SCLC Fundraising Poster Depicting Martin Luther King, Jr.
Shortly after Martin Luther King's death, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference used this poster—issued in an edition of one hundred—for a fundraising drive. The portrait was based on a drawing by Ben Shahn, commissioned for Time magazine's March 19, 1965 cover. Time's publisher noted that Shahn, "as famed in his own medium of protest as King is in his," greatly admired the civil rights leader and felt that King had "moved more people by his oratory" than anyone else. After the artist's friend Stefan Martin made a wood engraving based on the drawing, Shahn authorized its use in support of various causes. This 1968 poster included two additions to the portrait: the orange seal or artist's "chop" that Shahn had made in Japan, incorporating the letters of the Hebrew alphabet and an excerpt from King's famous "mountaintop" speech in the artist's own distinctive lettering.
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