[This is an unfortunately necessary update to the NAACP sign from 1930 and it continues its relevance in this moment ] Artist: Dread Scott • During the Jim Crow era, Black people were terrorized by lynching — often public and publicized extra legal torture and murder of Black people. It was a threat that hung over all Black people who knew that for any reason or no reason whatsoever you could be killed and the killers would never be brought to justice. Now the police are playing the same role of terror that lynch mobs did at the turn of the century. It is a threat that hangs over all Black people, that we can be killed by the police for no reason whatsoever — for a traffic stop, for selling CDs, for selling cigarettes. Shot to death, choked to death, tasered to death, driven to death. Standing still, fleeing. Shot in the chest, shot in the back. Hands up, hands down. Point blank range or at a distance. And the police never face justice for their crimes. It is a vivid concentration of the complete illegitimacy of this whole system. Legal armed enforcers of relations of exploitation and oppression murder with impunity. #justiceforALL #equalityforALL #humanizeblack #blacklivesmatter #blackisbeautiful (at Jack Shainman Gallery)