The Legendary Faith Ringgold

Myself, Aminah Robinson, Faith Ringgold, Michele Wallace, Barbara Wallace, Dorian Bergen

Growing up on Edgecombe Avenue in the 1930‘s, during the peak of the Harlem Renaissance, Faith Ringgold was determined to spend her life as an artist. She was influenced by her neighbors which included legends like former Supreme Court Justice - Thurgood Marshall, Composer/Performer - Duke Ellington, and Writer - Langston Hughes. “I got a chance to meet all these people. Thurgood Marshall lived right up the street. So, you got a chance to see what you could be,” Ringgold said in a piece called Memories of Sugar Hill in January 2010.

     The child prodigy spent most of her childhood in doors due to sever asthma. “Not being able to go to school, I missed more days than most - getting shots, spending time in the hospital,” she said. Ringgold never attended kindergarten or the first grade because of her illness. When she was finally well enough to attend school, she skipped both grades, “They never understood how I could keep up. My mother used to get my textbooks from Barnes and Nobel, they were text book dealers back then,” she said. “My older brother and sister loved teaching me.” It was during these early years that she began painting with the encouragement of her family.

    During the 1950s the City College of New York had a “very political student body.” This is where Ringgold became politically active and began her involvement with the Civil Rights movement, she graduated with her MA in 1959. This time in her life became an important part of her work - it is reflected in pieces like “The American People Series” and “The Flag is Bleeding”.

    After several failed attempts to have her work shown at galleries and museums, Ringgold began fighting for equal representation of black artists. “When I realized in the ‘60s that no matter how hard I worked for Civil Rights, if I didn’t understand problems as an artist, as a woman - I wasn’t going to get anywhere,” said Ringgold. “I was told to say outside while the men talked,” she continued. “I opened the door and they got to sit down and talk.” The sexism became frustrating, “I’ve opened no door for black women, just men,” she said. “I became a feminist. I’m not just black, I am a black woman.”

    Finally, in 1967 Ringgold landed her first one-person-show at the Spectrum Gallery in New York City. As her career continued she began to work with mixed media. By the late 1980s, she began to gain notoriety for her now famous for painting images and writing stories on quilts - which she admitted had been made out of “economic necessity” to avoid the high costs of shipping traditional framed paintings.

    The quilts also served another purpose, they gave Ringgold the opportunity to gain her voice as a writer. For years she struggled to find a publisher. Eventually she decided to “self-publish” by painting her stories on quilts, using the boarder as a space to write the story. It was not until she created the “Tar Beach” series of quilts, that she was finally approached by a publisher. The the book, “Tar Beach”, earned the The New York Times Best Children’s Book Award, a Caldecott Honor for best illustrated children’s book of 1991, and The Coretta Scott King Award for best illustrated book by an African American. Her determination and ingenuity paid off, she has now published more than 15 books including: We Flew Over the Bridge: The Memoirs of Faith Ringgold, Cassie’s Word Quilt, and My Dream of Martin Luther King.

     Ringgold has been such an inspiration throughout her life that a school has been built in her honor in Hayward, California. Currently, she is involved with The Sugar Hill Project’s development of the Faith Ringgold Children's Museum of Art and Storytelling as well as the Leadership Academy for Girls - both in New York City. Some of her most famous pieces are a part of the permanent collections at the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Guggenheim Museum - a true testament to determination, hard work, and will power.                    

    At the age of 79, she currently resides in Edgewood, New Jersey with her second husband, Burdette Ringgold. She continues to work on her art and with the non-profit she established in 2002 - The Anyone Can Fly Foundation, which promotes the work of little known black artists. She works very closely with her daughters, Michele and Barbara Wallace (from her first marriage), on most of her current projects.

Despite the adversity in her life, Faith Ringgold continues to persevere in the face of opposition and that is exactly what she advised me to do. “Go for it and be aware of who you are as a black woman in America,” she said. “Stand up and assert yourself, all you have to do is start.”