Mapping Resistance: The Legacy of Black Liberation (1925-1975) : Kavi Gupta | Washington Blvd. Fl. 1

Ernie Barnes began his career as an offensive lineman - playing pro football for six seasons with the San Diego Chargers, the New York Titans, and the Denver Broncos. Eventually, Barnes grew disillusioned with the conflict.

Barnes attended North Carolina College as an art major on full athletic scholarship. Ed Wilson, who taught sculpting, had a remarkable impact on Barnes. First, he taught him about the work of the early 20th century African American artists. Then, he taught him how to translate his athleticism on the field to the canvas. Barnes populated his canvasses with elongated forms full of movement and was influenced by the Italian Mannerist painters, as well as Thomas Hart Benton and Charles White. His personal style was accessible and resonated soundly with people. 

Williams’ work is included in several major collections, including that of the Smart Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the DeYoung Museum, and the DuSable Museum of African American History. Recent exhibitions of Williams' work include Everything Is Connected: Art and Conspiracy, The Met Breuer, NY, USA; AFRICOBRA: Nation Time, 2019 Venice Biennale Official Collateral Event, Venice, IT; AFRICOBRA: Messages to the People, MOCA North Miami, FL, USA; AFRICOBRA 50, Kavi Gupta, Chicago, USA; Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, Tate Modern, London, England; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Fayetteville, AR; USA, Brooklyn Museum, NY, USA; The Broad Museum, Los Angeles, CA, USA; San Francisco MOMA, CA, USA, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX, USA; Gerald Williams, Kavi Gupta, Chicago, USA; The Time is Now! Art Worlds of Chicago’s South Side, 1960-1980, Smart Museum of Art, Chicago, USA. A major profile of Williams appeared in Hyperallergic in 2018, based on an oral history included in the Smithsonian Archives of American Art.

Gerald Williams made the move to Washington DC in 1974, attending Howard University as a graduate student. Experimenting further while maintaining continuity with AFRICOBRA ideals, Williams produced a number of freeform, hand-block silkscreens, including Emerge, Power and the Will to Prevail, and Big Payback Get Ready. These experimental works are a bridge between Williams's early artistic endeavors and the revelations he would have in subsequent years, while participating as a United States delegate to FESTAC 77, in Lagos, Nigeria, along with other members of AFRICOBRA; to his years in the Peace Corps working as Pre-vocational Director in the Jacaranda School for the Mentally Handicapped in Nairobi, Kenya; to his decades directing arts and crafts centers on American Air Force bases in Japan, Italy, South Korea, the Azores, and South Carolina.

Jeff Donaldson was an African American artist, art historian, and critic who helped to articulate the philosophy and aesthetics of the Black Arts Movement in the United States. Born in Pine Bluff, AR, a Black college town, in 1937, Donaldson was three when his older brother started drawing. This encouraged him to start drawing cartoons and comic books.

Donaldson's love of the arts continued, and upon enrolling in the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, he established the school's first arts major. Here, his lifelong interest in Afrocentric art was nurtured under the tutelage of John Howard, who mentored under the great Harlem Renaissance artist Hale Woodruff. After graduating with a Masters Degree in Fine Arts from the Institute of Design of the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, Donaldson obtained a Ph.D. in African and African American Art History from Northwestern University.

Through his involvement with the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC), a group Donaldson helped form in Chicago, he organized the visual arts workshop that painted the Wall of Respect in 1967. The mural celebrated significant African Americans and set in motion a movement of outdoor murals painted in United States cities throughout the 1970s. Along with Wadsorth Jarrell, Barbara Jones-Hogu, and other African American artists, Donaldson founded AFRICOBRA (an acronym for African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists) in Chicago in 1968. AFRICOBRA established its objectives in developing a new African American aesthetics, as well as its commitment to the principles of social responsibility, involvement of artists in their local communities, and promotion of pride in Black self-identity.

Donaldson's work as a painter has been in over 200 group and solo exhibitions in galleries and museums in Africa, Europe, South America, the Caribbean, and the United States. Donaldson wrote numerous critical essays and served as the Dean of the College of Fine Arts at Howard University. He also served as Vice President of the Board of Directors of the Barnes Foundation and was on the Board of Directors of the National Center for Afro-American Artists.

Major exhibitions of Jarrell's work include AFRICOBRA: Nation Time, 2019 Venice Biennale,Official Collateral Event, Venice, IT; AFRICOBRA: Messages to the People, MOCA North Miami, FL, USA; AFRICOBRA 50, Kavi Gupta, Chicago, USA; Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, Tate Modern, London, England; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Fayetteville, AR; USA, Brooklyn Museum, NY, USA; The Broad Museum, Los Angeles, CA, USA; San Francisco MOMA, CA, USA, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX, USA; We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85, ICA Boston, MA, USA; and Heritage: Wadsworth and Jae Jarrell, The Cleveland Museum of Art, OH, USA. Jarrell’s works are in the permanent collection of the Brooklyn Museum and many other institutions. She lives and works in Cleveland, OH.

Beck’s work was included in the authoritative early exhibitions AFRICOBRA I & II at the Studio Museum in Harlem, and has been included in multiple other influential exhibitions of AFRICOBRA’s work, including AFRICOBRA 50, Kavi Gupta, Chicago, IL, USA; Africobra and Beyond, DuSable Museum of African American History, Chicago, IL, USA; AFRICOBRA: Messages to the People, MOCA North Miami, Miami, FL, USA; and I Am Somebody, at the Peninsula Hotel, Chicago, IL, USA, as well as in the solo exhibition Sherman Beck: Realms & Abstractions, African American Cultural Center, University of Illinois, Chicago, IL, USA. Beck is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is the former owner and operator of the Art Directions art supply store in Chicago and taught commercial art for twenty-two years at his alma mater, Dunbar High School, in the Bronzeville neighborhood of south Chicago.

 The former Minister of Culture and Revolutionary Artist for the Black Panther Party, Douglas helped define the aesthetics of protest at the height of the Civil Rights era, cementing his status among the 20th century's most influential radical political artists. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, he designed all but one of the Party's newspapers, each issue marked by the artist's bold, figurative illustrations outlined in thick black line and contrasted with bright colors, block text, and photomontage. The clearly rendered imagery, applied to a range of printed media from newspapers to posters, notecards, and pins, became a hallmark of liberation movements around the world, as supporters calling for an end to the oppression and subjugation of Black, Indigenous, and other communities sought to project a spirit of shared struggle through a common artistic vocabulary.

Douglas was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In 1951, his family relocated to San Francisco, where he continues to live today. Widely known as an epicenter of radical countercultural politics in the post-World War II era, the city was also deeply divided and segregated, and it was the injustices that Douglas observed as a child that informed his political ideology as an adult. Beginning in the early 1960s, as a student of commercial art at City College of San Francisco, Douglas made frequent trips to nearby San Francisco State University to see civil rights leaders like Amiri Baraka, Stokely Carmichael, and H. Rap Brown speak. He soon lent his talents to the nascent Black Arts Movement, creating fliers and other promotional artworks to advertise events held across the city. These formative experiences solidified his intentions to dedicate his work to the broader struggle for Black liberation that was taking shape around him.

In January 1967, Douglas met Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, two young activists from nearby Oakland, who, months earlier, had founded the Black Panther Party (BPP). Black self-determination was the Party's primary motivation, seeking to improve the position of underprivileged people of color in America through "whatever means necessary." The organization initially focused on an individual's right to bear arms for defense against police violence, but its attention eventually turned to social justice issues like free breakfast for school children and fair housing. Seeking to promote their civil rights agenda to a primarily Black American audience, the Panthers developed a newspaper, the first of which Seale created and published in April 1967.

That first issue was simple in layout and design, leading Douglas to offer his expertise in print production, understanding the power that strong visuals could lend to political action. Beginning with the second, he designed every issue thereafter-some 537 newspapers, from 1967 until it ceased publication in the early 1980s. Douglas quickly rose through the ranks of the organization: he was officially named its Revolutionary Artist and, eventually, Minister of Culture, overseeing all aspects of the BPP visual identity.

Douglas's familiarity with the print production process was a fruitful asset, as he employed simple tools like markers, rub-off type, and prefabricated texture materials to create his visually impactful designs. To keep costs low, each paper was printed in one or two colors-black ink, often with a contrasting bright color. His illustrations shone a spotlight on state-sanctioned brutality, depicting law enforcement officers and politicians as pigs, while also portraying Black people bearing arms and defeating their oppressors. Some issues featured images of Black suffering, lambasting the political establishment for failing to meet the basic needs of people of color across the United States. Douglas strategically employed photomontage as well, integrating photographs alongside text and illustrations to emphasize urgent issues facing the Party. The impact and influence of Douglas's designs underscored the importance of a consistent graphic strategy in conveying complex political messages in very simple terms. This success was underscored by the massive global distribution of the newspaper and the frequent use of Douglas's illustrations in the political campaigns for organizations like the Organización de Solidaridad con los Pueblos de Asia, África y América Latina, Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, known as OSPAAAL. Despite the popularity of the Panthers' programs and their frequent struggle against the established white political order, the Party was disbanded in the early 1980s.

Douglas continues to work as a political artist and activist, producing work that seamlessly translates complex political issues into easily understood illustration, a hallmark of the pieces he produced as a member of the Panthers. His striking figural illustrations connect him to generations of American artists like Elizabeth Catlett, Aaron Douglas, and Charles White, while his combining of type and image draw on generations of political art emanating from across the world, including contemporaries working in Cuba during the Communist Revolution. Deeply bound to American history and politics, his imagery evokes a powerful, globally resonant narrative.

James Van Der Zee (b. 1886 – d. 1983) began his love affair with photography in 1900. Ambitious and forward thinking,
Van Der Zee began developing his own photographs in high school, and continued to pursue photography both personally and professionally after he moved to Harlem, New York, in 1906. By 1916 he opened his own studio, and while he primarily operated as a commercial photographer, he became one of the few artists of his day to document working-class African Americans.

Richard “Dick” Poynor 

 Richard “Dick” Poynor was born into slavery in 1802 in Halifax County, Virginia. No known photographs of him exist, only those of his family. At the age of fourteen, he was taken to Williamson County, Tennessee, with his enslaver, Robert Poynor, in 1816.

Living among a family of established craftsmen, Richard learned the art and trade of chairmaking, developing a skill that would define his life’s work. His chairs, noted for their gracefully curved mule-ear posts and triple-slat backs, can be found today in the Smithsonian Institution, the Tennessee State Museum, and in private collections across the country.

When Robert Poynor died in 1848, Richard was valued at $450. Sometime between 1850 and 1860, he purchased his freedom and that of his second wife, Millie, becoming emancipated prior to the Civil War. He then opened his own chair shop in what is now Leiper’s Fork, Tennessee, advertising himself rather than his former enslaver as “the Original maker of the celebrated Poynor Chairs.”

Using a horse-powered lathe, Poynor turned maple and hickory into “common” or “split-bottom” chairs, with rockers made from walnut. His ladder-back chairs featured shaved posts and arched slats, valued for their beauty, proportion, and durability. Though he was a prolific maker, little written documentation remains of his processes beyond oral histories. His work demonstrates expert joinery and refined craftsmanship, with no known examples showing failed joints, even under stress.

By 1860, Poynor was listed in the census as a free mulatto, literate, and a man of property. He was a member of the Leiper’s Fork Primitive Baptist Church, a white congregation, and was widely respected in his community. His children and descendants continued to live and work in the region, many adopting the surname Poynter.

When he died in 1882, his passing was noted in the local newspaper: “Richard was one of the best-known citizens of old Williamson, and honored by all who knew him.”

Born into slavery and dying a free craftsman and businessman, Richard Poynor left one of Williamson County’s most remarkable legacies. His moral strength, skill, and precision as one of Tennessee’s most accomplished chairmakers remain evident in the enduring presence of his work.

James Presley Ball (b. 1825), better known as J.P. Ball, was one of the foremost activistartists of his time. Represented through six photographs—including both daguerreotypes and cartesdevisite—Ball was widely recognized in his lifetime as one of the preeminent African American photographers of the 19th century.

His fame was bolstered by his touring exhibition Mammoth Pictorial Tour of the United States Comprising Views of the African Slave Trade, a massive 600yardlong panoramic collage designed to educate and provoke dialogue around slavery. In addition to his photographic work, Ball published several pamphlets advocating for abolition.

Later in life, Ball moved from his native Cincinnati to Seattle, Washington, then Portland, Oregon, and ultimately settled in Honolulu, Hawaii, where he died in 1904. His artistic contributions showcase his diverse technical skills: from soft fades and full compositions to wedding portraits and rare daguerreotypes—such as Child with Rabbit (c. 1850s)—highlighting the depth and sensitivity of his photographic practice.