Colette Gaiter:
Liberated Pages from Segregated Spaces

Connecting specific characteristics of Black liberation’s typographic language for a century and a half illuminates aesthetic, technical, and ideological threads that persist from abolition to #BlackLivesMatter.

Typographic aesthetics in Black publications and activist ephemera were always “designed for liberation.” Print aesthetics in these publications hybridized African and Western European cultural communication traditions because of enslavement’s brutal intercontinental collisions. Starting with the first U.S. Black abolitionist newspaper, “Freedom’s Journal”, which began publication in 1827, the Black press operated primarily in segregated spaces. Black and white newspapers separately and concurrently published political news and covered societal and cultural news of interest to their divergent readers. Numerous Black newspapers focused on securing African Americans’ rights, opportunities, and psychological liberation. Continuing far into the twentieth century, segregation required parallel publishing universes that made Black publication and its typography and design virtually invisible to white mainstream awareness and, subsequently, to print history.

This talk travels through a range of Black liberation publications, looking closely at “The Black Panther” newspaper. Although it was published for only 13 years, “The Black Panther”, which started in 1967, revolutionized Black liberation’s visuals and narratives. Emory Douglas, who art-directed, designed, and was the most prolific illustrator for the paper throughout its publication, helped Huey Newton and Bobby Seale create an explosive movement-building tool for liberating people of color throughout the world. Situated closer to alternative press aesthetics than traditional Black newspapers, “The Black Panther’s” illustrations, by Douglas and others, had the most prominent visual impact. The paper’s typography and layout received less attention but carried on and created important African American print culture traditions that resonate in later publications.

This talk is scheduled to take place Friday, June 17, 2022, at 12:35pm New York time (EDT/UTC-4), as part of the main Typographics conference. Conference registration is required to attend in person.