Black History and Media | Part 1

If you know me, you know I watch anything Black history—all the time. I don’t care how hard it is to watch. I live for catching specials on PBS. And because I’m a designer, I’m always analyzing how image, marketing, and media shape cultural imperialism.

What sickens me just as much as lynchings and racial violence is how white supremacists have used imagery and language to degrade Black identity and obstruct progress—especially during Reconstruction.

While watching these two videos, I want you to absorb this history as a creative media specialist. Forget graphic design as we know it today—because Black people weren’t invited into the Industrial Revolution en masse. Instead, our creative labor was largely dedicated to fighting propaganda, dismantling fake news, and countering the visual assault on Black identity.

We weren’t designing to sell products—we were designing for liberation, for survival, for truth.

Figures like Robert Sengstacke Abbott (founder of The Chicago Defender), Ida B. Wells (Red Record), and Frederick Douglass, who masterfully wielded photography as a tool of resistance, deserve to be at the forefront of visual communication history. Their work wasn’t just about aesthetics—it was revolutionary defiance.

As you watch these documentaries, pay close attention to:

• How white supremacists weaponized imagery to uphold oppression
• The strategiesThe Defender used to fight back, inform, and help Black people move toward greater autonomy

You are the descendants of these radical, brilliant creatives—people who designed far more than just products for capital.

?? Watch and learn: ??? Great Migrations with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. | Full Episode 1 | PBSGreat Migrations with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. | Full Episode 1 | PBS

??? American Coup: Wilmington 1898 | Full Documentary | American Experience | PBSAmerican Coup: Wilmington 1898 | Full Documentary | American Experience | PBS