The Opening of the People’s Flag Show (9 November 1970)

This photograph shows Jean Toche and Jon Hendricks participating in the flag burning ceremony in the courtyard of Judson Memorial Church.

For denouncing the war, Jon Hendricks, Jean Toche, and Faith Ringgold organized “The People’s Flag Show” to test the legality of flag desecration laws. In the flyer of “Call for Work for People’s Flag Show,” it is written:

“As a challenge to the repressive laws governing so-called flag desecration, concerned artists and citizens are asked to participate in an exhibition, on Nov. 9th, 1970. The exhibition will run through Nov. 14th. Artists may not retain their conspicuous silence in times such as these. All participants should please limit their contribution to one piece. The delivery date for all work is Sunday afternoon, Nov. 8… Your voice is your sole defense against repression.”

The AWC organizers distributed the flyers and posted an announcement in the New York Times. The Flag Show took place in the Judson Memorial Church on Washington Square Park. Faith Ringgold designed the poster. Large numbers of New York artists participated in the show submitting over 150 works. The accepted works were presented without any alteration. “The People’s Flag Show” involved both artistic freedom and antiwar imagery. Before the show, artists had already incorporated the flag as “a staple of anti-war posters and art” wrote Lippard, “its stars and stripes reduced to guns, bombs, coffins, skulls, prison bars, and so forth.” The issue of artists’ appropriations of the flag emerged in the public sphere due to a pending US Supreme Court case involving Stephen Radich, a New York art dealer who had been sentenced in 1967 for showing works by an artist who used reinterpretations of the flag to criticize US involvement in Vietnam. Two hours before the opening of the show, a flag-burning ceremony was operated in the courtyard of the Judson Memorial Church. Jean Toche read the Declaration of War with the witness of the participants and other members of the press and media. The documentation of the event and the remnants of the burned flag were later placed in the sanctuary of the church, together with the rest of the people’s exhibit. The flag show’s publicity invoked the anti-war forces within the art community, a claim of representing the people, echoing the New Left’s attempts to cast itself as “the people” at events such as the demonstrations at the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention. The items included, just to name a few, a baked flag cake, a flag constructed of soft drink cans, a flag in the shape of penis. A flag collage in the exhibition was by the photographer herself. There are several notable figures. The women’s liberationist and writer Kate Millett draped an actual flag over a toilet bowl. The postmodern artist and choreographer Yvonne Rainer and the dance troupe Grand Union performed a nude dance with flags. The Yippie activist Abbie Hoffman spoke to the audience clad in his flag skirt, which he had been arrested for wearing in 1968. On November 13, the Flag Show was closed by the Attorney General’s office, which was one day earlier than planned. Faith Ringgold, Jon Hendricks and Jon Toche were arrested and accused with Desecration of the Flag. They were henceforth referred to as the Judson 3.