New Thing Calendar Artboard, March '69

This artboard features an African American man’s profile, alongside the poem ‘If We Must Die’ by Claude McKay, a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance. The poem speaks to a sense of self-assertion and the will to resist in order to protect a people’s freedom. The art appeared in a calendar produced by the New Thing Art & Architecture Center, a cultural center based in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington D.C. The Center’s mission aligns with both the content and the form of the calendar, as they sought to highlight a positive Afrocentric artistic culture in ordinary places.