SPCUNY Artist
Annabelle Heckler
Collaborators
- Mudiwa Pettus, Greylin Jones, Miles McAfee, and Louis Miller (*77*)
- Ingrid Romero, Jaclyn Reyes, Josh MacPhee, and Alicia Grullón (Give Light)
Red Scare Lavender Song: Queer Solidarities and Stolen Histories
At this moment of rising authoritarianism and organized, deliberate erasure of history, Red Scare Lavender Song traces queer solidarities hidden in the archives, especially uplifting the radical histories of the queer CIO. Comics, graphic history, collage, posters and “Freedom Zines,” (Chy Sprauve) share these silenced histories in an accessible, popular format.
Red Scare Lavender Song uplifts the voices of Moranda Smith, Viola Brown and other working class Black women who organized CIO unions in the Jim Crow South, connected union organizing with freedom movements and the early Civil Rights movement. In the face of intense political repression, they articulated the intersections of Black liberation and other struggles, prefiguring social movements to come (Dayo F. Gore).
Events
May–June 2025: Give Light, an art exhibit presented at Labor And The Crisis Of Democracy: Working-Class Politics In An Age Of Authoritarianism at CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies, the Labor Research & Action Network conference at Rutgers University, and the Labor and Working Class History conference in Chicago.
June 2025: *77*, organized by Mudiwa Pettus and Greylin Jones as part of Reclaiming Lyceums: New York City’s Forgotten Rhetorical Legacy.
Poster by Abygai Peña
Photo courtesy of the artist
Image courtesy of the artist
Image courtesy of Annabelle Heckler
Image by Daniel OBrien
Cinthya Santos Briones