Existing comment:
Yolanda López
born San Diego, California 1942
Free Los Siete
1969
offset lithograph on paper
In 1969, after six young Latino men in San Francisco's Mission District were arrested for allegedly killing a police officer, a campaign -- Free Los Siete de la Raza (Free the People's Seven) -- erupted to clear their names. Lopéz created this poster in their defense. Her image turns the stars and stripes of the U.S. flag into padlocked prison bars that partially obscure the faces of the six men (one of the accused was never apprehended). She surrounds this central image with an adapted quote of the Pledge of Allegiance, which ironically ends with the word free. This poster was paraded at rallies and printed in the pages of Basta Ya! (Enough!), the campaign's newspaper that was published in collaboration with the Black Panthers. The young men were acquitted of all charges in 1970.
Gift of Gilberto Cárdenas and Dolores García, 2019.51.69 |