Art as a Tool of Liberation: African American Women’s Use of the Cultural Realm in Developing Gendered Nationalist Identities

During the 1950s and 1960s, African Americans constructed radical political identities in order to subvert the dominant political and social order. African American women in particular, developed gender-specific political identities, like the black female revolutionary, that integrated their gendered political priorities with black liberation theory. This paper explores black female radicals’ constructions of gendered nationalist identities within the cultural realm. Using the 1950s political cartoons of Alice Childress and the 1960s political artwork of women in the Black Panther Party, it examines the ways in which black women radicals used artistic expression to influence the public perception of black nationalism and promote black nation building projects that were gender-inclusive. In the process, this paper reveals the often-overlooked work of radical female artists in shaping public perceptions of black nationalism and black power and highlights the influence of African American women’s artistic production on the discourse of the black power movement.