Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Portraits

“Let your motto be resistance! Resistance! RESISTANCE!
No oppressed people have ever secured their liberty without resistance.”
– Abolitionist Henry Highland Garnet, 1843

Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, almost all black Americans embraced Garnet’s plea to “let your motto be resistance,” based on “the circumstances that surround you.” The words of this nineteenth century political activist and Underground Railroad conductor are the essence of the exhibition, Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Portraits. Let Your Motto Be Resistance is the first of four exhibitions being presented as part of the Atlanta History Center’s Civil War to Civil Rights exhibition series.

Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Portraits features 69 stunning photographic portraits that trace 150 years of U.S. history through the lives of well-known African Americans, including abolitionists, artists, scientists, authors, statesmen, entertainers, and sports figures. These revealing photographs illuminate the creative and courageous ways that African Americans redefined the history of the United States through struggle, accommodation, and resistance. The portraits allow us to rethink our ideas of resistance and to remember the rich diversity of African American life in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Drawing on the collection of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, images of Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X; Edward Bannister and Toni Morrison; and Father Divine and Jimi Hendrix celebrate the ways in which photographs furthered recognition and equality in America during periods of challenge and defiance.


Tour Itinerary

Dates		Host Institution	Status
6/26/08	9/14/08	California African American Museum, Los Angeles, CA	Booked
10/25/08	3/1/09	Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, Detroit, MI	Booked
3/21/09	6/14/09	Museum of African Diaspora, San Francisco, CA	Booked
7/4/09	9/27/09	Morven Museum & Garden, Princeton, NJ	Booked
10/17/09	1/10/10	Museum of African American History, Boston, MA	Booked
1/30/10	4/25/10	Atlanta History Center, Atlanta, GA	Booked
5/15/10	8/8/10	African American Performing Arts Center, Albuquerque, NM	Booked
8/28/10	11/21/10	Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, Birmingham, AL	Booked
12/11/10	3/6/11	DuSable Museum of African American History, Chicago, IL	Booked
3/26/11	6/19/11	National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, Cincinnati, OH	Booked
7/9/11	10/2/11	Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia, Richmond, VA	Booked
10/22/11	1/15/12	Museum of Art, North Carolina Central University, Durham, NC	Booked
2/4/12	4/29/12	Historical Society of Saginaw County and the Castle Museum, Saginaw, MI	Booked

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