Plate from Letter from Birmingham City Jail
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View on museum website →Medium
screenprint from an illustrated book with eight screenprints
Dimensions
overall (closed): 39.8 × 33.2 × 4.9 cm (15 11/16 × 13 1/16 × 1 15/16 in.)
Classification
Volume
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Ruth Fine in honor of Michele Wallace
Accession Number
2021.80.27.3
Art Historical Context
Faith Ringgold's *Plate from Letter from Birmingham Jail* (2007) is a screenprint from an illustrated featuring eight such prints, honoring Martin Luther King Jr.' seminal 1963 epistle. Penned while imprisoned during nonviolent protests against segregation in Birmingham, Alabama King's letter powerfully defends civil disobedience as a moral imperative against injustice, urging white moderates to confront systemic racism. Ringgold, a trailblazing African American artist known for her narrative quilts and prints that weave personal stories with social critique, brings this enduring text into vis...