CORE Protest Poster
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
Protest Poster, 1966
Gift of Valeria Irving
MHS Collections
In August of 1920, the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League adopted the colors red, black, and green for the Pan-African Flag—a symbol of pride and an emblem of cohesion for a transnational black population.
In the turbulent decade of the 1960s, the red, black and green was appropriated by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) , an organization that played a central role in the Civil Rights movement. CORE was founded in 1942 in Chicago, IL to promote the application of Ghandian non-violence to deal with racial and social problems. During the course of their activism (which continues today), CORE participated in freedom rides, publicity campaigns, and sit-ins; one famous example of the latter took place in 1963 at St. Louis’s Jefferson Bank.
The members of CORE who proudly paraded with this protest sign proclaimed unequivocally “Freedom Now” in the powerful colors of strength and unity. Their use of red, black, and green symbolically connected the struggles and issues of the 1960s with those of a global black community seeking freedom from oppression more broadly.
Organized by the Virginia Historical
Society with additional support from the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter
Foundation and the
Lettie Pate Whitehead Evans Changing Exhibitions Fund, American. Support
in St. Louis is provided by The Stanley and Lucy Lopata Foundation
This exhibition has been made possible in part
by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Great Ideas Brought to Life.
