Mar 25, 2021 - Sale 2562

Sale 2562 - Lot 131

Price Realized: $ 375
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750
(BLACK POWER.) Black Gold . . . I am the Black Woman, Mother of Civilization. Poster, 25 1/4 x 19 inches; moderate wear including tack holes, mount remnants on verso, light wrinkling, and loss of about an inch from the upper left corner. New York: Truth Posters, 1969

Additional Details

This poster features a series of first-person commandments for "the Black Woman, Mother of Civilization." Overtly anti-feminist, it states that "through me the Black man produces his nation . . . I care and make our home comfortable for my Husband . . . The best that I can give my nation is strong, healthy, intelligent children who will grow to be the leaders of tomorrow." It was advertised in the 14 February 1969 issue of the Nation of Islam newspaper, Muhammad Speaks, as "the hottest poster in New York!!" Shulamith Firestone, in her 1970 feminist classic Dialectic of Sex, criticizes this "much-circulated poster," and the text has been republished in many formats since. In 1970, the design was incorporated into the cover of the Nina Simone album Black Gold. However, we can trace no examples of this oft-discussed poster at auction, in OCLC, or elsewhere on the Internet. Here it is.