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Celebrate American Heroes

In the fall of 2019, I was approached by a man named Jim Stewart, a retired history professor at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, while working at my job as a barista. I had expressed to him that I was a Digital Media Arts student and he informed me of a project he was working on - Celebrate American Heroes. The intent behind the project is to bring African-American history to light and work to actively include this history in American history. The project began with stamping twenty dollar bills with Harriet Tubman’s face, and has since extended to buttons, magnets, and t-shirts.

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Black Power Fist, Celembrate American Heroes
Celebrate American Heroes Logo
The Celebrate American Heroes logo incorporates two main elements to capture the main inspiration behind the project. The center of the logo features a Black Power fist, a prominent symbol for black nationalism throughout history. The solid black, double lined border that surrounds the fist is a spin-off of the United States Federal Reserve System logo, which is included to represent the origins of the project.
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The Celebrate American Heroes t-shirts highlight historically prominent Black American leaders. Each leader is surrounded by a solid square in which they can be seen protruding from the top border to showcase their actions towards breaking oppressive normalities. 

The Harriet Tubman shirt has a slightly different design that includes a solid bar along the bottom of the square that states, “Moses to her people”, along with “General Tubman”. This shirt’s design is slightly different as Tubman was the first shirt that was created in the series, and one of the first and most prominent black heroes in history.

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