The missing designers : a history of activists designing for racial justice

Abstract

Design precedents are often de-historicized, de-politicized, and de-raced. By starting at the margins, what lineages can designers uncover for seemingly apolitical design tactics? Intervening in the genealogy of race and design, this thesis locates design creativity within Black resistance movements and complicates the narrative of who is credited with transforming and repurposing the built environment. As critics of the status quo, Black activists did more than just fight and dismantle. They designed and created alternatives to the systems that aimed to diminish them. Two case studies offer a closer look at design interventions for self-determination by Black communities in the late 1960s. In Chapter One, I consider the Black Panthers as tactical urbanists who reshaped the environment in low-cost, temporary, and participatory ways. In Chapter Two, I examine the New Communities land trust and their design charrettes as a democratic intervention in an often professionalized planning process. Chapter Three considers how Critical Race Theory decodes images in these cases that seem natural, inevitable, and race neutral.