Benny Andrews's "Militant"

1996

Benny Andrews’s art speaks to African Americans’ relationship with patriotism and protest.

Benny Andrews is an artist, educator, and activist. Andrews’s image of a man on bended knee recalls Josiah Wedgwood’s Am I Not a Man and a Brother?, an iconic 18th-century image of an enslaved man in chains. Wedgwood’s image became an internationally recognized icon of the abolition movement.

In Andrews’s contemporary version, the kneeling figure is swathed in two American flags, suggesting themes of African American patriotism and protest.