Teaching Packet

Uncovering America: Activism and Protest

Part of Uncovering America

Fritz Scholder, Tamarind Institute, Lorillard Company, Bicentennial Indian, 1975, color lithograph on wove paper, Corcoran Collection (Gift of Lorillard Tobacco Company), 2015.19.2595

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On this Page:

  1. Overview
  2. Selected Works
  3. Activity: Taking Creative Action
  4. Additional Resources
Printed with black lines and shading and then painted, a row of seven red-uniformed soldiers to the right fire rifles into a crowd of dozens in a town square in this vertical engraving. The soldiers are led by an eighth behind the line, who raises a sword. Blood gushes from wounded people to the left, who wear clothing in shades of marine and sky blue and brick red. A small brown dog stands near one dead person along the bottom of the composition, and two- and three-story buildings enclose the rectangular square behind the action. The sky is tinted blue along the top of the print, and a crescent moon is in the top left corner. An inscription near the dog in the image reads, “Engrav’d Printed & Sold by Paul Revere Boston.” Printed text over the image reads, “The Bloody Massacre perpetuated in King Street Boston on March 5th 1770 by a party of the 29th Regt.” Three columns of text below read, “Unhappy Boston! See thy Sons deplore, They hallowed Walks besmear’d with guiltless Gore. While faithless P—n and his savage Bands, With murd’rous Rancour stretch their bloody Hands; Like fierce Barbarainas grinning o’er their Prey, Approve the Carnage and enjoy the Day. If sealding drops from Rage from Anguish Wrung, If speeches Sorrows lab’ring for a Tongue, Or if a weeping World can ought appease, The plaintive Ghosts of Victims such as these; The Patriot’s copious Tears for each are shed, A glorious Tribute which embalms the Dead. But know, Fat summons to that awful Goal, Where Justice strips the Murd’rer of his Soul: Should venal C—ts the scandal of the Land, Snatch the relentless Villain from her Hand, Keen Execrations on this Plate inscribed, Shall reach a Judge who never can be brib’d.” Cursive printed script below reads, “The unhappy Sufferers were Sam’l Gray, Sam’l Maverick, Jam’s Caldwell, Crispus Attacuks & Pat’k Carr Killed. Six wounded, two of them (Christ’r Monk and John Clark) Mortally.”
Paul Revere, The Boston Massacre, 1770, engraving with hand coloring on laid paper, Rosenwald Collection, 1943.3.9042

Overview

Why and how do people protest?

How might works of art show support or advocate for a cause?

How are people, communities, and events affected by works of art?

Artists in the United States are protected under the First Amendment, which guarantees freedoms of speech and press. This module features works created by artists with a range of perspectives and motivations. Some artists hoped to create widespread, systemic change, while others desired to make visible the vulnerable. Still others used their chosen medium to call attention to an issue, event, or system. Broadly, these artists hoped to improve conditions for themselves, others, or the world.

Paul Revere was one of these artists. His engraving depicting the Boston Massacre, published in 1770 in the Boston Gazette, is one of the most effective examples of war propaganda in US history. The image of British soldiers firing upon a crowd of Bostonians inflamed anti-British sentiments and bolstered residents who were increasingly frustrated by levies imposed by the Crown. Without the distribution of Revere’s engraving, the Boston Massacre may have remained an isolated incident instead of becoming a key event that helped trigger the Revolutionary War.

What made the Boston Massacre engraving so powerful?

To answer this question, consider these other questions:

  • Who was Paul Revere? Why did he make this engraving and write the accompanying text?
  • How might the image both represent or deviate from actual events?
  • What artistic choices might Revere have made in order to promote his point of view?
  • Who do you think Revere hoped to persuade and influence with his engraving?
  • How do you imagine 18th-century viewers encountered and perceived the engraving?
  • How might this work of art still influence or inform people today?

Revere’s engraving is widely recognized as an exaggerated depiction of actual events, but less widely known is that he did not conceive of the image. Artist Henry Pelham loaned his work in progress, titled The Fruits of Arbitrary Power, to Revere, who copied it and distributed his version before Pelham published his own. Why might this matter?

Every artist has a point of view. Today, artists make use of new platforms, tools, and means of communication to advocate for a cause or inspire action. What similarities do you see between the issues in the works of art in this module and contemporary issues today? How might you take action about an issue or cause? How do the works of art collected here provoke, reveal, move, or make change in some way?

Selected Works

  • Printed with black lines and shading and then painted, a row of seven red-uniformed soldiers to the right fire rifles into a crowd of dozens in a town square in this vertical engraving. The soldiers are led by an eighth behind the line, who raises a sword. Blood gushes from wounded people to the left, who wear clothing in shades of marine and sky blue and brick red. A small brown dog stands near one dead person along the bottom of the composition, and two- and three-story buildings enclose the rectangular square behind the action. The sky is tinted blue along the top of the print, and a crescent moon is in the top left corner. An inscription near the dog in the image reads, “Engrav’d Printed & Sold by Paul Revere Boston.” Printed text over the image reads, “The Bloody Massacre perpetuated in King Street Boston on March 5th 1770 by a party of the 29th Regt.” Three columns of text below read, “Unhappy Boston! See thy Sons deplore, They hallowed Walks besmear’d with guiltless Gore. While faithless P—n and his savage Bands, With murd’rous Rancour stretch their bloody Hands; Like fierce Barbarainas grinning o’er their Prey, Approve the Carnage and enjoy the Day. If sealding drops from Rage from Anguish Wrung, If speeches Sorrows lab’ring for a Tongue, Or if a weeping World can ought appease, The plaintive Ghosts of Victims such as these; The Patriot’s copious Tears for each are shed, A glorious Tribute which embalms the Dead. But know, Fat summons to that awful Goal, Where Justice strips the Murd’rer of his Soul: Should venal C—ts the scandal of the Land, Snatch the relentless Villain from her Hand, Keen Execrations on this Plate inscribed, Shall reach a Judge who never can be brib’d.” Cursive printed script below reads, “The unhappy Sufferers were Sam’l Gray, Sam’l Maverick, Jam’s Caldwell, Crispus Attacuks & Pat’k Carr Killed. Six wounded, two of them (Christ’r Monk and John Clark) Mortally.”
  • The black, stencil-like silhouette of a man with arms raised is printed against a pale orange background with a white speech bubble overhead. Shown from the chest up, the bearded man wears sunglasses and stands with both fists raised, his chest and arms along the bottom edge of the composition. The all-capital, black text in the speech bubble reads, “DOWN WITH THE WHITENESS.” The paper has a white margin all around. The artist signed and dated the work with graphite in the lower right corner: “Rupert García 1969.” And in the lower left, also in graphite: “ED 105.” Near the signature is a turqoise-colored stamp with a frog, sitting, pointing to our left, and smiling over a vertically striped shield, which reads, "MADE IN USA."
  • The words “I AM A MAN” are painted in all capital, bold black letters against a white ground in this vertical painting. The words are spaced so they take up most of the composition, with “I AM” on the top line, “A” at the center of the composition, and “A MAN” at the bottom. “AM” is underlined. The white paint is thickly applied and brushstrokes, drips, and cracks are visible on the surface. A sliver of raw, off-white canvas is visible at the top right corner.
  • Ten black, horizontal, rectangular panels are hung evenly spaced in a vertical stack above a larger red rectangle, and those eleven pieces are flanked by two identical, round, black and white photographs that are almost as tall as the stacked panels. Each of the ten black panels bear a single word in lowercase, white letters. From top to bottom, they read, “ring,” “surround,” “lasso,” “noose,” “eye,” “areola,” “halo,” “cuffs,” “collar,” and “loop.” The red panel is inscribed, also with white, lowercase letters, “feel the ground sliding from under you.” Each of the two round photographs is framed with a narrow black band and shows the full lips, narrow chin, collarbone, and chest of a Black person. The person wears a white scooped neck top that creates a crescent moon shape at the bottom of the image.

Activity: Taking Creative Action

Like many artists and activists, Rupert García and Andy Warhol created posters to provoke audiences and show support for a particular cause. In this activity, students will think critically about protest, study poster design (especially the work of García and Warhol), identify an issue they care about, consider the pros and cons, and then create and publicly exhibit a poster.

The black, stencil-like silhouette of a man with arms raised is printed against a pale orange background with a white speech bubble overhead. Shown from the chest up, the bearded man wears sunglasses and stands with both fists raised, his chest and arms along the bottom edge of the composition. The all-capital, black text in the speech bubble reads, “DOWN WITH THE WHITENESS.” The paper has a white margin all around. The artist signed and dated the work with graphite in the lower right corner: “Rupert García 1969.” And in the lower left, also in graphite: “ED 105.” Near the signature is a turqoise-colored stamp with a frog, sitting, pointing to our left, and smiling over a vertically striped shield, which reads, "MADE IN USA."
Rupert García, Down with the Whiteness, 1969, color screenprint on wove paper, Corcoran Collection (Gift of Dennis Beall), 2015.19.3060
Andy Warhol, Jeff Wasserman, Robert Dressen, Robert Knisel, Gemini G.E.L., Vote McGovern, 1972, color screenprint on Arches 88 wove paper, Gift of Benjamin B. Smith, 1985.47.229

How might art be a vehicle to express support for an issue or advocate for a cause?

  1. What does protest mean to you? Distribute large sheets of paper with the word protest circled in the middle to small groups of students. Ask students to work together to write down words or phrases that come to mind when they think about protest. Ask each group to share the results of their “protest map.”
  2. Share digital or physical reproductions of García’s Down with the Whiteness and Andy Warhol’s Vote McGovern with small groups of students (only one work per group). Ask students to identify the parts of the image (its pieces and components; be specific), the purpose of the work of art (what it is for, why it might have been made), and what they wonder about the work (any questions they have). Then have groups with different images share their thoughts with each other. (Adapted from a Project Zero thinking routine.)
  3. Bring together the students and provide more information and context about how and why Rupert García and Andy Warhol created these works. Deepen the discussion by inviting students to conduct research about the Black Panther Party, the 1972 presidential election, and why García and Warhol took the positions they did. Discuss whether the students think these works of art were successful forms of protest.
  4. As a large group, generate a list of current events in the news. These issues might be of local, regional, or national significance, but they should be complex issues that the students care about. Examples might include universal health care, transgender rights, or immigration. Use a democratic method (e.g., sticker voter) to identify an issue that students care about most.
  5. Return students to small groups to identify opposing sides of the issue and generate a pros and cons list for each side using news articles and research. Students will then individually compose a position statement: where do they stand on the issue? They must use evidence from trusted news sources and studies to bolster their position, but they should also talk about why this issue matters to them, why it might matter to the people around them (e.g., family, friends, classmates, and neighbors), and why it might matter to the world. (Adapted from a Project Zero thinking routine.)
  6. Next, students will brainstorm memorable phrases, sayings, symbols, and imagery related to their issue that can be simply and clearly represented in a poster. How will they distill their position into a visual statement? Who will the audience for their poster be, and how will the poster be persuasive and memorable? Avoid clichés, such as smiley faces and peace signs. Incorporate time for feedback and improvement.
  7. Create posters using whatever mediums you have at hand, and then as a class determine how and when you would like to share them publicly. Could they be exhibited in your school, or is there an opportunity to use them in a public space outside your school to advocate for your cause? How might you use your posters to spark discussion or dialogue with others?
  8. Reflect: How successful was your public display of your posters? Do you think marches and protests make a difference? What would you do differently next time?

Additional Resources

Created Equal: The Abolitionists, Slavery By Another Name, Freedom Riders, Freedom Summer, and The Loving Story films and lesson unit, National Endowment for the Humanities

Boycotting Baubles of Britain lesson unit, National Endowment for the Humanities

Competing Voices of the Civil Rights Movement lesson unit, National Endowment for the Humanities

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