Goals of the AFRICOBRA movement

AfriCOBRA, or the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists, worked to make African-American art something unique in society, and co-founder Gerald Williams explains the dilemma that African American

African American

African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

 artists faced:
To attempt to create this idea of blackness, black artists of this time period used different techniques to display the aspects of blackness in their artwork, in addition to gaining a more equal position in society, such as the commemoration of black revolutionaries

Revolutionary

A revolutionary is a person who either actively participates in, or advocates revolution. Also, when used as an adjective, the term revolutionary refers to something that has a major, sudden impact on society or on some aspect of human endeavor.-Definition:...

 in the Wall of Respect.The "Wall of Respect" was painted by the members of the Organization for Black American Culture (OBAC).
AfriCOBRA was more than a collection of artist

Artist

An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

s; it was a passionate call for freedom founded on a set of philosophical and
aesthetic principles. In the struggle for liberation

Liberty

Liberty is a moral and political principle, or Right, that identifies the condition in which human beings are able to govern themselves, to behave according to their own free will, and take responsibility for their actions...

 and equality

Egalitarianism

Egalitarianism is a trend of thought that favors equality of some sort among moral agents, whether persons or animals. Emphasis is placed upon the fact that equality contains the idea of equity of quality...

 within the African-American community, AfriCOBRA represented these principles through the medium of art

Art

Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....

.
-Barbara Jones-Hogu characterized the artistic expression of the AfriCOBRA movement by saying,
“[Our art] must communicate to its viewer a statement of truth

Truth

Truth has a variety of meanings, such as the state of being in accord with fact or reality. It can also mean having fidelity to an original or to a standard or ideal. In a common usage, it also means constancy or sincerity in action or character...

, of action, of education

Education

Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...

, of conditions and a state of being to our
people. We wanted to speak to them and for them, by having our common thoughts, feelings, trials and tribulations express our
total existence as a people.”