The 'people's history' approach to thinking about and interpreting the past has gained momentum over the last few decades. From Howard Zinn's indispensable A People's History of the United States in 1980 to the ReVisioning History series from Beacon Press over the last decade, there has been a welcome shift away from rote memorization of presidents, dates, and patriotic dogma. By building connections from the past to the present and tying individual stories to enduring sociopolitical realities, students of history can begin to think of themselves, their families, and their communities as historical actors. The people's history movement gains a new visual identity through Celebrate People's History!: The Poster Book of Resistance and Revolution, 2nd Edition, the brainchild of Brooklyn-based artist and archivist Josh MacPhee and the Justseeds Artists' Cooperative.
What started as a midnight undertaking to paste posters of Malcolm X in West Side Chicago in 1998 has turned into an international consciousness-building artistic project. The first edition, released a decade ago, was much slimmer, but the groundwork was set for increased participation in the project and its revolutionary ethos.
The second edition contains nearly 250 posters stretching from the Secession of the Plebs in the Roman Empire during the Fifth Century BCE to the recent toppling of white supremacist statues in the United States. All of these posters have the potential to spark a transformational learning journey. At the very least, readers will come away with the names of more than 100 socially engaged artists and illustrators to keep an eye out for at galleries, bookstores, and on the streets.
The posters eschew traditional political leaders and, instead, center activists, organizers, and other people that just got fed up with the status quo. In some cases, the movements succeeded against impossible odds. In others, the pushback was too powerful at the time, but a spark remains to galvanize those that preserve and honor the memory of the fight.