Black August is a month of remembrance, study, discipline, and resistance. It began inside California's prisons in the late 1970s, when incarcerated members of the Black liberation movement set aside August to honor their fallen comrades. The month centers on George Jackson, the revolutionary writer and theorist of Soledad Brother and Blood in My Eye, who was killed by guards at San Quentin on August 21, 1971. It also honors his younger brother Jonathan, killed on August 7, 1970, during his armed attempt to free political prisoners at the Marin County courthouse, alongside William Christmas and James McClain.

 Its founders also honored Khatari Gaulden, who died at San Quentin in 1978 after being denied proper medical care. In their memory, participants fast, refuse distractions, train their bodies, and commit to political education, sharpening themselves for the long struggle ahead. Black August also draws on a long history of resistance that falls within the month. That history includes the ceremony at Bois Caïman that sparked the Haitian Revolution, Nat Turner's rebellion, Gabriel Prosser's planned uprising in Virginia, the birth of Marcus Garvey, the Watts rebellion, and the 1978 police assault on MOVE in Philadelphia.

In the 1990s, the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement carried the tradition into culture through the Black August Hip Hop Project, linking artists in the United States, Cuba, and South Africa in support of political prisoners and exiles like Assata Shakur. Black August asks more than remembrance. It calls for a disciplined, collective practice of resistance against a system that cages, starves, and kills, and for the steady commitment to build a world where all our people are free.

• 1 print shipped in a rigid mailer (made from recycled cardstock)
• printed on acid-free, premium photo paper

• paper weight + thickness: 250/m² / 66lbs 

*frame not included*