Jack Bryan, Zach Peters, Daniel Bollinger and Emma Mason

 

This project’s purpose was to address the problems of black oppression in the United States’ public and private areas. This project specifically addresses police brutality directed towards African Americans.

            Americans still need to change in the way that some people still hold to their unspoken prejudices against African Americans simply because of their skin color. Racism was extremely obvious in the 1960’s, especially in Birmingham, as a result of the Jim Crow laws – these were state an local laws that were primarily designed to enforce segregation primarily in Southern states after the Reconstruction. Some people still hold to these ideas because of the “New Jim Crow” laws – a term used to refer to the soaring numbers of African Americans – especially young men that are incarcerated often at a young age for minor violations and thus labeled as criminals, stripped of voting rights and employment eligibility. If America truly wants to put our dark history of internal racism behind us, then we must change these inequalities and stereotypical perceptions.

We chose to arrange our images so that the police cars around the African American seated man are targeting him even when he is peacefully protesting. The majority of police officers are hollow silhouettes to show that the solid one is the only “bad egg” out of all of them, and they are not all bad. The groups of people holding the signs with words on them are supposed to symbolize the fact the protesters then and now have not changed except for their slogans.