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Chicago Conspiracy 8, Black Panther Original Poster [193152]

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Paper Start Price:375.00 USD Estimated At:750.00 - 1,500.00 USD
Chicago Conspiracy 8, Black Panther Original Poster [193152]
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Choice, 24x20" original You Can't Jail the Revolution. Stop the Trial, Free the Conspiracy 8 poster. "The poster is unsigned, but although we don't know who the artist is, we do know its purpose. It was commissioned by the Committee to Defend the Conspiracy, a group of activists who were raising money for the eight men who were on trial. The group published a letter in the New York Review of Books to garner support. "That group included some prominent writers and intellectuals: Norman Mailer, Noam Chomsky, Dr. Spock, Susan Sontag," said Jason Nargis, a special collections librarian at Northwestern University who did archival research on the poster's origins. "They wrote this sort of call, saying that the anti-riot act ó which is what they were using as justification for the trial ó was un-American and unconstitutional and they called for support." The message on the poster still reverberates today. At protests against police violence, people continue to chant versions of "You can't jail the revolution" and raise their fists as a symbol of solidarity. More importantly, the history of the poster and its continuing relevance reflects the powerful relationship between visual images and the role they play in moving people to participate in social movements and protest. The text on the poster is directly tied to the trial and the events that led up to it.
1986 ó the year before ó was a tumultuous one, fueled by monumental historic events including the Vietnam War. Over 20,000 American soldiers had already died in the war, and another 17,000 would lose their lives by the year's end. In March, President Lyndon B. Johnson pulled out of his re-election campaign as the anti-war movement continued to build strength. In April, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, followed by the assassination of Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy in June. By August, when the Democratic Party held its National Convention in Chicago, tensions were already high as activists sought to use the spotlight for anti-war demonstrations. Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley refused to grant many of the activists permits to protest. He also wanted a heavy law enforcement presence and requested 5,600 Illinois National Guardsmen to add to the 11,500-member Chicago police force, 1,000 federal agents, and 7,500 federal soldiers. While the convention took place, law enforcement met protesters with violence in a scene that looked eerily similar to today's protests against police killings. (A report by the U.S. National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence confirms that police did in fact cause the violence during these protests.) The following year, the new administration under Republican President Richard Nixon, decided to prosecute eight people involved in the Chicago protests, accusing them of violating the anti-riot "Rap Brown law" ó formally known as the Civil Obedience Act of 1968. "They were prosecuted under a brand new law, which had been passed specifically against Black radicals crossing state lines to incite a riot'," said historian Jon Wiener, author of Conspiracy in the Streets: The Extraordinary Trial of the Chicago Eight. Although charged with conspiring with one another, some of the eight had never met. The ridiculousness of the charge furthered activists' fight to "stop the trial" and led to the nickname the "Conspiracy 8." "The Committee to Defend the Conspiracy, they got their name from the fact that a bunch of people in the Chicago 8 were calling themselves the conspiracy,' kind of jokingly," Becky Little, a journalist who wrote about the trial for history.com, explained." from wbez.org.
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Date:
Country (if not USA):
State: Illinois
City: Chicago
Provenance: