Description
This original relief print is small in size (3″ x 4″), but mighty in message. It comes to you in an 8″ x 10″ black wooden frame with white mat.
This work is inspired by voting rights activists and the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., spoken during an early march on Washington in May 1957, years before “I Have a Dream”. This is just a segment of his powerful speech…
“Give us the ballot, and we will no longer have to worry the federal government about our basic rights.
Give us the ballot, and we will no longer plead to the federal government for passage of an anti-lynching law; we will by the power of our vote write the law on the statute books of the South and bring an end to the dastardly acts of the hooded perpetrators of violence.
Give us the ballot, and we will transform the salient misdeeds of bloodthirsty mobs into the calculated good deeds of orderly citizens.
Give us the ballot, and we will fill our legislative halls with men of goodwill and send to the sacred halls of Congress men who will not sign a ‘Southern Manifesto’ because of their devotion to the manifesto of justice.
Give us the ballot, and we will place judges on the benches of the South who will do justly and love mercy, and we will place at the head of the southern states governors who will, who have felt not only the tang of the human, but the glow of the Divine.”
The work is part of Hope McMath’s #100DaysofHope series, which began by creating one linoleum block image everyday for 100 days as a means to bring daily artmaking into her practice. Hope reflects on issues that matter to her most as she looks for ways to sustain and persevere. It isn’t a blind hope of unfettered optimism, but a hope that is based in truthtelling, understanding, love, equity, and the actions that will bring a brighter future.
Each work is hand printed in a limited edition of 10.
