Black Lives Matter launches new arts and culture platform with Emory Douglas as its first featured artist

Black Lives Matter today launches online arts and merchandise platform, BLM Arts+Culture promoting emerging and established African-American designers, musicians and visual artists. Black Lives Matter, founded by Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi in 2013, is one of the largest social movements in recent American history.

The site’s first featured artist is Emory Douglas, a graphic artist and Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party from 1967 until its dissolution in the early 1980s. To celebrate the five-year-anniversary of #BlackLivesMatter, Douglas has released a print of his iconic artwork, We Shall Survive, Without A Doubt. The site also sells T-shirts, mugs and caps, with all proceeds going towards supporting the important activist movement.

As told to the Hollywood Reporter, Patrisse Cullors says: “Black Lives Matter Arts+Culture uplifts artists who are staging cultural interventions and changing the world through their work.” Cullors has also curated an art show, including artists Damon Davis, Carlos Garcia and Oto Attah, at a BLM Arts+Culture pop-up shop in Long Beach this weekend. Of the exhibition, Cullors says: “I curated this group of artists because their work is critical to transforming the way we relate to the world and to ourselves.”