Scales, Harry. n.d. Protesters Learning Sign Language, 6/10/20. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2022638045/
This photograph offers a unique perspective on inclusive, communal communication practices at protests and demonstrations. The use of sign-language has a history of presence at protests across the United States, including disability rights protests in the 1970s. This photograph serves as a piece of intersectional protest history across racial and disability identities. This photograph also serves as a counter-image to the violent and graphic images that the media centered during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. The photograph’s composition, including lighting, shadows, background, color, and foreground can also serve as a study in visual representations of stories, communities, and histories impacted by racism and the communal efforts to work together across physical abilities to communicate clearly while exercising their first amendment rights at protests and demonstrations.
Twenty-first-century students are currently living in an era where the historical context of Black History in America and elements of the Civil Rights movement are at risk of being lost or obscured through the recent wave of legislation designed to silence historically marginalized voices and their historical truths and narratives. These histories are being labeled as “anti-American” or “dangerous” by politicians and special interest groups across the country. The image of the protesters’ hands learning sign language demonstrates the power of community, memory, and representation of marginalized groups in America’s history. It also represents the intersectionality of the Black Lives Matter protests, the Civil Rights protests of the 1960s, and the Disability Rights movement in the 1970s. This photo represents the ways in which tragic events, such as police brutality and its impact on America’s Black community, mobilizes people across America to exercise their first amendment rights to elicit social change.
“Protesters learning sign language, 6/10/20” is a “Photograph [that] shows arms and hands in the air, as protesters learn sign language during a Black Lives Matter protest in Boston, Massachusetts.” It is an image that only contains protesters’ hands raised as they learn sign language, a form of nonverbal communication.
- How does this image of the protesters’ hands shape our understanding of the various ways protesters communicate with one another?
- What does this photo reveal to readers about the intersectionality of disability rights and the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States?
New York State Next Generation Learning Standards for ELA
11-12R3: In informational texts, analyze a complex set of ideas or sequence of events and explain how specific individuals, ideas, or events interact and develop. (RI)
- Students can analyze the sequence of events as they view the image from the background, foreground, and margins, and offer ideas regarding how these interact and develop their understanding of nonverbal communication and its role in civil disobedience/protest.
New York State Next Generation Standard 11-12R9: Make connections to other texts, ideas, cultural perspectives, eras, and personal experiences. (RI&RL)
- Students can view this image and compare it to other primary source images of the Black Lives Matter movement and protests that were held across the country. Students can make social and political connections among these photographs and connect them to their own personal or historical/cultural experiences with representation, intersectionality, and freedom of expression.
- This image would pair well with demonstration artifacts and stories that touch upon police brutality, equal representation, and the Black Lives Matter movement. Students can view this image in conjunction with reading such texts as Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds’s Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You; Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give; Nic Stone’s Dear Martin; and Black Enough (edited by Ibi Zoboi).
- This image can also serve as a paired text with Raoul Peck’s documentary, I Am Not Your Negro (2016)—which is based on James Baldwin’s unfinished manuscript, Remember This House, in which he reflects on the lives and deaths of prominent Civil Rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Medgar Evers. This image can help students reflect upon the similarities across protests and civil rights demonstrations from the 1960s to today.
- The image could be challenged for its connections and specific origins to honor and commemorate the Black Lives Matter movement from 2020 to today. Those who have personal objections to the Black Lives Matter movement or the public demonstrations and protests related to or as a result of the Black Lives Matter movement may object to having students view the image of the protestors and describe them as “anti-American”, “dangerous”, or “violent” in nature.
Links to resources for approaching those topics:
- Learning for Justice, a program through the Southern Poverty Law Center, has an entire rationale and selection of information on their website that is specifically dedicated to the importance of teaching the Black Lives Matter Movement. It provides a strong historical framework for the movement, and it helps dispel false information that has been spread about the movement. https://www.learningforjustice.org/magazine/summer-2017/why-teaching-black-lives-matter-matters-part-i
- The National Education Association has a Black Lives Matter teaching toolkit that provides texts, approaches, and lessons to help teachers educate themselves, their colleagues, and their students about the Black Lives Matter movement. https://www.nea.org/resource-library/black-lives-matter-school
- “Black Lives Matter sign next to St. Johns Church on Black Lives Matter Plaza” is a photograph of a “Black Lives Matter” sign placed next to St. Johns Church on Juneteenth of 2020 (June 19, 2020). This image can be used as another way for students to see images of nonverbal protest and to discuss how the sign’s visual nature conveys multiple messages in its size and placement. https://www.loc.gov/resource/highsm.63653/
- “What are you waiting for? Broadway at 19th, Oakland, California” is a photograph related to the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020. This photograph is from June of 2020, and it features a mural/artwork with the message “What are you waiting for?” and the names of Black people who were murdered at the hands of police officers. This image helps students see the ways that patterns of violence and racial/cultural marginalization are communicated nonverbally through artwork, while still being part of a protest and civil rights demonstration. https://www.loc.gov/item/2023696101/
- Getty Images has over 76,000 images from Black Lives Matter demonstrations and protests. It includes nonviolent images of protest signs, artwork, and people gathering peacefully during the demonstrations. https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/black-lives-matter-protest
- ABC News has a Black Lives Matter protest archive of images from Black Lives Matter protests that took place across the United States. These images capture the power and magnitude of the protests through the power of images. https://abcnews.go.com/US/photos/black-lives-matter-movement-photos-44402442