Vintage Posters

1970s Anti-capital-punishment protest poster flyer urging for "right to life" for convicted man Robert Cline of Rhode Island, who's death sentence was eventually overturned when Rhode Island's Supreme Court ruled that the law imposing the death penalty for murder committed by inmates in state prisons was unconstitutional. (Source: State v. Cline, 397 A.2d 1309 (R.I. 1979). and Washington Post February 19, 1979). Artist George Knowlton (who's studio was the Flats Workshop)"was an artist and instructor in the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition Prison Arts Program in Kingston, Rhode Island." (Source: NYPL - Black Emergency Cultural Coalition records 1971-1984). "In 1971, the BECC created a Prison Arts Program in response to the Attica Prison riot in New York. The following year, the BECC, in collaboration with Artists and Writers Protest Against the War in Vietnam, published the, “Attica Book,” that included black-and-white reproductions of works by forty-eight artists, including Benny Andrews, Faith Ringgold, Irving Petlin, Jacob Lawrence, Jack Sonenberg, Mary Frank, Melvin Edwards, and Vivian Browne. Eventually, the prison arts program would expand to twenty states, and the BECC would sponsor similar programs in juvenile detention centers and mental health facilities throughout the United States."(Source: Wikipedia)