This freshly commissioned set of postcards from the Detroit-based letterpress printer Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. (born 1950) highlights the voices of women of color in the Black arts and social justice movements, including Ida B. Wells, Zora Neale Hurston, Pauli Murray, Lucy Parsons and others. Sista Said features 40 postcards with 20 inspiring quotes in a keepsake box.
Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. (born 1948) was working a corporate job for AT&T when, at the age of 40, he discovered the art of letterpress printing on a tour of Colonial Williamsburg. Kennedy then devoted himself to the craft, earning an MFA at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and teaching at Indiana University. He now operates Kennedy Prints!, a communal letterpress center in Detroit. Borrowing words from social justice heroes Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth and others, Kennedy layers bold statements on race, capitalism, history and politics in exuberant, colorful and one-of-a-kind posters. Kennedy has been featured in the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine and the Economist, and his work has been exhibited by the Library of Congress, the Museum of Modern Art, New York and other institutions throughout the US. He was the subject of a 2012 feature-length documentary, Proceed and Be Bold!