Let Resistance be your Motto!! May 26, 2010

This exhibition features 69 stunning photographic portraits that trace 150 years of U.S. history through the lives of well-known abolitionists, artists, scientists, writers, statesmen, entertainers, and sports figures. These moving photographs reveal, reflect, and illuminate the variety of creative and courageous ways that African Americans have resisted, accommodated, struggled, and redefined the history of the United States - as seen through an African American lens. These moving portraits help us rethink and reposition our notions of resistance; and these images of individuals from Frederick Douglass to Malcom X; from Edward Bannister to Toni Morrison; and from Father Divine to Jimi Hendrix help us to remember the richness and diversity of African American life in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The images were selected by curator Deborah Willis from the collection of the National Portrait Gallery. The theme, African American resistance across 150 years of U.S. history, was inspired by the words of Henry Highland Garnet, an abolitionist and clergyman. On August 16, 1843, Garnet spoke to a group of northern free blacks gathered to discuss the future prospects of black America. Frustrated at the lack of progress, he advocated action:

Strike for your lives and liberties....Let your motto be Resistance! Resistance! RESISTANCE!....What kind of resistance you...make you must decide by the circumstances that surround you....

Throughout American history, most black Americans embraced Garnet's plea. The photographs reveal and illuminate the variety of creative and courageous ways that African Americans resisted, redefined and accommodated in an America that needed but rarely accepted its black citizens. Some black Americans thought the lack of racial justice needed to be challenged by any means necessary, including violence. Other black Americans felt that the best form of resistance was to confront discrimination whenever possible. Many believed that resistance could be the highest form of patriotism. In their beauty and power, the featured portraits resist the stereotypic depictions that fueled racism in America.