09/25/2025
I Pledge A Knee (2017) by April Banks
2017, 21.5” x 35.5”
Encaustic wax, hand-cut paper, graphite, on wood panels. The work is part of the Harold Jones collection. I spoke to Harold Jones about the ordered removal of this image from public view by this administration, and with his permission I’m sharing what he wrote: “It is so profoundly ironic that the current administration seeks to suppress one of the most recognized visual records of American slavery: that of the Civil War era photograph of the enslaved “Gordon” whose back is literally etched deeply with scars from repeated lashings. Black American artist April Banks reimagined this image by transposing it with an image of former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, forced out of play for his kneeling during the national anthem in protest of racial injustice. Their nearly identical kneeling postures, separated by more than a century of history, are folded by the artist into a single image that links slavery’s brutality with the silencing of protest. This work is only one out of Banks’s series entitled “Redacted”; the work also layers in graphically the censored and forgotten stanza of the “Star-Spangled Banner” that cries out slavery’s terror and gloom, exposing the truths America has long chosen to erase. Removing this work denies the truth of our “shared” history and dishonors those who endured its horrors.“ -Harold Jones I remember driving this piece from Los Angeles to Oakland, straight to Harold. I didn’t know then that the imagery used would be erased less than 10 years later. Today I’m grateful for artists, and for those that support us. We are the most consistent, and truthful, repositories.
