New Age of Slavery

Source catalog description

This description refers to material held by Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Visual details below describe the original material.

Patrick Campbell’s painting, with its bold stripes featuring bodies hanging from nooses, and cracked stars with people falling, pleading, or wielding weapons in between, went viral in December 2014. Earlier that month, a New York grand jury ruled “no reasonable cause” to indict the officer whose chokehold on Eric Garner led to Garner’s death. This decision came on the heels of a grand jury decision in November not to charge the officer who shot and killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. In response, Campbell used art to illustrate his disbelief. When he posted the image on social media, others who shared his disappointment and anger spread the image across the internet. By the time Freddie Gray protests ignited in Baltimore in April 2015, Campbell’s watercolor was a symbol of a movement. A watercolor painting of the American flag, in which bodies are depicted hanging within the red stripes.

Catalog date

2014

Recorded subjects

African American; Art; Communities; Lynching; Race discrimination; Race relations; Resistance; U.S. History, 2001-

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