Created as part of a suite of works
with the other members of AFRICOBRA,
"Wake Up" debuted as part of AFRICOBRA
II in 1971, at the Studio Museum in Harlem.
A vote was taken to develop prints based on
the best works from AFRICOBRA I the
previous year, "Wake Up" being the piece
selected for Gerald Williams. Votes were
taken at the original Studio Museum show,
as AFRICOBRA wanted the prints to reflect
the interests of the public. The original
painting by Williams is in reference to
"waking up" to social ills. Particular
reference is made in the text component and
in Jeff Donaldson's manifesto for
AFRICOBRA I to the "King Alfred Plan." The
King Alfred Plan was a conspiracy theory
which gained traction in the late 1960s and
early 1970s pertaining to an alleged CIA plan
working towards global genocide of people
of African descent. While the conspiracy
theory was untrue in specific terms, it is
worth noting retroactively that there were
violent anti-Black conspiracies enacted by
the government at the time. Infamously, the
"Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the
Negro Male" now called the Tuskegee
Syphilis Experiments were being conducted
by the US Public Health Service. The
unethical studies, conducted between 1932
and 1972, involved 600 African American
males, 399 of which had syphilis and were
left untreated, and 201 of which were
unknowingly infected with syphilis and left
untreated.