I created this design, primarily through digital means, to be put on a T-shirt as a fundraiser for my home church: Metropolitan A.M.E. of Washington, DC. As of today, that process is in limbo. But regardless of the outcome, I wanted to post the design since there has been a lull in my posting frequency.
The T-shirt was meant to highlight the fact that the U.N. has declared 2011 to be the International Year for Peoples of African Descent. I thought long and hard about what image to put on a shirt before finally landing on this one: three dancing silhouettes filled by the flags of the top 35 countries with black populations. I looked up which countries had the highest percentages of black populations and list them in order from the island nation of St. Kitts and Nevis (98% black pop.) to Israel (2.8% black pop.). There are a number of countries that did not make this list, I know, but for the purpose of this design, I decided to basically stop at a 2.8% black population. Note: Canada and Italy have smaller black populations and were added to the patchwork quilt of flags, largely because I both wanted more European representation and because Canada, I know from history, owes much of its black population, small though it may be, to the runaway slaves from the U.S.--an integral part the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade's leg of the forced migration of African Descended People.
The dancers in the image are striking poses I found while perusing images of African and Hip-Hop dance--a perfect bridge between our past and present, I thought. My hope at this point is that the Daniel Alexander Payne CDC organization of Metropolitan A.M.E. will approve the design, all will go well with the printing, and this will desgin will be across the chests of "Met" members and extended family throughout the DC Area.
