Jesse R. Erickson has recently published his paper, “Revolution in Black: Black American Alternative Press and Popular Culture at the End of the Twentieth Century,” in Publishing History, no.70, 2011. In looking at the various connections between ethnicity, typography, and graphic design, the paper attempts to trace some of the currently reigning visual motifs in African American print culture back to certain post-World War II era movements of black radicalism. In doing so, the paper draws upon a number of contemporaneous African American periodical print publications for evidence.

His use of primary source evidence includes printed ephemera and artifacts from the Los Angeles chapter of the Black Panther Party, some of which is currently housed in the department’s Collection of Underground, Alternative and Extremist Literature (Collection 50). From the messianic typography found in the newspaper headlines of the Nation of Islam’s Muhammad Speaks to the hip hop industry’s print media coverage of the Tupac Shakur assassination, “Revolution in Black” presents a thoroughly researched case for the argument that race, printing, and subaltern social movements are often manifestly interdependent.

Jesse Erickson is a Library Assistant in the Charles E. Young Research Library Department of Special Collections and a Ph.D. candidate in UCLA’s Graduate School of Education of Information Studies. His most current research focuses on the intersections among African American printing history and special collections librarianship.