Faith Ringgold

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Lore & Background

Faith Willi Jones was born the youngest of three children on October 8, 1930, in Harlem Hospital, New York City. Her parents, Andrew Louis Jones and Willi Posey Jones, were descendants of working-class families displaced by the Great Migration. Her mother was a fashion designer and her father an avid storyteller. Growing up surrounded by the Harlem Renaissance arts scene—with figures such as Duke Ellington and Langston Hughes nearby—and childhood friend Sonny Rollins, who often practiced saxophone at her family's parties, she was encouraged creatively. Because of chronic asthma, she explored visual art with crayons and learned sewing and fabric work from her mother. Ringgold maintained that despite the Great Depression, she was 'protected from oppression and surrounded by a loving family.' In 1948, she enrolled at City College of New York, forced to major in art education because women were only allowed certain majors. She married Robert Earl Wallace in 1950, had two daughters, Michele and Barbara Faith Wallace, in 1952, and separated four years later due to his heroin addiction. She earned her bachelor's degree in 1955 and her master's degree in 1959, then traveled to Europe with her mother and daughters, visiting the Louvre, which inspired her later quilt series The French Collection (1991–1997). She married Burdette Ringgold on May 19, 1962. She visited West Africa twice, in 1976 and 1977, which deeply influenced her mask making, doll painting, and sculptures.

Reader's Guide

Faith Ringgold's significance lies in her decades-long career as a multimedia artist and activist who challenged the marginalization of Black artists in art museums. Her narrative quilts, beginning in the 1980s, became her signature form, weaving together painting, fabric, and storytelling to depict Black American life. She also wrote and illustrated over a dozen children's books. Her early political paintings, such as the American People Series (1963), addressed racism and the Civil Rights Movement from a female perspective. In 1972, as part of a commission sponsored by the Creative Artists Public Service Program, she installed For the Women's House at the Women's Facility on Rikers Island—her first public commission and first feminist work, which inspired the organization Art Without Walls. Her piece Black Light Series #10: Flag for the Moon: Die Nigger (1969), created in response to the first Apollo 11 Moon landing, was nearly purchased by Chase Manhattan Bank until representatives read the hidden text. Ringgold's art is held in permanent collections of major institutions including the Guggenheim, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. She taught in public schools and at the college level, and in 1973 left public school teaching to focus on art full-time. In 1995, she was approached by ACA Galleries for exclusive representation and was represented by them for the rest of her life. Her legacy includes promoting Black artists and rallying against their exclusion from mainstream art spaces.

Did You Know?

• Ringgold's childhood friend Sonny Rollins, who became a prominent jazz musician, often visited her family and practiced saxophone at their parties.
• Her 1972 mural For the Women's House at Rikers Island was her first public commission and first feminist work, and it inspired the organization Art Without Walls.
• In 1969, her painting Black Light Series #10: Flag for the Moon: Die Nigger was nearly purchased by Chase Manhattan Bank until representatives realized the flag design optically incorporated the phrase 'DIE NIGGER'.
• Ringgold visited West Africa twice, in 1976 and 1977, which deeply influenced her mask making, doll painting, and sculptures.
• She was forced to major in art education at City College of New York because women were only allowed in certain majors.