Students attending the Columbus College of Art and Design were invited to enter the Emancipation Poster Contest hosted by the State Library of Ohio and in conjunction with the Forever Free: Abraham Lincoln’s Journey to Emancipation exhibit at the State Library of Ohio.
The goal of the contest was to create a 16"x24" visual representation to communicate the concept of emancipation without the use of text. Students were challenged to make a poster that a slave in 1862 (that could not read) would be able to understand that they had been emancipated, no longer a piece of owned property but a free man, woman or child of the United States of America.