How Black Lives Have Mattered in Art, From 1930s Protest Posters to Cell Phone Videos

Unidentified artist. Negro Peoples Theatre Presents: Langston Hughes' Great Play, "Don't You Want to be Free?" 1938. Collection of Merrill C. Berman In 1930s America -- more than half a century after the abolition of slavery -- posters urging "Equal Rights for Negroes" and asking Langston Hughes's famous question "Don't You Want to Be Free?" drew attention to the continuing struggle of African Americans to secure their rights as citizens. Decades after these posters appeared -- and a full year a...