Uphold Your Men

Victory in the Valley of Eshu and Uphold Your Men (See Accession no. 2013.8) are both examples of screenprinting, a process by which many copies of the same work can be made inexpensively. AfriCOBRA artists often employed this process because it enabled them to circulate their work and messages to a wider audience than their exhibitions could otherwise reach. Distribution was central to AfriCOBRA’s goal of defining a positive, shared identity for the African-American community through art. The AfriCOBRA artists sold these “poster-prints” at exhibitions, bookstores, galleries, and art fairs always for the affordable price of $10.

Uphold Your Men depicts an African American woman gazing confidently at the viewer surrounded by the messages “Uphold your men” and “Unify your families.” AfriCOBRA artists believed that these vibrant, or what they called “cool-ade,” colors with figurative subject matter and text, would relate directly to the African American audience, offering an accessible message of strength and positivity.