Learning, Social Messaging
We still haven’t fully recognized the art made by twentieth-century black artists.

Images, like Emory Douglas’s depictions of cops as pigs, were central to the Black Panther Party’s self-fashioning and mark its place in history. Art work by Emory Douglas / ARS / Art Resource

"We can see by now that the anti-police-brutality protests of 2020 differ profoundly from those of the nineteen-sixties. And I do mean see. We’re seeing many protesters who are not black and marches in more places: large, small, urban, rural. These are protests ignited by seeing, seeing horrific videos of criminal acts again and again and again.

"The very fact of the sameness of police brutality then and police brutality now intensifies an anger that remains totally justified. In the sixties, the Black Panther Party arose to confront police brutality, and the Panthers created a visual archive of justified outrage. Today’s protesters know that their actions and the images they create will enter the political history of confronting injustice. This has not been the case for anti-police-brutality imagery created a half century ago. We still haven’t fully seen the art made by those twentieth-century angry black artists."

Article: Seeing Police Brutality Then and Now