Nancy Hadley

We the People/Not Only White

21.5” x 19.5”

America’s foundational myths are wonderful ideals for the American people. Unfortunately we’ve never lived up to them. From the time of the first colonists, we’ve defined many people who live in America as not American or not people. Indian wars, broken treaties, and forcible removal; slave trading and chattel slavery; immigrant labor and exclusion laws; Jim Crow and lynching and “race riots”; the list of ways in which various groups of American people have been excluded from basic rights and freedoms goes on and on. When will the nation understand that We the People means all the people? When will the American flag truly represent all Americans, not only white Americans?

Quotes from: U.S. Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Indian treaty language, Gettysburg Address, poem on the Statue of Liberty, Fifteenth Amendment.

Quotations were printed onto cotton fabric with an ink-jet printer. Stars are raw edge fusible applique.