You may have noticed the new community banner…aww, how could you not?! Do you use a screen reader? In celebration of African Americans and the Arts, !detroit@midwest.social will proudly appropriate some of the work of Revolutionary Artist and The Minister of Culture, a man who has Van Son for blood, Grand Rapids-born, SF-raised graphic artist agitator Emory Douglas.

Coming from the same field as Dr Douglas (with about the same amount of resources), I couldn’t help but chuckle reading this passage…

Douglas happened to stop by when [Huey] Newton and [Bobby] Seale were visiting with [Eldridge] Cleaver, and when Seale was laying out the first issue of the Black Panther Community News Service—a crudely produced mimeographed paper with a print run 1,000. Douglas took interest and told Seale that he “could help improve the quality of what was being done.”

– Nicolas Lampert,
A People’s Art History of The United States
available to borrow from our friends at The Internet Archive

The reason I laugh is because any graphic artist would have done the exact same thing! “Hey, man, I can make that look way better!” I can just imagine him then pulling out his Formatt catalog!

Thanks, Dr Douglas. All power to the people!

EDIT 2024-02-01_13:39CEST: typographic errors. 🤦‍♂️