was a great admirer of the works of the African American artist Jacob Lawrence (who first burst upon the scene of American art during the

1940s).1 Indeed, she would often cite him as the definitive influence in her subsequent career as an artist. Nonetheless, with certainty, we can say that in the early 1960s there were no sufficient role models in the visual arts for Faith to consider patterning herself after. So instead, she chose to fashion herself after the leading black writers of the day, in particular James Baldwin. Yet Faith was neither a male nor a writer.2 Her goal would be precisely to do in art what Baldwin had done in his writings of both essays and novels.3 As a proud and superbly well educated black woman—thoroughly engaged by both the political and social issues of the day, singular in her commitment to being a productive and important artist despite all the obstacles clearly set in her path—there was no mold, and so

Art was the one thing that I always loved to do. Yet, because I had never heard of a black artist, male or female, when I was a child, I did not think of art as a possible profession. In retrospect, I think I must have taken art for granted at this time— as something to do rather than be. We Flew over the Bridge, 20–21

Figure 2

The artist and Earl Wallace’s marriage announcement, 1950.

she deliberately set out to create one. If we add into our calculation this exhibition, organized by the Neuberger Museum of Art, which includes the American People Series (1963–67) (plates 14–33), the Black Light Series, also known as America Black (1967–69) (plates 34–45), her political posters (1969–72) (plates 46–54), and her monumental first public commission, For the Women’s House (1971) (plate 55), installed at the Rose M. Singer Center on Rikers Island, then we begin to grasp the depth and range of Faith’s accomplishment as something we might view as the long lost (and never written) great American novel in its generosity and willingness to include all the American people in the story of the African American in the 1960s (fig. 1). As a black woman, Faith’s career as an artist developed afield of the New York art scene in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1948, she entered the City College of New York to study art. At that time, however, the School of Liberal Arts, where the arts program was housed, did not accept women. So Faith matriculated formally into the School of Education, an obstacle that would prove to be an asset as she developed her career as a teacher. Two years later, when she was twenty, Faith married Earl Wallace, the boy next door and her teenage sweetheart (fig. 2). In 1952, they had two children, me in January, and my sister, Barbara, in December (fig. 3). Just two years later, in 1954, Faith moved out with me and Barbara to live with her mother, Mme. Willi Posey. In 1956, Earl and Faith’s marriage was annulled. Faith’s mother was one of her most important influences and collaborators. Throughout the 1950s and the 1960s, she was engaged in a fashion design business, run from home, as part of a network of black designers in Harlem and other black communities throughout the United States. At the time, the mainstream American fashion world followed the then dominant business model of almost total racial Figure 1

Photo collage of photographs from the 1950s. Detail from Faith Ringgold, Change: 100 Pound Weight Loss Quilt and Performance, 1986.

Figure 3

Daughter Michele the day she was christened, in her mother’s arms alongside her grandmothers and her godmother, Aunt Doris.

My mother was a treasure. I openly adored her. Not only did she raise me carefully and lovingly but she was also my best friend. She was intelligent, forceful, and physically and mentally agile. She could do a split, a headstand, and she even learned to swim at seventy. Her career as a Harlem fashion designer in the 1950s and 1960s was brilliant and made her an unsung pioneer in black fashion. Later, when she became my collaborator, she inspired my new medium: the quilt. We made our first and only quilt together in 1980. Since then, with the wealth of knowledge and skills she imparted to me, I have made eighty-five or more quilts. There was nothing Willi Posey Jones could not do once she set her mind to it. We Flew over the Bridge, 67

Figure 7

The artist, after receiving her Masters Degree from the City College of New York in 1959. Two early paintings in background.

Figure 4

Mme. Willi Posey Couture business card.

Figure 6

“Famous Fashions by Barbara Mayo and Mme. Willie Posey” program, 1965.

segregation, which did not allow the participation of blacks at almost any level. However, the garment district in New York City, especially since the onset of World War II, had provided employment for my grandmother as well as many other blacks in their factories as seamstresses, finishers, and even sometimes on an informal basis as showroom models (fig. 4). Faith often helped her mother with her business. She and other members of the family often modeled in her mother’s fashion shows (fig. 5). In 1965, for example, Mme. Posey and her closest friend, Barbara Mayo, a milliner, partnered for two fashion shows, one at the Hilton Hotel on April 4 (fig. 6), where Miss Brown Beauty was crowned (created as a psychological defense against the annual all-white Miss America Pageant), and another at the now defunct Americana Hotel on May 9, which was described as the Annual Founders’ Day Sojourner Truth Awards Luncheon.4 Faith completed her B.S. in art education in 1955 and began teaching at

Figure 5

The artist modeling in 1959. Photo: George Hopkins.

J.H.S. 136 in Harlem. At the same time, she entered the graduate program in art at the City College of New York, which she completed in 1959. Upon completion of her graduate work (fig. 7) and the receipt of her full-time teaching license at the secondary level, Faith began teaching at John Jay High School in Brooklyn. Having been well educated, Faith wanted the same for us, so she enrolled us in Our Savior Lutheran School on the advice of a friend who taught there. The education was

Figure 8

Faith Ringgold, Nude Trees, 1961, Oil on canvas, 35 x 25 inches. Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York.

rigorous, and the school was small enough that if Faith needed to check on us while she was at work, there was always someone available to talk to. Although we had nominally converted to Lutheranism, we all continued to attend Abyssinian Baptist Church with Faith’s mother, Mme. Posey, where the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell and then his son, the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Jr., who gained a congressional seat in 1945, delivered up every Sunday in the pulpit a heady mixture of politics and black pride long before it was fashionable. It would not be too much to say that Powell had helped to radicalize Faith (as well as all the rest of her immediate family). This was as critical to my education as was anything else. It was at that time that we also moved to our own apartment. There, with more time and a bit more space, Faith began to devote more time to her painting in the dinette adjoining the kitchen and the living room. The paintings she made during this period were inspired by many things, including the “isms” of modernism—impressionism and cubism, as examples. (see figs. 8–12 and plates 1–3) Faith read everything there was to read about Picasso, as did I, right along Figure 9

Faith Ringgold, The Tenement, 1960, Oil on canvas, 21 x 17 inches. Collection Michele Wallace.

with her, even though I was only eight at the time. She also ran us through the

In the early sixties, for the first time despite all the hell in my life, I decided to make it known that I was an artist demanding to be taken seriously.... I used a palette knife so that I could work in heavy impasto, and still keep my edges well defined in the thickly laid-on paint. If I wanted to remove an image, I could just scrape it off with my knife and lay on a new one without getting “mud,” or having the underpainting show through. We Flew over the Bridge, 143

Figure 10

The artist at home, 1961. Three early paintings in the background, including The Tenement (right). Photo: Willard Smith.

Figure 12

Faith Ringgold, The Doctors, 1962, Oil on canvas, 24 1⁄2 x 36 inches. Collection Michele Wallace.

Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art more times than I can count. Once the Guggenheim went up in 1959, she took us there as well. The works she painted in the late 1950s up until the summer of 1963 are about searching, and questioning, trying, and restarting. She was searching for the thing that her art was going to be about. Although Faith was devoting more time to her art, she was also occupied by her duties as a mother of two growing girls, her job as a public school teacher, and her continuing assistance to her mother’s fashion designing business. She had little time for the downtown hanging out that might have garnered her some introduction to the “right crowd.” Nonetheless, she subscribed to Arts, Artforum, and Art News and closely followed the work and the adventures of the important artists of the day. In 1961, still feeling little connection to the New York arts scene and scanning for direction in her work, Faith took me and my sister and our grandmother to Europe for the summer (fig. 13). There, we visited the Louvre in Paris and the Uffizi in Florence (fig. 14). For me the trip was one of the most divine experiences I had ever had up until that point in my life. For Faith, I’m sure it was also a turning point. When the craze to get to Africa later hit Harlem, I often wished that we had gone to West Africa instead, but that continent was still roiling from its struggles

Figure 13

The artist, her mother, and her daughters on their way to Europe aboard the S.S. Liberté, 1961. Photo: George Hopkins.

Figure 14

The artist and her daughters standing in front of the Louvre, 1961.

Figure 11

Christmas card designed by the artist, 1962.

Figure 15

The artist and Burdette Ringgold, marriage photograph, 1962. Photo: George Hopkins.

with colonialism. In fact, life in much of the Europe we saw was perhaps quite similar to continental Africa. Most of the people we saw were obviously poor and their living conditions quite primitive. I can recall bands of gypsies, people travel-

n 1963, Faith began her momentous American People Series of oil paintings. This was coincidentally an immensely important year for African Americans and the Civil Rights movement. First, it was the hundredth anniversary of the Emanci

pation Proclamation, in which, while the Civil War was still raging, Abraham Lincoln

ing with animals on the trains, the little old guys with the dancing monkeys and the organ grinders, and women dressed in rags pushing huge carts at the railroad sta-

made the first declarations of universal emancipation—in theory restricted to those

tions selling snacks of various kinds. Everywhere we went prostitution was legal,

who were still enslaved by the Confederacy, but in fact setting off a chain of events

prostitutes and their children were members of society.

that led to the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the United

In Italy, especially in Rome, we saw barefoot children begging in the streets,

States Constitution.6 Second, it was also the year in which the March on Washington

and toilets that were more like holes in the ground. The hotels we stayed at always

took place. This first major national civil rights demonstration led by the Rev. Dr.

had one bathroom per floor. Sanitary conditions were generally primitive. Particu-

Martin Luther King Jr. was also a landmark tele-visual event, which my family along

larly the working classes looked as though they were trapped somewhere in the

with most others in black and white America watched together in our living rooms on

Depression of the 1930s. Meanwhile, their tabloids were blasting with the news of

small black-and-white television sets. Third, there were two major political assassi-

the Civil Rights movement in the United States. Everyone we saw was extremely

nations, which bookmarked the year of 1963. The earlier one was the murder of the

happy to see us. As children, we were celebrated everywhere we went—offered can-

important civil rights leader Medgar Evers in the spring in Jackson, Mississippi. The

dy, ice cream, cookies, and cake and generally coddled. From the time our feet

second was the murder of John F. Kennedy just before Thanksgiving.7

touched the deck of the S.S. Liberté, the entire experience was dreamlike right up

In the summer of 1963 Faith took us, her two daughters, to stay with Dr.

until the day our trip was cut short by the news of the death of Faith’s older brother,

and Mrs. Goldsberry (who came from Worcester, Massachusetts and were friends

Andrew, and we had to hurry back to the United States.

of our grandmother Mme. Posey) in their summer home at Oak Bluffs, largely an

From the beginning Birdie was easy to be with, and over the years he has never lost that quality. Birdie is a man who was looking for his complement in a mate, not someone to hide behind him. .. . My situation was unusual and Birdie recognized and admired my solid family support system—something which he himself did not have. Birdie was part of a pre-sixties consciousness (among some black men) and was confident enough to subordinate his own achievements in favor of his wife’s.

The following year, Faith mar-

African American enclave, on the island of Martha’s Vineyard. Faith set up her easel

ried her old friend Burdette Ringgold

in the front yard and produced in quick succession five momentous paintings, the

(figs. 15 and 16). Soon we all moved to

first blast in her riveting American People Series, which would confront head-on

a beautiful apartment in Harlem once

some of the key issues of the ongoing Civil Rights movement (plates 14 –33). Her

occupied by Dinah Washington, the

perch provided her at the same time with a front-row seat for the unfolding drama

great singer, at 345 West 145th Street,

of the rise of the black bourgeoisie associated with the Democratic administration

a gorgeous building where Faith’s sis-

then reigning in Washington, D.C.

ter, Barbara, was already living. Faith

This series of paintings un

transferred us to the ultra-progressive

folded in a very particular and precise

New Lincoln School in the fall of 1963.5

order. Not one brushstroke was either incidental or unplanned. The first of Figure 16

The artist on her wedding day, posing near an early work, 1962. Photo: George Hopkins.

the paintings to emerge on the Oak Bluffs lawn of the Goldberrys was Between Friends (plate 14). That it portrayed two women, one white and one

We Flew over the Bridge, 57

black, was hardly accidental since the portrayal of women would assume such great importance through Faith’s

The first painting, Between Friends, depicting an uneasy meeting between a black and a white woman, was inspired by the women who came to weekday poker parties at the Goldsberrys’ house while their husbands were in their offices in town. The Goldsberrys were lifetime members of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and entertained an interracial group of high-powered friends. I thought the white women were simply representing their husbands and I could sense a lot of distance between friendship and what these women were sharing. We Flew over the Bridge, 144–45

subsequent career as an artist. Although at the time Faith still had little interest in feminism, her depiction of females was always distinct from that of males, as she was already demonstrating great sensitivity to subtle rarely explored facets of gender roles. Moreover, in marked contrast to the focus of Baldwin’s work on the Civil Rights movement during this period, Faith’s work came from the point of view of an urban African American northerner. In a context in which social interactions between the races are not forbidden by law, the precise calibration of such inter actions becomes an object of fascination. In subsequent paintings in the series, Faith often portrays white men as calculating and officious bureaucrats, women rather in supportive or essentially decorative roles (plate 15). In the five initial paintings of the American People Series (plates 14–18), Faith had set herself firmly upon the path of portraying the emotional intricacies and theatricality of the American race problem. Of the twenty-two persons portrayed in the first five canvases, only six were African American; the rest were white, invariably with masklike faces absolutely fascinating in their precise emotional pitch: not smiling but not frowning either. Their faces seem almost frozen in motion as if in a scene onstage, poised for decisive action invariably judgmental in character as based upon their perceptions of the visible race of the person encountered. In Between Friends, the unwritten message seems to be that we can talk but we will never be friends. In both For Members Only (plate 15) and Neighbors

For Members Only recalls the open racial hostility I encountered as a child on a church school outing to Tibbets Brook in Upper New York State. A band of white men, carrying sticks, surrounded us kids and demanded that we get out and “go back to your bus.”

(plate 16), any interaction between the races is rendered incomprehensible. In The Civil Rights Triangle (plate 17) and Watching and Waiting (plate 18), once again black and white are carefully arranged in dynamic alienation, as are

In the summer of 1965 I had heard that Harry Belafonte was interested in black artists and was collecting their work. I went to his offices on West 57th Street where his secretary told me that his business manager, Sy Siegel, bought all of his paintings for him. So I took several of my paintings from the American People Series to show to Mr. Siegel. One was Mr. Charlie, a large grinning head of a patronizing white man. Another called The Cocktail Party was a social gathering with one black person. The final canvas I brought was The American Dream, which presented a woman, half white, half black, showing off her huge diamond ring. Mr. Siegel turned red. He growled menacingly: “I don’t know who these people are.” Waving his hand at the paintings, he went on angrily. “And I don’t know what they’re doing.” (He was looking at The In Crowd, a scene of white men piled in a power pyramid with black men on the bottom.) I tried to explain the scene to him. “You see the white man has his hand on this black man’s mouth because he doesn’t want him to speak out about the injustice in the black community. We call him ‘Uncle Tom,’ and we call him—pointing to the grinning white face—‘Mr. Charlie.’ “Well, you wanted me to see them and I’ve seen them,” Mr. Siegel thundered. He turned and left the outer office, slamming the door in my face. We Flew over the Bridge, 148–49

the two women in Between Friends.

We Flew over the Bridge, 145

Nobody I knew seemed to have time just to talk about ideas or problems, except my mother. She never got tired of listening. I knew I worried her during those years, but she held on to me, and I to her. Other older artists wrote my paintings off as “protest” art, sometimes even dismissing them as merely history painting or social realism. They were mostly people who had been badly burned during the Communist scare in the fifties and now wanted to keep their noses and palettes clean. Art for them was an abstraction, a fragment of an idea that nobody could understand, much less condemn. However, I had called my art “Super Realism” because I wanted my audience to make a personal connection with its images and messages. The older artists were cautious—“half-stepping,” as they used to say in the sixties—trying to get by in the art world and not drawing attention to their blackness. “Art is art. Quality is the important thing. It doesn’t matter what color you are” was their message. They knew there was little or no support for artists in the black community— so what could be gained by alienating friends and contacts in the white art world? On the other hand, I was not concerned with friends or enemies. Being unknown and a newcomer, I had neither. I was concerned with making truthful statements in my art and having it seen. Younger black artists objected to my paintings of white people. Some neither understood nor accepted my need to make images of anyone but black people. Others, I was told, felt that my steely-eyed white faces were going too damn far.

When Faith struck out in this direction of portraying the contemporary American scene from the particular vantage point of racial interactions, she did something that was absolutely unique among her peers, white and black, in the art world of the 1960s. Aside from the fact that the work was blatantly political in tone and function, Faith had chosen to emphasize the particular problems of interracial contact, the obstacles of temperament and inclination that would block the utopian aspirations of the current civil rights movement under the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Faith had chosen this approach, no doubt, out of her own experience as a black person born and raised in the North, where blacks and whites commonly intermingled in public spaces and yet rarely became friends (although Faith had had many close white female friends since becoming an adult). Although she had never been to the South or experienced the open racial hostilities that were then its norm, she prided herself on her ability to discern racism in northern whites and not to have any such whites in her circle of friends. In 1964, Faith began teaching at P.S. 100 in Harlem, where she continued to teach through 1968 (figs. 17 and 18). Faith’s work with and devotion to her students became well known immediately when her students from P.S. 100 exhibited their works in a young students’ show in Harlem, sponsored by the National Council of Negro Women.

We Flew over the Bridge, 147–48

Figures 17

The artist teaching at P.S. 100, 1967.

Figure 20

The artist in her Harlem studio, ca. 1964. Early Works #16: A Man Kissing His Wife (top, right), Early Works #22: Uptight Negro (bottom, right) and a lost work (left). Photo: George Hopkins.

Figure 18

The artist teaching at P.S. 100, 1967.

From 1964 to 1968 I taught at P.S. 100, which was part of the More Effective Schools (MES) Program—some people thought it was a MESS, but the program basically was a good one. It was designed to upgrade the reading scores and general educational level of ghetto elementary school children. Its special features included teaching specialists in reading, mathematics, science, social studies, art, and music, and small class sizes with a maximum twenty-two kids in a room, each class conducted by two teachers. We also had even smaller classes for problem children, and special funds for books, supplies, educational aides, and equipment. The MES program was an ideal plan on paper. There were problems that were insurmountable, however, and “being set up to fail” was not the least of them. Yet for the first time in my teaching career, I had an abundance of space, art supplies, equipment, and teaching assistants. I could freely design my own art curriculum for grades one through five, which included oil and acrylic painting on stretched canvas as well as tempera painting and drawing, ceramic and clay sculpture, and silk screen printing. This was an amazing teaching opportunity, so I tried not to waste any time implementing it.

The artist in 1967 in front of American People Series #17: The Artist and His Model. Photo: George Hopkins.

In her own work, Faith continued to concentrate in her paintings on the psychological substructure of racism in everyday encounters. This was a move that put her decidedly ahead of the curve among both black academics and artists who preferred not to treat the issue, despite Baldwin’s assertions in The Fire Next Time, for example, that “the brutality with which Negroes are treated in this country simply cannot be overstated, however unwilling white men may be to hear it.” In the process, Faith rendered a series of works in oil during 1964 (fig. 20 and plates 4–10) that informed the remainder of the American People Series. Most portray signs of aesthetic strategies she would return to in subsequent paintings. The notion of what it meant to be an artist and how one represents oneself (see fig. 19 and plate 13) was of great interest to Faith. In The Artist and His Model

As often as I was allowed to, I worked with the four- and five-year-olds in the kindergarten and pre-kindergarten classes. This was a privilege not to be taken lightly, since the principal felt that these classes were the gems of her program and did not want the children in them to be overstimulated by too many different experiences. She didn’t seem to understand how natural art is to the development of a young child. It was fascinating to watch these children’s random scribbles develop into pictorial compositions over just a few weeks. By that time they would be fabricating long, involved, higly imaginative tales about their drawings that seemed to have no end.

(fig. 21 and plate 30), for example, she takes the classic approach of the artist’s self-portrait and turns it on its head in order to challenge the usual order of things. In this case, the artist portrayed is a black male and his model is a white female. Moreover, the actual artist who has composed the composition is not a male at all but a black female. It is interesting to think of this painting as an uncanny self-portrait in disguise. The implication is strong within the context of the painting that the artist is supposed to be male, or masculine, and

We Flew over the Bridge, 223–24 Figure 19

The artist in her Harlem apartment, ca. 1968. Early Works #25: Self Portrait (left) and American People Series #14: Portrait of an American Youth (right).

Figure 21

My art was changing. In the back grounds of my canvases, stop signs and arrows had been supplanted by leaves and flowers, which seemed more appropriate for the women and children I was now painting. In Hide Little Children, two black children and one white child are hiding in the trees with only their little faces showing. This painting was inspired by my own children and the fears I had about their friendships with white children with whom they socialized in and out of school. New Lincoln School had a reputation for being ultra-liberal, but what about the parents? What kind of reputation did they have? We Flew over the Bridge, 154

Many artists painted large canvases as if to say, “To be big you have to paint big.” My paintings, on the other hand, were small, three by four feet. I felt like a tiny fish in a big pond, although I realized that anybody could paint the same configuration of circles and squares and lines on a six-foot canvas as on a smaller one. The magic of painting had nothing to do with size. In most cases, people were just painting big to be in style. Mainstream art was tailor-made to satisfy the rich art collectors and patrons who did their art shopping in Madison Avenue galleries. Artists who wanted to get into a good gallery were the most conscious of the mainstream rules. They named their canvases Untitled, and did not sign them—people were supposed to know who you were and what the work was about. That was “art cool.”

The knife the black man carries is for self-defense, not for destruction. Every male carried one. The flag is bleeding with injustice on him.

Figure 22

Detail of Faith Ringgold, American People Series #18: The Flag is Bleeding, 1967, Oil on canvas, 72 x 96 inches.

Michele Wallace, conversation with the artist, June 25, 2010

that the model should be consequently

ever produced. She planned every aspect of their compositions, mapping them out

female, or feminine. But where is Faith’s

on graph paper through drawings. These paintings, The Flag Is Bleeding (plate 31

perspective, neither white nor mascu-

and detail fig. 22), U. S. Postage Stamp Commemorating the Advent of Black Power

line, in this picture? Even as a teenager,

(plate 32 and detail fig. 23), and Die (plate 33), were the conclusion of the American

that question fascinated me.

People Series and the beginning of a new kind of approach in her work.

In 1967, after school let out for

In The Flag Is Bleeding (plate 31), Faith placed three figures against an

the summer, Faith sent Barbara and

American flag—a white woman, a black man, and a white man. This was not the

me to Europe with her mother. We trav-

first time Faith used the American flag in her work. In 1964 she produced God Bless

eled to London, Paris, and Rome. While

America (plate 26) in which she placed an elderly white woman with white hair, a

Mme. Posey (whom we knew as Momma

Daughter of the American Revolution type, hard edged in appearance, her face hov-

Jones) visited the various couture col

ering just over the field of blue. Her hand holds just one large star over her heart. In

lections of Europe, we studied French at

The Flag Is Bleeding, the white woman is positioned at the center of the canvas, but

the Alliance Française on Boulevard

this time she is youthful, fragile, a peacemaker between the white man wearing a

de Raspail. In Florence, we toured the

suit who holds his hand threateningly over his pockets, where he may be packing,

Uffizi, in Rome the Vatican, and in Lon-

and a large muscular black man who carries a knife, his hand over his bleeding

don the National Gallery, picking out

heart (fig. 22). The stripes bleed from the self-inflicted wounds of America. U. S. Postage Stamp Commemorating the Advent of Black Power (plate 32)

our favorite paintings and sculpture to commit to memory. In London, we also

immediately became my favorite paint-

had a great time eating fish and chips

ing in the world upon my return from

from greasy newspapers and exploring

Europe. I was only fifteen, so my think-

the shops on Carnaby Street for the latest fashions and the white go-go boots, all

ing about it wasn’t particularly deep.

the rage that summer in the United States and in Britain.

It was for the simple reason that it in-

We Flew over the Bridge, 154

Meanwhile Faith was back in New York and hard at work. Having success-

cluded a hundred faces in a grid of ten

fully joined the cooperative Spectrum Gallery on 57th Street, which was run by

faces by ten faces, with ten black faces

poet and art critic Robert Newman, she had a one-woman show coming up in the

in diagonal order, representing the

fall. For that show, Newman had suggested that Faith should produce three mural-

numerical status of African Americans

size works, and that she should have the keys to the gallery for the summer (galler-

as 10 percent of the population of the

ies were closed in New York in the summers then). Faith spent the summer painting

United States, with all the rest of the

and getting to know Jeannine Petit,

faces painted in various shades of white,

another artist in the collective who

actually pink, tan, beige, and so forth.

I was partially inspired by Jasper Johns’s flag series for two reasons— I liked the regularity of the position of the forty-eight stars as opposed to the uneven position of the fifty stars (which our flag actually had in 1967), and I also felt that John’s flag presented a beautiful, but incomplete, idea. To complete it I wanted to show some of the hell that had broken out in the States, and what better place to do that than in the stars and stripes.

What really held my attention

shared the gallery walls with her and

as she continued to paint this painting

would become a close personal friend. As Newman had suggested,

was the idea, which she shared with me,

Faith painted three mural-size works,

that the trick of it would be to make

the largest of which measured 144 inch-

each of the faces somewhat distinct from every other and yet obviously more

es wide. It was the biggest work she had Figure 23

Detail of Faith Ringgold, American People Series #19: U. S. Postage Stamp Commemorating the Advent of Black Power, 1967, Oil on canvas, 72 x 96 inches.

We Flew over the Bridge, 158

U.S. Postage Stamp Commemorating the Advent of Black Power was a difficult work for me on two counts. It was difficult to paint the hundred faces, but equally it was difficult to visualize the subject itself because, in many ways, I had no idea what Black Power meant. My own need to feel a sense of personal as well as public power was in direct contrast to a world that ignored women of all races. For me the concept of Black Power carried with it a big question mark. Was it intended only for the black men or would black women have power, too? I expressed this idea by depicting the words “Black Power” in a diagonal line of letters descending across the canvas from left to right. The words “White Power” are shown in horizontal white letters and represent the white (racist) power whose challenge led to the creation of the Civil Rights Movement and its rallying cry for “Black Power.” We Flew over the Bridge, 158

Figure 24

Exhibition announcement American People, the artist’s first one-person exhibition, Spectrum Gallery, New York. Invitation features detail from American People Series #18: The Flag is Bleeding.

Figure 25

Left to right, Richard Mayhew, the artist, Romare Bearden, and two unidentified people at the American People opening reception at Spectrum Gallery, 1967. Photo: George Hopkins.

alike than different, apart from the dif-

me over the years because I am more

ference of skin color. This notion of dif-

struck by the tension between her de-

ference was enthralling to me. Even

piction, which portrays both whites

more enthralling was that every day

and blacks bleeding and fleeing, males

when I got up and looked at the paint-

and females engaged in a free-for-all

ing, I would notice that one or more of

reminiscent of

the faces would have changed, owing to

(which we had been to visit so many

the manner in which Faith was building

times at the Museum of Modern Art

up layer upon layer of paint in the

when I was a child), whereas the actual

construction of these images. Each and

riots were largely black men breaking

every face was different from every

into stores, battling the police who

other ever so slightly, but how? (fig. 23)

had guns with rocks or other objects,

I would scan the surface looking for the

chaotic affairs.

slight differences of appearance, and

Picasso’s Guernica

So the battle Faith’s mural

how it was that I knew one face from the

portrays is a conceptual one, revealing

other. I never grew tired of this exercise.

the undercurrents of what was really at stake in the riots of the 1960s, which was

These many years later, I have

black-against-white conflict mostly in urban cities. Blacks (mostly males, I be-

learned of the fascinating work psy-

lieve) were registering their dissatisfaction with the restrictions of ghetto life and

chologists have done on the human

with lack of genuine opportunities for advancement and prosperity, and their real-

memory for faces as well as the scien-

ization that despite the absence of the obvious signs of Jim Crow segregation and

tific verification we now have that each

restriction in the cities, the white power structure was still pulling the strings and

and every face, with its complex structure of muscles and tendons and emotions,

keeping them in check.

is completely unique, and the differences go much deeper than differences of skin

From this point on (in the late

tone or hair texture or gender. It is possible to have a stroke and have one’s memo-

1960s), by the way, the numbers of

ry for faces knocked out, leaving other kinds of memory intact. Apparently the

black males incarcerated began to in-

loss of the ability to distinguish one face from another and to recognize familiar

crease exponentially even as other

faces is devastating to every shred of the potential for happiness in life. How sad

kinds of opportunities began to open

is it, then, that the recognition of the race of a particular face can ruin one’s hap-

up for black men who were educated

piness forever.

and had bourgeois aspirations. The

I can also remember very clearly and very distinctly when Faith painted

trend continues into the 21st century

Die (plate 33), an imaginative rendering of the “race riots” that had begun to

in which we have found ourselves with a

plague the United States landscape every summer like clockwork during the six-

black president, a black secretary of

ties. These riots were almost always in what we then called “black ghettos,” and

state, a black governor of New York,

most participants were either black people who lived in the community, or white

and more black men and women in

officers policing the black community, or white press attempting (usually unsuc-

prison than ever before.

cessfully) to report on the action. Faith’s Die has grown even more fascinating to

“American People,” my first solo show, opened at Spectrum Gallery on December 19, 1967. My three murals occupied the outer gallery, and the smaller works were in the other two spaces in the inner gallery. Most people were responsive to them, although some felt that Die was too bloody, or, as Robert [Newman, director of Spectrum Gallery] put it, “You would not see that much blood in Vietnam.” One woman got off the elevator, which faced the painting, only to lunge backward and shout to the elevator operator to take her down. She had been face to face with Die and she couldn’t stand the blood. We Flew over the Bridge, 159

345 West 145th Street walls this per-

I was interested in Ad Reinhardt and Josef Albers since they, too, had created black paintings. Reinhardt’s paintings are so hard to see; a guard at the Museum of Modern Art once told me that often people get frustrated looking at them because the canvases appear to have no images at all. Only after intense concentration do Reinhardt’s images become visible. People got angry about his style of painting. Were they angry because it was black? Wasn’t Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man black? And how much of the hatred directed at black people had to do with their lack of high visibility? Is black racism just another term for low “color” visibility?

fect conjunction with the current rheto-

We Flew over the Bridge, 162

AMERICA BLACK

t some point, perhaps before the American People show opened, Faith initiated her black light experiments in painting with the first astounding image, ominously entitled Big Black (plate 34). From its very first appearance in our

household I dearly loved it. It spoke firmly to my increasing sense of anxiety (as an adolescent) about very personal issues of black identity. Its form suggested pure space and color, dark, rich, sublimely immersive like a warm gentle sea of black water. In retrospect, it is difficult to separate my subsequent reverence and awe for this bold experiment in abstract design and color combined with philo-

In 1967 I had begun to explore the idea of a new palette, a way of expressing on canvas the new “black is beautiful” sense of ourselves. In the painting of Die, I had depended upon the blood-splattered white clothing of the figures to create the contrast needed to express the movement and energy of the riot. I felt bound to [the color white’s] use, having been trained to paint in the Western tradition. But I was now committed to “black light” and subtle color nuances and compo sitions based on my interest in African rhythm, pattern, and repetition. In 1971, I described these new works as experiments in toning the light to the blacks, browns, and grays that cover my skin and hair; and the shades of blues, greens, and reds that create my forms and textures. In years to come my colors have lightened, but I feel more comfortable with “black light” even now.

sophical speculation on the potential for a black aesthetic from my own surprise then to see suddenly gracing our

ric of “black is beautiful,” black pride, and black nationalism.8

I made my early black paintings in 1967 by very crudely mixing ivory black into other colors to darken them. Because ivory black has a high oil content, it dries slowly and produces an uneven glossy sheen. Continuing to perfect my new palette, I switched from ivory black to Mars black, which dries faster and has a beautiful matte finish. Then I decided to add burnt umber, which also has a beautiful surface quality and emulates dark flesh tones. I used flake white to create opacity and to lighten my colors a little. Against a white background the color differences between red/ black, blue/black, and brown/black, and so on are indistinguishable— all the blacks look alike. I began to realize that such dark colors must be placed next to other equally dark colors in order to see their true surface quality, color value, and depth of contrast.

The title Big Black suggests a godlike figure, and yet the figure seems deliberately not personified but rather proposed in terms of the basic and most minimal conceptual ingredients of the new “blacker” consciousness. Being black is okay. Black is good. Being black can actually provide the basis for how you see and enter the world, not from a posture of hatred or violence but from a posture of self-love. Interestingly, Man (plate 35), the second in the Black Light Series, grows more human. Yet he remains abstracted by blocks of color. His face is masklike and evocative, not personal but intimate. Soul Sister (plate 3 and fig.

Figure 26

The artist in her studio ca. 1971 with political landscapes on either side of Black Light Series #3: Soul Sister and Black Light Series #10: Flag for the Moon: Die Nigger on easel at right. Photo: George Hopkins.

26), finally, proposes an entirely human figure in the form of a beautiful woman

We Flew over the Bridge, 162

We Flew over the Bridge, 163

Figure 27

Jean Pace, Oscar Brown Jr., the artist, and Tom Lloyd (left to right) discussing a Martin Luther King, Jr. Wing for African American art at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, ca. 1969. Photo: George Hopkins.

with perfect bare breasts, her hair natural and, dangling from her ears, the hoop

campaign against the Museum of Modern Art, much of it based on the assump-

earrings that were so popular in the 1960s in the black community.

tion that the art establishment was inherently pernicious and unsalvageable. But

It was in 1967 that Martin Luther King Jr., denouncing the Vietnam War,

Lloyd’s section of the campaign was focused on the more concrete goal of estab-

joined the future of the Civil Rights movement to the expanding peace movement

lishing a Martin Luther King Jr. wing for black and Puerto Rican artists and a study

to stop the war in Vietnam. In April of 1968, Martin Luther King was murdered in

center for research on the art and cultures of these peoples. The AWC backed his

Memphis, Tennessee, on his way to attend a demonstration supporting a strike of

proposals, and Faith joined forces with him, as did my sister and I (figs. 27 and 28).

sanitation workers. His movement was shifting to a focus on poverty as a core is-

The Martin Luther King wing never happened for a variety of reasons. Instead

sue in the struggle for racial equality, but he would not live to see the end results of

there was one joint exhibition for Romare Bearden and Richard Hunt, and then

the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Poor People’s Campaign that the

nothing for a long, long time.

Rev. Ralph Abernathy, his second in command, would go on to spearhead. King’s

Nonetheless, despite the time devoted to the political scene going on in

death served to inspire a hardening of positions among many black progressives

the art world, Faith did complete nine more canvases in the Black Light Series

and the tendency to disassociate themselves from peaceful means of protest and

in 1969. Black Art Poster (plate 38) begins Faith’s work with words and letters as an

passive resistance. There were many riots. Yet his death also inspired many artists

integral part of her painting. Also, the concept of the poster becomes a working

to launch projects in the black community.9

principle in some of her canvases, consistent with the increasing aspirations of

When the Whitney Museum opened an exhibition called The 1930s: Paint-

black nationalists and others who were caught up in the revolutionary fervor of the

ing and Sculpture in America on November 15, 1968, and not one black artist was

times, as well as the general idea of making things widely available to people

included, not even Jacob Lawrence, whose work was in the permanent collection,

either gratis or on a very inexpensive basis.

the black arts community was very displeased. Black critic Henri Ghent, director

In Love Black Life (plate 39), Faith continues the use of letters and words,

of the Brooklyn Museum’s Community Gallery, called a meeting, which was held

this time in an arrangement borrowed from Kuba (from the Kuba people of the

at the Studio Museum in Harlem. At this, Faith suggested to the group that a pub-

Congo) design. Faith had begun to study African design and to incorporate it into

lic demonstration of protest would be in order and volunteered the Spectrum

her artwork and her teaching. Red White Black Nigger (plate 41) is the first in the

Gallery, which had now moved to Madison Avenue only blocks away from the

series of paintings Faith would do in which she incorporates the term “Nigger.”

Whitney, as their operational headquarters for the day. On Sunday, November 17,

Flag for the Moon: Die Nigger (plate 43; see also fig. 26 background), for

1968, the demonstration, in which I participated as well as my sister and mother,

me, is the most exciting of the images in this series. It was inspired by the landing

took place. On this occasion, Faith met for the first time the African American art-

of American astronauts on the moon in the summer of 1969. It is also Faith’s most

ists Tom Lloyd, William T. Williams, and

fascinating flag painting, a combination of the image of the American flag with her

Benny Andrews. Grace Glueck, then art

new dark palette and with words concealed in both the stripes and the stars. The

editor for the New York Times, covered

more visible word is “DIE,” which stands behind the stars. One must turn to the

During the years from 1968 to 1970, I was caught up in a steady stream of activities protesting MoMA’s exclusion of black artists. I stayed up many nights typing press releases. I spent many days at the museum distributing questionnaires to museum-goers in an attempt to expose the racist exclusion of black art from the MoMA exhibition schedule. Needless to say I did not produce much art during this time.

the demonstration, interviewing Henri Ghent, Romare Bearden, and a few of the other men. Faith’s name was never mentioned in the resulting article the next day. Tom Lloyd then called Faith to

Figure 28

Protest advocating for Martin Luther King Pedro Campos Wing at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Michele Wallace in background (wearing ensemble made by Mme. Willi Posey, her grandmother), 1969. Photo: Jan van Raay.

side to see, as it is concealed in the stripes, the less visible word “NIGGER.” Or in other words, Faith implicitly proposes that the flag the astronauts planted on the moon actually should have born this legend: “Die Nigger,” in keeping with the widespread suspicion among African Americans that the space program was just another way to avoid giving the racially disenfranchised the money and attention they so deserved.10

encourage her to get involved in the Art

It is only now in 2010, having read Julia Bryan-Wilson’s Art Workers: Radical

Workers’ Coalition’s (AWC) ongoing

Practice in the Vietnam War Era (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), that

We Flew over the Bridge, 171

My second solo show opened on January 27, 1970, at Spectrum Gallery’s new location on Madison Avenue and 79th Street. Robert Newman had named my first show “American People,” but I named this second show myself—“America Black.” Robert was displeased with the title: he felt it was too militant and separatist. For me, however, it was an expression of our new appreciation of blackness—we had never known until now that we could love our black selves. The show contained twelve canvases in my new “black light” style. The American People Series and the Black Light Series really said all I had to say about the civil rights period of the 1960s.

I am beginning to revisit and examine

I also thought of such people as wealthy, or in other words rich. Or in yet

anew the importance of that term “art

other words, they were living (as they were engaged in their anti-war and anti-

workers” in the context of radicalism in

materialist rhetoric) in relative luxury (despite their paint-splattered overalls,

the art world in the late sixties and early

frequently bare feet, and bedraggled, uncombed hair) on the spoils of their osten-

seventies. Her book considers in great

tatiously apolitical art making. As it happened, my experience of the decade of the

depth the endeavors of the Art Workers’

sixties as a student at the progressive New Lincoln School (I entered in seventh

Coalition particularly as expressed by

grade in 1963) had already acquainted me with the self-presentation of poverty or

the activism and artwork of Carl Andre,

blue-collar or farm-worker dress purchased from the Army Navy Stores that used

Robert Morris, Lucy Lippard, and Hans

to sprinkle New York City among the children of the wealthy.

Haacke, the four figures she mainly fo-

Besides that, I had grown up all my life experiencing the importance of

cuses on in telling her story.

neat, stylish, and even expensive clothing among the largely working-class popula-

I cannot recall having ever met

tion of the black communities of the Bronx and Manhattan. I fully understood

Hans Haacke, but the other three I got

by 1969 that identifying someone’s wealth or attitudes about wealth was not a

to know quite well; or perhaps I should

conclusion you could draw from what the person was wearing. Indeed, quite the

say rather that I got to observe them

opposite. You would be more likely to understand a person’s wealth from where he

closely for a time, because I was seven-

or she lived. Also, I had this notion that if you were a “successful artist,” or in other

teen in 1969, and at the time I had no

words somebody who was a white male, whose name often appeared in print, and

idea who I was. I was very shy and frequently found it difficult in this period to

who belonged to a prominent gallery (and my favorite solitary social activity even

We Flew over the Bridge, 173

address adults casually for more than a sentence or two.

Figure 29

Granted, this extreme shyness and lack of self-confidence did not prevent me from dancing or singing onstage (which I did in a number of productions either in or outside of school), nor did it prevent me from saying something belligerent in

Front and back of exhibition announcement for America Black, the artist’s second one-person exhibition, Spectrum Gallery, New York, 1970.

as a teenager was trolling the galleries of 57th Street and the Village, and the art museums of the city of New York) and was employed full-time as an artist, then you were probably well-off, rich, wealthy, comfortable—choose any of these words. At the time, they all meant the same to me.

the context of a demonstration or debate as needed in the service of whatever Faith’s agenda may have been that day.11

Granted I was not a deep thinker on the issue of wealth. There was only one important fact I knew about wealth. Neither I nor anybody in my family was

It was during this period that Faith and I and Tom Lloyd were often en-

wealthy.

gaged in protests to increase the representation of black and Puerto Rican artists

So I am not sure how I came to the conclusion that their notions of art

at the Museum of Modern Art. My perception of Lippard, Morris, and Andre was

making were an attempt to avoid political issues in connection with their art, but I

that they were very, very upset about the Vietnam War and wanted it to stop, and

think this may have been what Faith thought. Perhaps even if you were familiar

that perhaps they were also anti-racist but distinctly less so. But the thing that

with Bryan-Wilson’s account of their ideas concerning the political usefulness of

Bryan-Wilson’s account really calls into question was my own impression at the

conceptual art, you might still pooh-pooh the whole thing. Even Bryan-Wilson

time that the two men were vigorously and unrepentantly engaged in producing

points out that conceptual art is not much associated in most people’s minds with

apolitical or anti-political art, and that Lucy, who wrote about the art of white male

progressive politics. But her account makes some sense to me, particularly since

artists like Andre and Morris, was herself a proponent of an art-for-art’s-sake view

she brings in the fact that a lot of people in the art world in the 1960s were very

of some sort consistent with the prominence and success of the leading white

turned off by the notion of social realism as a valid way to articulate politics in art.

male artists at the time—who ranged from minimalists and pop artists to concep-

This I was, or subsequently became, very aware of. I also think I didn’t see, nor had

tual artists of one variety or another, overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly male.

ever seen, anything wrong with the idea of art for art’s sake (although I would not

Figure 31

The artist with Jon Hendricks and Jean Toche at The People’s Flag Show, Judson Memorial Church, New York, 1970. (The artist’s coat and dress designed and fabricated by her mother, Mme. Willie Posey.) Photo: Fred W. McDarrah / Getty Images.

have had the courage to say such a thing to my mother then). But then it also makes sense that at this point (in the early 1970s), such extreme personalities as Carl Andre, Lucy Lippard, and Robert Morris would have wanted to bring everything

I was brought to the section of the Tombs for women. Two black female officers asked my officer, “What’s she in for?” “Desecration of the flag.” . . . At the end of the corridor, I saw a cage with three women in it. “This is it, Faith,” I told myself. “Now you’re going to get your ass kicked for the first time in your life in a godforsaken cage in the Tombs on a Friday night.” We Flew over the Bridge, 185

in their lives into a kind of theoretical consistency. In other words, if they were critiquing the current arrangements of the art world and protesting the implicit contribution of the established art world in the political arrangements of the dominant culture in the United States, then they would have also done writing and made Figure 30

art that would be consistent with those same views.

Faith Ringgold, The Peoples Flag Show, 1970, Cut paper and pen design for poster, 18 x 24 inches. Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York.

Needless to say, Faith and I did not share their views that the art world and the art establishment were moribund and that the principal purpose of art production at this point would be to rail against American capitalism, corporatism, and hypocrisy. The whites in the Art Workers’ Coalition and Art Strike who took their inclusion in the culture arrangements of the dominant culture for granted might be excused for feeling as though conventional forms of art making would be too much of a compromise with the status quo, but such assumptions could have little relevance for African American artists who had had little opportunity by then to be included in the art world, nationally or internationally. There is also the consideration of the perspective that Faith often proposes in response to this kind of anti-art thinking. As she puts it, people do what they can do. Or in other words, if you don’t know how to draw and you don’t know how to paint and you don’t know how to make sculpture or to imagine images that might improve the world, well then, there would be little point in embracing the necessity for making art. You are not an artist in any case. In 1970, a Flag Show took place at the Judson Memorial Church on Washington Square Park, for which Faith designed the poster and I wrote the words (fig. 30 and plate 48). The show, after massive participation on the part of artists in New York, was closed by the attorney general’s office. Faith, Jon Hendricks, and Jean Toche were arrested and charged with desecration of the flag. As a consequence, they were dubbed the Judson 3 (fig. 31 and plate 49). They were subsequently acquitted of all charges on appeal, with lawyers who were assisted by the Figure 32

The artist, Jon Hendricks, and Jean Toche at Leo Castelli Gallery auction in support of ACLU legal defense efforts on their behalf, 1970. Photo: Jan van Raay.

American Civil Liberties Union. Many people contributed to the cause (fig. 32). It was an important case for freedom of speech among artists. In the poster for the

Figure 33

Faith Ringgold, Committee to Defend the Panthers, 1970, Cut paper design for poster, 27 5⁄8 x 21 1⁄2 inches. Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York.

show, produced afterward, Faith further developed her increasingly sophisticated

and wife both holding rifles and a child, in a pictorial representation of one of the

use of words and lettering in art, as well as the image of the American flag.

issues that first brought the Panthers to the headlines in California: the right to

Also in 1970, an integrated, predominantly white group called the

publicly bear arms (plate 47). They decided not to use this poster either.

Committee to Defend the Panthers asked Faith to make a poster, which they didn’t

In 1971, Faith made four posters that expressed her current interest in

like and didn’t use, perhaps because it

black feminist activism. These were Woman Free Yourself in purple and green;

made explicit that which they preferred

Freedom Woman Now and Women Free Angela in red, black, and green, the black

to keep a secret: that they were white

nationalist colors; and America Free Angela in red, white, and blue (plates 50–53).

people who wanted to support but

The latter two were produced in honor of the arrest of Angela Davis, who was for a

remain in the shadows of the Black

time on the FBI’s Most Wanted List for allegedly having conspired in an attempted

Panthers (fig. 33 and plate 46). Racial

escape from a California courthouse. The gun that was used was registered in her

separatism had become an extremely

name. Davis was subsequently freed with all charges dismissed.

I did my first poster, dated July 1970, for the Committee to Defend the Panthers, a radical-chic New York group whose purpose was to raise money for the Panthers’ legal defense. I remember being rather shocked that rich white people like Leonard Bernstein would associate themselves with such a controversial cause. The day I took them the poster, their office had been fire-bombed and there was water everywhere. They seemed paranoid that day and rightly so. They rejected the poster; perhaps because they had just been bombed, or maybe not. My poster had a central image of a red-eyed, blackfaced, snarling panther-looking man, flanked on both sides by profiles of two raging white panther heads. The text read “Committee to Defend the Panthers, Free all political prisoners, All Power to the People” with the committee’s address and phone number: 11 East 13th Street NYC, 243 2260. How was I to know the committee was operating undercover, especially since they had originally tried to talk me into making the high Panther rhetoric—“Off with Pigs” and “Kill Whitey”—the central theme of my poster. This is the only poster I’ve ever done that was never reproduced.

volatile issue on the American Left by

The posters, meant to be distributed at public meetings and displayed at

this time, subsequent to the ideological

spontaneous protests, were conceived as art for the people in the egalitarian spirit

transformation that the Student Non

of the times. Once again Faith was formally utilizing the Kuba design, and incorpo-

violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

rating poster lettering of words popular at protest marches then.

underwent in 1967, when it embraced a

All words so used were equally and simultaneously inflected as affirma-

separatist agenda and recommended

tive demands or statements—Freedom, Woman, Now—with the order change-

that white participants in the civil rights

able at will in any direction: Freedom Woman Now; Now Freedom; Now Woman. In

movement return to their communities

this regard, Faith was proposing visual means of reflecting the current use of

and teach anti-racism.

language among a movement of black cultural nationalist poets represented by

The Black Panthers, who were

the Last Poets and Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez,

not ideologically in favor of racial sepa-

Gwendolyn Brooks, and someone once called Don L. Lee. Their poetry was as

ratism in terms of their rhetoric, none-

much performance, oration, political advocacy, and flamboyant rhetoric, repre-

theless had a very dramatic image,

senting a uniquely African American approach to aesthetics. Faith’s work was

which didn’t include white people or

consistent with their lead, with two very important differences: She was a visual

even women for the most part. It was an

artist first and always, and the black cultural nationalists of the 1970s never

extremely masculine image, in an at-

really found their comfort zone with the visual arts. Second, from 1970 onward,

tempt to address the challenges to black

Faith was a feminist.

masculinity posed by four hundred

In 1971 and 1972, Faith did two versions of a poster in tribute to the men

years of slavery and Jim Crow oppres-

who died in the police raid on the prisoners’ rebellion in Attica, New York (plate

sion. But typically, Faith’s work would

54). In another event that was extensively televised, this time in the early 1970s,

make explicit that which was meant to

we were all wondering what would happen to these brave men who had dared to

remain implicit and de-emphasized.

publicly risk their lives in order to protest the conditions in the prisons. The final

She tried another design for a

debacle took place in the wee hours of the morning long before we had the tech-

poster in an attempt to please the com-

nological advantages of twenty-four-hour surveillance via satellite, the Internet,

mittee—a family of Panthers, husband

and CNN.

We Flew over the Bridge, 187–88

Figure 34

The artist with inmates on Rikers Island at the dedication of For the Women’s House in 1972. Photo: Rufus Hinton.

The result of the prisoners’ entirely nonviolent endeavor was not only that many of them lost their lives or were subsequently tortured, but that conditions for prisoners in the State of New York grew even worse. Faith’s approach to this poster was to research all the various genocides and murders, including all the casualties of war, that had taken place in American history and write them into a map of the United States. Indeed, the poster invites others to contribute further documentations of unfair brutalities committed under the auspices of the United States government or from the time the colonies were first settled. The colors she used were red and green, in honor of Marcus Garvey’s black nationalist flag, so popular in the 1960s.13

For the Women’s House

he occasion of this exhibition, American People, Black Light, is the first opportunity I have had in forty years to see my mother’s first public commission, For the Women’s House (plate 55, details figs. 35–38).14 This canvas, eight

feet by eight feet, was produced in 1971, the result of a Creative Arts Public Service (CAPS) grant to execute a mural for the Women’s House of Detention on Rikers Island. The piece was installed in the Women’s House in 1972 (fig. 34). Having had occasion to look at this painting a great deal lately, and most recently as part of a presentation I delivered on a panel that was featured in a

Figures 35 and 36

Detail of Faith Ringgold, For The Women’s House, 1971, Oil on canvas, 96 x 96 inches. Courtesy Rose M. Singer Center, New York.

Figure 37

Detail of Faith Ringgold, For The Women’s House, 1971, Oil on canvas, 96 x 96 inches. Courtesy Rose M. Singer Center, New York.

symposium on feminism in art at the Museum of Modern Art, I have been thinking

her father. Opposite that image, a woman is playing the drums, a significant taboo

hard about the long-standing American taboo against art that is both representa-

in the 1960s and 1970s although many women play the drums now.

tional and political within the canon of modern art.

This painting was Faith’s first public commission. It was also her first ma-

I felt it most strongly as a participant in this symposium facing what ap-

jor feminist work. It would be the last of her series of oil paintings beginning with

peared to me to be a very largely female, entirely white audience at a public event to

American People and America Black in the 1960s. By the time she did this work,

which I invited as many people as I thought might be interested. Many people are,

she had already become committed to black feminism and the pursuit of equality

of course, entirely unsympathetic to anything wearing the tag of feminism, so I

and opportunity for women, partly as a consequence of her experience of art

kept that in mind when asking people to come. And yet no one that I invited, who

world activism and its tendency to put women’s issues and women’s accomplish-

might not have found the label feminism abhorrent and could also have come, was

ments on the back burner.

interested enough on this very busy and very beautiful Friday afternoon to show up.

Faith had begun to realize that the only way women could ever expect to

Instead, I was greeted by a very polite audience who was nonetheless

get equal rights and attention would be to explicitly embrace a feminist agenda.

there, I assume, principally to take advantage of the other offerings of the women

She composed For the Women’s House based upon in-depth interviews with the

artists included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. None

inmates at the prison, which I describe in an interview with her called “For the

of the women actually featured in the discussion or the exhibitions were black

Women’s House” in a chapter of Invisibility Blues (New York: Verso Books, 1990),

women, although my panel featured both an Indian and a Cuban woman artist

published originally in 1972 in an underground publication called Women and Art.

whose presentations I missed, and the collection itself does include works by

Based upon the interviews with the women in the prison, Faith decided to

Lorna Simpson and Carrie Mae Weems, both photographers, and Kara Walker,

use only women in the mural; to have included men would have been to undercut

who is someone who works largely with cut paper. And yet still modern art is very

the importance of the activities in which the women in the picture are engaged. For

much about painting. Painting is clearly the most highly valued, generally, as indi-

instance, a female police person is shown with a female hardhat behind her (fig.

cated by prices. When Faith made her paintings in the 1960s on stretched canvas

37). In 1972, these were two jobs in which there were very few women. In 2010, to

with oil paint, she had to finally stop doing so because no one wanted to buy them,

see women (especially black women) as police officers or in construction is much

no one wanted to exhibit them, and she eventually had nowhere to keep them. This

more commonplace.

embargo against African American painters (regardless of whether they are repre-

One of the most interesting images in the painting to me then and now is

sentational or abstract) persists to this day, and it is no laughing or casual matter.

the one next to this, in which a white woman is shown reading to her apparently

I really love For the Women’s House, for many reasons that have nothing to

mixed-race daughter with kinky red hair from a book about Rosa Parks and Coretta

do with its subject matter but rather with the way in which Faith chose to organize

Scott King (fig. 37). Of course, such books were pretty much unobtainable in 1971

the space and the color in the frame. Of course, objectivity would not be my great-

and 1972. Decades later, Faith herself

est strength in this context. And yet, is there any such thing as objectivity in the

would be a primary author for children’s

discussion of the relative merits of visual art? Are we not all victims of the culture

books of inspiration based upon the

and the education that produced us?

lives of courageous black women such

In one quadrant of the painting, we see a female president speaking into

as Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks.

all the network microphones for a press conference, and surrounded by the female

I thought the inclusion of this

members of her family (fig. 35). The opposing image is of women playing profes-

white woman with a black daughter

sional basketball. One player wears a New York Knicks number. The other player

was extremely important at the time,

wears the number of Wilt Chamberlain. In another quadrant, a woman is being

especially in the context of a prison in

married by a female priest (fig. 36). Her own mother is giving her away instead of

which many of the women who were

The superintendent of the Women’s House of Detention on Rikers Island in New York was very receptive, and gave me an opportunity to talk with some of the women inmates about what they would like to see depicted in a mural. One woman said see would like to see “a long road leading out of there”; and another spoke about “women of all races holding hands and having a better life.” We Flew over the Bridge, 190

locked up had come to be so through their association with the men they some-

Notes

times had had children with. Some of these women (most often then it seemed that women were arrested for prostitution) were white women who had mixedrace children and black boyfriends (or pimps) or maybe even husbands. Of course, even more fraught then, as now, was the situation for the children of incarcerated women. I am not sure if they had nurseries then or how long they allowed women who had children while in prison to keep them, but I was particularly happy about this aspect of this painting. I still think it is a bad idea to ever separate a child from his or her mother, as long as the mother is not trying to harm the child. In another section of the painting, a white woman bus driver is featured at a time when women still were not driving public buses (fig. 38). In the other half of this quarter of the painting, we see a woman physician teaching medicine to a black medical student. At the time, black women doctors were still rare, and so were black women medical students. These images were all meant to be projections of career possibilities that women might go into instead of being incarcerated. At the time, it still seemed very much as though women did not have a full range of opportunities outside of becoming wives and mothers. If becoming a successful wife and mother wasn’t an option because of the lack of opportunities for the men in the community you came from, then prostitution (the oldest profession) and prison were always waiting. In the 1960s and 1970s, it seemed to me as a young woman that there were many women engaged in prostitution, and that there were always lots of pimps at the bus stations, at local bars, and at subway entrances all too eager to ensnare the innocent and unwary young woman of whatever race. Young women were pursued as easy prey. In her discussion with Lisa Farrington at the Museum of Modern Art this spring, Faith emphasized her attraction to feminism in her artwork being largely a matter of wanting to inspire hope and ambition in her daughters and to hold out for us the possibility of doing more with one’s life than reproducing.

But the thing that strikes me most about the white female bus driver in For the Women’s House is her relationship to the first image of a white woman that begun the American People Series. Both are middle-aged white women, and yet by the time Faith has arrived at the bus driver in 1972, her feminist consciousness has considerably softened her presentation of such a woman. It isn’t a rose-colored image, but it has a reality and familiarity to it that directly relates to Faith’s feminist commitment to equality for all women, and subsequently to my own.

Figure 38

Detail of Faith Ringgold, For The Women’s House, 1971, Oil on canvas, 96 x 96 inches. Courtesy Rose M. Singer Center, New York.

1. Jacob Lawrence’s first major work was his Migration Series (1941), which was split in two and purchased in equal numbers by the Phillips Collection and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, when he was just twenty-four years old. He thus became instantly the premier artist of the African American tradition and has remained in that number one spot to this day, all the more securely since his death in 1999. See Peter T. Nesbett and Michelle DuBois, eds., The Complete Jacob Lawrence—Over the Line: The Art and Life of Jacob Lawrence and Paintings, Drawings, and Murals (1945–1999): A Catalogue Raisonné (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000); and Patricia Hills, Painting Harlem Modern: The Art of Jacob Lawrence, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009). 2. Subsequently Faith would write her auto biography, We Flew over the Bridge: The Memoirs of Faith Ringgold, which was first published in 1995 by Bullfinch Press (Little, Brown), as well as a wonderful series of children’s books beginning with Tar Beach, a Caldecott Prize winner (Crown Press, 1991), based on her 1988 painted story quilt of the same name, now in the collection of the Guggenheim Museum in New York. 3. James Baldwin’s significant works in this period are the novels Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), Giovanni’s Room (1956), and Another Country (1962). His crucial collections of

essays were Notes of a Native Son (1955), Nobody Knows My Name (1961), and The Fire Next Time (1963). Faith had Paula Baldwin in her class at her first teaching assignment at Harriet Beecher Stowe (J.H.S. 136) in 1955. Paula introduced Faith to the work of her oldest brother. (See We Flew over the Bridge, 219). From 1955 on, the writings of James Baldwin were a fixture in our house. I was born in 1952, and among my earliest memories is my struggle to read and understand his books. As a matter of course, I was eager to read every thing my mother read. Since she was a student when I was born, it seemed to me then that she was reading all the time. 4. The National Association of Fashion and Accessory Designers was founded at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in 1949. In 1959, the Manhattan, Long Island, and Brooklyn chapters held a fashion show on April 5 at the Concourse Plaza Hotel on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, then an elegant white neighborhood, and an award presentation and fashion show in connec tion with their tenth anniversary on Sunday, June 21 at the Starlight Roof, at the WaldorfAstoria Hotel. In both shows, my grandmother participated as a designer, and the entire family (my sister and I, my mother, and her sister, Barbara) participated as models. 5. “New York’s AvantGarde School: Daring New Lincoln Strives for Student Self-Assertiveness,” Ebony, May 1965, 34–44. New Lincoln was famous

for its advanced stand on the Civil Rights movement and its early policy of racial integration. 6. The Thirteenth Amendment (1865) abolished and prohibited slavery and involuntary servitude, the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) guaranteed the citizenship of African Americans, and the Fifteenth Amendment ostensibly guaranteed the vote. Unfortunately, all but the letter of these laws was effectively negated by the so-called “separate but equal” decision of the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, which negated most aspects of African American civil liberties, setting the stage for the reenactment efforts of the civil rights movement of the fifties and sixties. 7. In regard to the significance of these and other events in 1963 to the progress of the civil rights movement, please refer to Maurice Berger’s For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010). 8. Ever since we began to have digital files of Faith’s art images, her oldest grandchild, Faith, has used “Big Black” as a screensaver, and she has speculated about getting a very large jpeg that could be blown up to a massive size for one entire wall of her apartment in Boston, where she is a Ph.D. candidate in microbiology at Tufts University. As a fellow sufferer of sophisticated racially integrated worlds and private schools, I understood immediately her visceral connection with this image, her need

to see it every day as part of her life. 9. I had an opportunity to be involved personally in at least two of them: Arthur Mitchell’s Dance Theatre of Harlem, which he brought to Mount Zion Baptist Church and the Harlem School of the Arts in the summer of 1968, and Barbara Anne Teer’s National Black Theatre, which also held its first meetings at the Harlem School of the Arts, later moving into the more ample headquarters of the Last Poets on 125th Street. 10. This might be a good place to mention that there was a great deal of personal drama going on in all our lives in the summer of 1969. During a trip Barbara and I made that summer to study at the University of Mexico, we joined a commune. The experience is written about at length (although in conflicting versions) by both Faith and me: she in her chapter on her daughters in We Flew over the Bridge; I in my first book, Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman, originally published in 1979. 11. Indeed, a perfect illustration of this seeming dual personality can be provided by the occasion upon which Faith led an impromptu lecture tour of the Museum of Modern Art galleries in the context of an Art Workers’ Coalition protest action, discussing the lack of representation of artists of color. When she designated a particular room as the best location for the future Martin Luther King Jr. wing because she found there an image from Jacob

Lawrence’s Migration Series, she turned to me to lead the people assembled in an African chant I had learned at the National Black Theatre, which I promptly did. I don’t think there was any warning that this was going to happen. It was totally spontaneous and should have been very scary for a shy person such as myself, and yet my extreme comfort and ease in doing this astonished me even then. 12. Also, there were several people who seemed to be at least as important as Morris, Andre, and Lippard in the various things that were going on then, such as Rudolf Baranik, May Stevens, Leon Golub, Nancy Spero, Poppy Johnson, Yvonne Rainier (who I believe was then married to Morris), Lil Picard, Alex Gross, and Louise Bourgeois. 13. See “Attica: An Anniversary of Death,” by my former colleague at the University of Buffalo Bruce Jackson, for more information about the events surrounding Attica (Artvoice, September 1999). 14. At some point subsequent to 1971, the building became a men’s prison as the complex of prisons on Rikers Island expanded to hold the incarcerated many, and the men became tired of looking at the women in the main mezzanine, so the painting (which Faith had been told could under no circumstances be moved or removed) was relocated to the wall of the cafeteria. Then it was painted over with white house paint in preparation for a new painting by an unknown prison artist.

However, his ambitions (or his sentence) were not equal to the eight-feet by eight-feet blank white canvas (with images of the women surely insin uating themselves through the house paint, no match for oil paint in the scheme of things). Thus the canvases (a diptych) were moved again, this time to the basement. A woman guard who remembered the painting’s former glory and Faith on her own initiative found Faith and told her what was happening and that the canvases were soon slated for disposal. This was sometime in the 1990s. Faith went to the commissioner of prisons. As it turns out, the prisons (along with every other institution of the City of New York) have extensive and longstanding art collections given to them over the years. The commissioner rescued the painting from the basement on Rikers Island, brought it to his headquarters, and raised the $25,000 needed to remove the white house paint and restore the original oil paint. By the by, if it had not been acrylic paint, all would have been lost. Then the painting was ceremoniously reinstalled at the new women’s facility (the Singer Center) on Rikers Island at a great height and safeguarded in all sorts of new and novel ways. My thanks to the Neuberger Museum of Art for springing the painting from its perch in time to include it in this important exhibition.

Early Works 52

Plate 1

Plate 2

Early Works #7: Four Women at a Table, 1962

Early Works #9: Brother and Sister, 1962

Oil on canvas, 30 3⁄16 x 40 inches

Oil on canvas, 40 1⁄16 x 30 5⁄16 inches

Plate 3

Plate 4

Early Works #15: They Speak No Evil, 1962

Early Works #16: A Man Kissing His Wife, 1964

Oil on canvas, 40 1⁄4 x 30 1⁄4 inches

Oil on canvas, 19 x 12 inches

Plate 5

Plate 6

Early Works #17: Black Man, 1964

Early Works #18: Two Guys Talking, 1964 Oil on canvas glued onto Masonite, 20 1⁄8 x 16 1⁄16 inches

Oil on canvas glued onto Masonite, 24 3⁄16 x 16 1⁄16 inches

Plate 7

Early Works #19: Red, White and Blue Woman, 1964

Oil on canvas glued onto Masonite, 18 x 141â &#x201E;4 inches

Plate 8

Early Works #20: Black and Blue Man, 1964 Oil on Masonite, 23 3â &#x201E;4 x 16 inches

Plate 9

Plate 10

Early Works #21: The Trio, 1964

Early Works #22: Uptight Negro, 1964

Oil on paperboard, 24 x 19 1â &#x201E;8 inches

Oil on paperboard, 24 x 18 inches

Plate 11

Plate 12

Early Works #23: Bride of Martha’s Vineyard, 1964

Early Works #24: Woman in a Red Dress, 1965

Oil on canvas, 50 1⁄2 x 20 1⁄2 inches

Oil on canvas, 33 1⁄8 x 18 inches

Plate 13

Early Works #25: Self-Portrait, 1965 Oil on canvas, 50 x 40 inches

American People series 68

Plate 14

American People Series #1: Between Friends, 1963 Oil on canvas, 40 x 24 inches

Plate 15

American People Series #2: For Members Only, 1963 Oil on canvas, 36 x 40 inches

Plate 16

American People Series #3: Neighbors, 1963 Oil on canvas, 417⁄8 x 24 3⁄16 inches

Plate 17

American People Series #4: The Civil Rights Triangle, 1963 Oil on canvas, 36 1⁄16 x 42 1⁄8 inches

Plate 19

American People Series #6: Mr. Charlie, 1964 Oil on canvas, 33 1⁄16 x 18 1⁄16 inches

Plate 18

American People Series #5: Watching and Waiting, 1963 Oil on canvas, 36 x 40 1⁄16 inches

Plate 20

American People Series #7: The Cocktail Party, 1964 Oil on canvas, 42 x 24 inches

Plate 21

American People Series #8: The In Crowd, 1964 Oil on canvas, 48 x 26 inches

Plate 22

American People Series #9: The American Dream, 1964 Oil on canvas, 36 x 24 1⁄16 inches

Plate 23

American People Series #10: Study Now, 1964 Oil on canvas, 30 1⁄16 x 21 1⁄16 inches

Plate 24

American People Series #11: Three Men on a Fence, 1964 Oil on canvas, 40 x 30 inches

Plate 25

American People Series #12: The Family Plan, 1964 Oil on canvas, 29 1⁄8 x 19 1⁄16 inches

Plate 26

Plate 27

American People Series #13: God Bless America, 1964

American People Series #14: Portrait of an American Youth, 1964

Oil on canvas, 31 x 19 inches

Oil on canvas, 36 x 24 inches

Plate 28

American People Series #15: Hide Little Children, 1966 Oil on canvas, 26 x 48 inches

Plate 29

Plate 30

American People Series #16: Woman Looking in a Mirror, 1966

American People Series #17: The Artist and His Model, 1966

Oil on canvas, 36 x 32 inches

Oil on canvas, 30 x 24 inches

Plate 31

American People Series #18: The Flag Is Bleeding, 1967 Oil on canvas, 72 x 96 inches

Plate 32

American People Series #19: U.S. Postage Stamp Commemorating the Advent of Black Power, 1967 Oil on canvas, 72 x 96 inches

Plate 33

American People Series #20: Die, 1967 Oil on canvas, 72 x 144 inches

Black Light series 94

Plate 34

Plate 35

Black Light Series #1: Big Black, 1967

Black Light Series #2: Man, 1967

Oil on canvas, 30 1⁄4 x 42 1⁄4 inches

Oil on canvas, 30 1⁄16 x 24 1⁄8 inches

Plate 36

Plate 37

Black Light Series #3: Soul Sister, 1967

Black Light Series #4: Mommy and Daddy, 1969

Oil on canvas, 36 x 18 inches

Oil on canvas, 30 x 24 1â &#x201E;4 inches

100

Plate 38

Plate 39

Black Light Series #5: Black Art Poster, 1969

Black Light Series #6: Love Black Life, 1969

Oil on canvas, 50 x 36 inches

Oil on canvas, 30 x 30 inches

101

Plate 41

Black Light Series #7: Ego Painting, 1969

Black Light Series #8: Red White Black Nigger, 1969

Oil on canvas, 30 x 30 inches

Oil on canvas, 24 1â &#x201E;16 x 24 inches

Plate 40

102

103

Plate 42

104

Black Light Series #9: The American Spectrum, 1969 Oil on canvas, 18 x 72 inches

105

Plate 43

106

Black Light Series #10: Flag for the Moon: Die Nigger, 1969 Oil on canvas, 36 x 50 inches

107

Plate 44

108

Plate 45

Black Light Series #11: US America Black, 1969

Black Light Series #12: Party Time, 1969

Oil on canvas, 60 x 84 inches

Oil on canvas, 59 3â &#x201E;4 x 84 inches

109

Posters 110

111

112

Plate 46

Plate 47

Committee to Defend the Panthers, 1970

All Power to the People, 1970

Cut paper design for poster, 27 5â &#x201E;8 x 21 1â &#x201E;2 inches

Cut paper design for poster, 30 x 20 inches

113

Plate 48

The Peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Flag Show, 1970

114

Cut paper and pen design for poster, 18 x 24 inches

Plate 49

The Judson 3, 1970 Silkscreen, 18 x 24 inches

115

Plate 50

116

Woman Free Yourself, 1971 Offset poster, 30 x 20 inches

Plate 51

Freedom Woman Now, 1971 Cut paper design for poster, 30 x 20 inches

117

118

Plate 52

Plate 53

Women Free Angela, 1971

America Free Angela, 1971 Cut paper design for poster, 30 x 20 inches

Cut paper design for poster, 30 x 20 inches

119

Plate 54

120

United States of Attica, 1971–72 Offset poster, 21 3⁄4 x 27 1⁄2 inches

121

For the Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s House 122

123

Plate 55

For The Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s House, 1971

124

Oil on canvas 96 x 96 inches Courtesy Rose M. Singer Center, New York

125

Chronology and Bibliography 126

127

1930

Born Faith Willie Jones, October 8, Harlem Hospital, New York City, to Andrew Louis Jones Sr. and Willi Edell Posey Jones. Youngest of four: Ralph, who died before Faith was born, Andrew, and Barbara. Lives in Central Harlem, “the Valley,” 222 West 146th Street.

1932

First asthmatic attack. As she is frequently sick with asthma as a child, art becomes a major pastime.

Parents divorce. Even so, Andrew Jones Sr. remains constant presence in household. Family moves to Sugar Hill in Harlem, 363 Edgecombe Avenue between 150th and 155th streets. Mother changes name back to Willi Posey and takes first job, working in a parachute factory.

1943

Ringgold’s sister, Barbara, graduates from high school.

1948

Graduates from Morris High School in the Bronx.

Covering period through the installation of For the Women’s House in 1972

painting in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Enters City College of New York to study art.

Begins teaching at Manual Training High School (now John Jay High School) in Brooklyn (through 1960).

Obtains first studio space for independent oil painting projects. Emcees her mother’s first fashion show at a small club in Harlem.

1952

Has two children: Michele Faith Wallace, January 4; Barbara Faith Wallace, December 15.

1954

1942

Chronology

(November 1), a classical and jazz pianist.

Enters School of Education, City College of New York. Studies with Robert Gwathmey.

1950

Marries Robert Earl Wallace

128

Permanent separation from Wallace. Divorce proceedings begin (granted an annulment in 1956). Moves with daughters to mother’s house. Defended in divorce proceedings by Flo Kennedy, who later, in 1967, introduces Ringgold to the women’s liberation movement.

1955

Graduates from City College with B.S. in fine art. Begins teaching art in the New York City public schools, Harriet Beecher Stowe Junior High School, Manhattan P.S. 136 (through 1957). First hears of James Baldwin through his sister, Paula, a student of hers at J.H.S. 136.

1957

Spends first of many summers

1959

Completes M.A. in art at City College. Continues to study with Gwathmey and also with Yasuo Kuniyoshi. Moves to 665 Westchester Avenue in the Bronx.

1960

Begins teaching at J.H.S. 113 in the Bronx (through 1964).

1961

Travels to Europe with mother and daughters aboard S.S. Liberté. Tours museums in Paris, Nice, Florence, and Rome. Brother, Andrew, dies. Family returns home abruptly. Creates studio space in dining room of her home.

1962

Marries longtime family friend Burdette (Birdie) Ringgold (May 19).

1963

Spends summer at Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard. Develops first mature style, which she calls “super realism.” Results in American People Series. Moves back to Harlem.

1964

Begins search for New York gallery. Tries to join Spiral, founded in 1963. Receives only a polite letter from Romare Bearden acknowledging her work. Tries to exhibit in first Black Arts Festival in Senegal. First published article about her work appears in New York Amsterdam News (May 16). Receives permanent teaching license. Begins teaching at Walton High School in the Bronx (through 1965).

1965

Meets LeRoi Jones at his newly founded Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School in Harlem. Begins teaching at P.S. 100 in Harlem (through 1968). Students in her art class at P.S. 100 exhibit their work at Blumstein’s Department Store. Exhibition receives New York Times review.

1966

Participates in Art of the American Negro, sponsored by the Harlem Cultural Council at Kenwood Reter’s furniture store (opened June 27), the first large survey of black art and first exhibition of black art in Harlem since the 1930s. First significant contact with black artists, including exhibition curator Romare Bearden and other participants such as Ernie Crichlow, Norman Lewis,

129

Charles Alston, Hale Woodruff, and Betty Blayton. Participates in traveling art exhibition organized by the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/ School (August). Invited to join Spectrum Gallery on 57th Street, Robert Newman, director. Robert Earl Wallace dies.

1967

Her mother and daughters travel to Europe for summer; first time living alone. Using Spectrum Gallery as a studio, spends summer painting first mural-size works: American People Series #18: The Flag Is Bleeding, American People Series #19: U.S. Postage Stamp Commemorating the Advent of Black Power, and American People Series #20: Die. Shares painting space with Jeannine Petit, another Spectrum artist. First one-person show, American People, at Spectrum Gallery (December 19 –January 6). American People Series #6: Mr. Charlie illustrated in Hale Woodruff, “Artists of the Sixties,” in The Negro in Music and Art, ed. Lindsay Patterson, International Library of Negro Life and History series. Sells work for the first time: Art historian James Porter purchases Early Works #23: Bride of Martha’s Vineyard (1964), and Carol Bobkoff purchases American People Series #15: Hide Little Children (1966).

Begins development of Black Light Series using palette of darkened colors, in pursuit of a more affirmative black aesthetic.

1968

Takes summer job teaching African art at Intermediate School 201 in Harlem. In the fall, begins teaching at Brandeis High School Annex in Manhattan (through 1973, at which time she retires from New York City public school system). Raises funds for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference by arranging for civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer to speak at one of her mother’s fashion shows. Participates in benefit exhibition, In Honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) (October 31–November 3). Meets Jacob Lawrence, Henri Ghent, and Ed Taylor.

Joins Art Workers’ Coalition. Initiates public protest on November 17 at the Whitney Museum of American Art over exclusion of black artists from the exhibition The 1930s: Painting and Sculpture in America. Meets Lucy Lippard, Yvonne Rainier, and Lil Picard. The Studio Museum (established this year) hosts Invisible Americans: Black Artists of the 30s in response. Demonstrates with Tom Lloyd against MoMA to demand black artist wing for Martin Luther

Newspaper and periodical articles King Jr. (assassinated April 4). Efforts result in two blacks on the board of trustees of the museum and major exhibitions for Romare Bearden and Richard Hunt in 1971. Shirley Chisholm, the only living woman in Ringgold’s 1972 Feminist Series and the inspiration for her 1972 Political Landscape Series, becomes the first black woman elected to Congress.

1969

Returns to development of Black Light Series using palette of colors (dry pigment) darkened with burnt umber. Black Light Series #9: American Spectrum purchased by David Rockefeller for the Chase Manhattan Bank. Apollo 11 successfully lands on the moon, first lunar landing. Ringgold paints Black Light Series #10: Flag for the Moon: Die Nigger in response. Begins series of political posters. Father dies.

1970

Second one-person show, America Black, featuring Black Light Series, at Spectrum Gallery (January 27–February 14). While still teaching full-time at Brandeis High School Annex, begins lecturing part-time at Pratt Institute, Bank Street Graduate School for Teachers, and Wagner College.

Co-founds Women Students and Artists for Black Art Liberation (WSABAL) with daughter Michele. As its first act, WSABAL successfully persuades Robert Morris and Poppy Johnson of Art Strike to include more than 50 percent women, black artists, students, and political poster artists in the Liberated Venice Biennale exhibition, held at Museum (AWC headquarters) (opened July 22). Participates in Ad Hoc Women’s Art Group demonstration at Whitney Museum Biennial Exhibition. Her recommen dations result in inclusion of Betye Saar and Barbara ChaseRiboud in the Biennial, making them the first black women to exhibit at the Whitney. Arranges the People’s Flag Show with Jean Toche and Jon Hendricks at Judson Memorial Church, Greenwich Village (November 11–14 but shut down November 13). The three artists, dubbed the “Judson 3,” were arrested for flag desecration. Convicted the following May, Ringgold pays $100 fine rather than serve thirty days in jail. Panel discussion at Museum (AWC headquarters) regarding issues prompted by the People’s Flag Show and artists’ arrest (November 30). Asked by the Committee to Defend the Panthers, a New York–based organization supporting the Black Panthers’ legal defense fund, to produce a poster. Committee rejects the poster she designs.

1971

1964

Tapley, Melvin. “Pint-Sized Artist Won’t Paint Negro with Bandana.” New York Amsterdam News, May 16, 1964.

Participates in “The Black Artist” (May 2) and “Women’s Liberation and the Arts” (March 16) panel discussions, part of “ART 71: A Series of 8 Panel Discussions” at the Art Students League.

1965

Burks, Edward C. “Paintings Shown by Negro Artists.” New York Times, July 13, 1965.

Co-founds black women artists group Where We At with Kay Brown and Dindga McCannon to address exclusion of women artists from black artists organizations like Spiral.

1966

“Cultural Council Has Art Exhibit in Store.” New York Amsterdam News, June 25, 1966.

Curates exhibition Where We At, Black Women Artists, Acts of Art Gallery, New York (through July 30).

1967

First television appearance: Free Time, hosted by Julius Lester, WNET-TV, New York. Meets Louise Nevelson, Alice Neel, and Pat Mainardi.

Aldridge, Cathy. “Images, Truths, Drama on Ringgold Canvases.” In “P.S. Woman’s World on the New York Social Scene.” New York Amsterdam News, December 16, 1967.

Wins Creative Arts Public Service (CAPS) grant to execute a mural for the Women’s House of Detention on Rikers Island.

1968

Produces two posters for Angela Davis, in jail at the time having been charged as an accomplice to conspiracy, kidnapping, and homicide in the murder of Marin County judge Harold Haley.

1972

For the Women’s House (1971) installed in January at the Women’s House of Detention on Rikers Island. Helps form Art Without Walls, which brings art to prison inmates.

130

Pomeroy, Ralph. “Faith Ringgold.” Art News 66, no. 9 (January 1968): 54. J. F. “Faith Ringgold.” In “In the Galleries,” Arts Magazine 42, no. 4 (February 1968): 62. Conason, Celia. “Faith Ringgold—Artist with Purpose.” United Teacher, February 7, 1968, unpaginated.

Bibliography

1969

Covering texts that treat the artist’s period of activity through the installation of For the Women’s House at Rikers Island in 1972

Brooks, Lewis. “Her Art Is Soul.” Afro-American Woman Magazine 1, no. 1 (March–April 1969): 10.

131

1970

Barnitz, Jacqueline. “Faith Ringgold at Spectrum.” Arts Magazine 44, no. 4 (February 1970): 61. Perrett, George. “Faith Ringgold at Spectrum.” Arts (February 1970): 61. Picard, Lil. “Women in Art.” East Village Other, February 25, 1970. Johnson, William. “Faith Ringgold [Spectrum].” Art News 69, no. 2 (April 1970): 72. Glueck, Grace. “Foes of Biennale Open Show Here.” New York Times, July 25, 1970. Wallace, Michele. Letter to the editor in “Art Mailbag: Does ‘Massa’ Still Live in the Art World?” New York Times, July 26, 1970. Rose, Barbara. “Black Art in America.” Art in America (September–October 1970): 54–67. Robins, Corinne. “The N.Y. Art Strike.” Arts Magazine 45, no. 1 (September–October 1970): 27–28. Conlon, James E., and Kennedy, James E. “An Afro-American Slide Project.” Art Journal 20, no. 2 (Winter 1970–71): 164–65. Reproduction. Glueck, Grace. “Art Notes: At the Whitney, It’s Guerrilla Warfare.” New York Times, November 1, 1970. ———. “A Strange Assortment of Flags Is Displayed at ‘People’s Show.’” New York Times, November 10, 1970.

Books and Book Reviews “3 Arrested in Raid on Flag Art Show.” New York Times, November 14, 1970. Glueck, Grace. “Flag-Show Case Aired by Panel.” New York Times, December 1, 1970.

1971

“Flag Show Artists Fined $100 Apiece.” New York Times, May 25, 1971.

1972

Wallace, Michele. “For the Women’s House.” Feminist Art Journal 1, no. 1 (April 1972): 14.

1973

Mellow, James R. “‘Against the Wall’: From the Revolution to Watergate.” New York Times, July 15, 1973.

1984

Henry, Gerrit. “Faith Ringgold at the Studio Museum in Harlem.” Art in America (November 1984): 154 – 55.

1985

Baraka, Amiri. “Faith.” Black American Literature Forum 19, no. 1, Contemporary Black Artists Issue (Spring 1985): 12–13.

Koppman, Debbie. “Odyssey of Faith.” Woman’s Art Journal 12, no. 2 (Autumn 1991–Winter 1992): 40–42.

1993

Freudenheim, Betty. “A Quilt Maker’s Art Tells Stories of Childhood and Family.” New York Times, December 5, 1993. Gwathmey, Robert. “Art for Art’s Sake?” American Art 7, no. 1 (Winter 1993): 99–103.

1994

Graulich, Melody, and Mara Witzling. “The Freedom to Say What She Pleases: A conversa tion with Faith Ringgold.” NWSA Journal 6, no. 1 (Spring 1994): 1–27.

1999

Gregg, Gail. “The Ringgold Cycle.” Art News (June 1999): 112–15. Farrington, Lisa E. “Faith Ringgold.” American Visions, (October/November 1999): 24–29.

1967

Woodruff, Hale. “Artists of the Sixties.” In The Negro in Music and Art. Comp. and ed. Lindsay Patterson. International Library of Negro Life and History series. New York, Washington, and London: Publishers Company, 1967. Reproduction.

1982

Fine, Elsa Honig. The AfroAmerican Artist: A Search for Identity. New York: Hacker Art Books, 1982.

1990

Wallace, Michele. Invisibility Blues: From Pop to Theory. New York: Verso, 1990.

1992

Tesfagiorgis, Freida High W. “Afrocentrism and Its Fruition in the Art of Elizabeth Catlett and Faith Ringgold.” In The Expanding Discourse: Feminism and Art History. Ed. Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard. New York: Icon Editions, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 1992.

1999

Art News 88, no. 2 (February 1989): 139 – 40.

Farrington, Lisa E. Art on Fire: The Politics of Race and Sex in the Paintings of Faith Ringgold. New York: Millennium Fine Arts Publishing, 1999.

1991

2004

1989

Lippard, Lucy R. “Out of Turn.” Transition 52 (1991): 144–50.

Holton, Curlee Raven, with Faith Ringgold. Faith Ringgold: A View

132

from the Studio.Boston: Bunker Hill Publishing, 2004.

2007

Ater, Renée. Review of Creating Their Own Image: The History of African-American Women Artists, by Lisa E. Farrington. NWSA Journal 19, no.1 (Spring 2007): 211–217.

2010

Johnson, Sheena, Alice Hallaman, Jess Vita, Laura Mychal Fiesel, and Juliet Weintraub. Change! Faith Ringgold’s Life, Art, Politics, and Writings. Oakland, Calif.: Mills College, 2010.

Exhibition catalogues

Dissertation

Memoir

1984

1997

1995

Rouse, Terrie S., Moira Roth, Freida High-Wasinkhongo, and Lucy Lippard. Faith Ringgold: Twenty Years of Painting, Sculpture and Performance (1963– 83). New York: Studio Museum in Harlem, 1984.

Farrington, Lisa E. “Faith Ringgold: The Early Works and the Evolution of the Thangka Paintings.” Ph.D. diss., City University of New York, 1997.

1985

Campbell, Mary Schmidt, ed. Tradition and Conflict: Images of a Turbulent Decade, 1963–1973. New York: Studio Museum, 1985.

Ringgold, Faith. We Flew over the Bridge: The Memoirs of Faith Ringgold. Boston, New York, Toronto, and London: A Bulfinch Press Book (Little, Brown), 1995.

Oral History and Interviews “Faith Ringgold: Archives of American Art Oral History.” Interview by Cynthia Nadelman, September 6–October 18, 1989. Transcript. Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C., and New York. “For the Women’s House.” Interview with Faith Ringgold, 1972. Rpt. in Modern Art in the USA: Issues and Controversies of the 20th Century. Ed. Patricia Hills. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2000. “Interview with Faith Ringgold.” Interview by Dolores Holmes, 1972. Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C., and New York. Transcript.

Gouma-Peterson, Thalia, ed. Faith Ringgold: Painting, Sculpture, Performance. Wooster, Ohio: College of Wooster Art Museum, 1985. Ringgold, Faith. Since the Great Harlem Renaissance, 50 Years of Afro-American Art. Lewisburg, Pa.: Center Gallery of Bucknell University, 1985.

1988

Hill, Patrick. “The Castration of Memphis Cooly: Race Gender and Nationalist Iconography in the Flag Art of Faith Ringgold.” In Dancing at the Louvre: Faith Ringgold’s French Collection and Other Story Quilts. Ed. Dan Cameron. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988.

1990

Flomenhaft, Eleanor, Thalia Gouma-Peterson, and Lowery S. Sims. Faith Ringgold: A 25 Year Survey. New York: Fine Arts Museum of Long Island, 1990.

133

Early works Plate 1

Early Works #7: Four Women at a Table, 1962 Oil on canvas 30 3⁄16 x 40 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York Plate 2

Early Works #9: Brother and Sister, 1962 Oil on canvas 40 1⁄16 x 30 5⁄16 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York Plate 3

Early Works #15: They Speak No Evil, 1962 Oil on canvas 401⁄4 x 301⁄4 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York Plate 4

Early Works #16: A Man Kissing His Wife, 1964 Oil on canvas 19 x 12 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York Plate 5

Early Works #17: Black Man, 1964 Oil on canvas glued onto Masonite 24 3⁄16 x 16 1⁄16 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York Plate 6

catalog of the exhibition

Early Works #18: Two Guys Talking, 1964 Oil on canvas glued onto Masonite 201⁄8 x 16 1⁄16 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York Plate 7

Early Works #19: Red, White and Blue Woman,

1964 Oil on canvas glued onto Masonite 18 x 141⁄4 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York Plate 8

Early Works #20: Black and Blue Man, 1964 Oil on Masonite 23 3⁄4 x 16 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York Plate 9

Early Works #21: The Trio, 1964 Oil on paperboard 24 x 19 1⁄8 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York

Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York

Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York

American People Series

Plate 19

Plate 25

Plate 31

American People Series #6: Mr. Charlie, 1964 Oil on canvas 33 1⁄16 x 18 1⁄16 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York

American People Series #12: The Family Plan, 1964 Oil on canvas 29 1⁄8 x 19 1⁄16 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York

American People Series #18: The Flag Is Bleeding, 1967 Oil on canvas 72 x 96 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York

Plate 20

Plate 26

Plate 32

American People Series #7: The Cocktail Party, 1964 Oil on canvas 42 x 24 inches Courtesy of Mikki and Stanley Weithorn, Arizona

American People Series #13: God Bless America, 1964 Oil on canvas 31 x 19 inches Private collection

American People Series #19: U.S. Postage Stamp Commemorating the Advent of Black Power, 1967 Oil on canvas 72 x 96 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York

Plate 14

American People Series #1: Between Friends, 1963 Oil on canvas 40 x 24 inches Collection Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York. Museum purchase with funds from the Roy R. Neuberger Endowment Fund and Friends of the Neuberger Museum of Art.

Plate 27

American People Series #14: Portrait of an American Youth, 1964 Oil on canvas 36 x 24 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York

Plate 15

Plate 21

American People Series #2: For Members Only, 1963 Oil on canvas 36 x 40 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York

American People Series #8: The In Crowd, 1964 Oil on canvas 48 x 26 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York

Plate 16

Plate 22

American People Series #3: Neighbors, 1963 Oil on canvas 41 7⁄8 x 24 3⁄16 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York

American People Series #9: The American Dream, 1964 Oil on canvas 36 x 24 1⁄16 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York

Plate 17

Plate 23

Early Works #24: Woman in a Red Dress, 1965 Oil on canvas 33 1⁄8 x 18 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York

American People Series #4: The Civil Rights Triangle, 1963 Oil on canvas 36 1⁄16 x 42 1⁄8 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York

American People Series #10: Study Now, 1964 Oil on canvas 30 1⁄16 x 21 1⁄16 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York

American People Series #16: Woman Looking in a Mirror, 1966 Oil on canvas 36 x 32 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York

Plate 13

Plate 18

Plate 24

Plate 30

Early Works #25: Self-Portrait, 1965 Oil on canvas 50 x 40 inches Courtesy of Faith

American People Series #5: Watching and Waiting, 1963 Oil on canvas 36 x 40 1⁄16 inches

American People Series #11: Three Men on a Fence, 1964 Oil on canvas 40 x 30 inches

American People Series #17: The Artist and His Model, 1966 Oil on canvas 30 x 24 inches

Plate 10

Early Works #22: Uptight Negro, 1964 Oil on paperboard 24 x 18 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York Plate 11

Early Works #23: Bride of Martha’s Vineyard, 1964 Oil on canvas 50 1⁄2 x 20 1⁄2 inches Courtesy Howard University Collection, Washington, D.C. Plate 12

134

Plate 28

American People Series #15: Hide Little Children, 1966 Oil on canvas 26 x 48 inches Courtesy of Seth Taffae and Seventieth Art Gallery, New York Plate 29

Plate 33

American People Series #20: Die, 1967 Oil on canvas 72 x 144 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York

Black Light Series Plate 34

Black Light Series #1: Big Black, 1967 Oil on canvas 30 1⁄4 x 42 1⁄4 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York Plate 35

Black Light Series #2: Man, 1967 Oil on canvas 30 1⁄16 x 241⁄8 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York Plate 36

Black Light Series #3: Soul Sister, 1967 Oil on canvas

36 x 18 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York

18 x 72 inches Courtesy of The JPMorgan Chase Art Collection, New York

Plate 37

Plate 43

Black Light Series #4: Mommy and Daddy, 1969 Oil on canvas 30 x 241⁄4 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York

Black Light Series #10: Flag for the Moon: Die Nigger, 1969 Oil on canvas 36 x 50 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York

Plate 38

Plate 44

Plate 50

Black Light Series #5: Black Art Poster, 1969 Oil on canvas 50 x 36 inches Courtesy of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Art and Artifact Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations, New York

Black Light Series #11: US America Black, 1969 Oil on canvas 60 x 84 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York

Woman Free Yourself, 1971 Offset poster 30 x 20 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York

Plate 39

Black Light Series #6: Love Black Life, 1969 Oil on canvas 30 x 30 inches Private collection Plate 40

Black Light Series #7: Ego Painting, 1969 Oil on canvas 30 x 30 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York Plate 41

Black Light Series #8: Red White Black Nigger, 1969 Oil on canvas 24 1⁄16 x 24 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York Plate 42

Black Light Series #9: The American Spectrum, 1969 Oil on canvas

135

Plate 45

Black Light Series #12: Party Time, 1969 Oil on canvas 59 3⁄4 x 84 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York

Cut paper and pen design for poster 18 x 24 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York Plate 49

The Judson 3, 1970 Silkscreen 18 x 24 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York

Plate 51

Freedom Woman Now, 1971 Cut paper design for poster 30 x 20 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York Plate 52

Posters Plate 46

Committee to Defend the Panthers, 1970 Cut paper design for poster 27 5⁄8 x 211⁄2 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York Plate 47

All Power to the People, 1970 Cut paper design for poster 30 x 20 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York Plate 48

The People’s Flag Show, 1970

Woman Free Angela, 1971 Cut paper design for poster 30 x 20 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York Plate 53

America Free Angela, 1971 Cut paper design for poster 30 x 20 inches Courtesy of Faith Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York Plate 54

United States of Attica, 1971–72 Offset poster 21 3⁄4 x 27 1⁄2 inches Courtesy of Faith

Ringgold and ACA Galleries, New York

For the Women’s House Plate 55

For The Women’s House, 1971 Oil on canvas 96 x 96 inches Courtesy Rose M. Singer Center, New York

All images courtesy and © Faith Ringgold unless otherwise noted. All plate images photographed by Jim Frank unless otherwise noted. Courtesy ACA Galleries, New York: figures 8, 22, 23, 30, 33; plates 14, 31, 33 Fred W. McDarrah / Getty Images: figure 31 Jim Frank: figures 30, 33, 35–38 Rufus Hinton: figure 34 George Hopkins: figures 5, 13, 15, 16, 20, 21, 25, 26, 27 Courtesy and © Jan van Raay: figures 28, 32 Ingrid Roe: plate 42 Willard Smith: figure 10 Greg Staley: plate 11 Courtesy and © Michele Wallace: figure 3

PHOTO CREDITS

136