A pioneer for the rights of women and African-Americans since the late 60s, Faith Ringgold is a feminist activist and world-renowned artist, most famous for her political paintings, narrative quilts, and children's books. A native New Yorker who grew up in 1930s Harlem, Ringgold took inspiration from the writings of James Baldwin and Amiri Baraka, African art, Impressionism, and Cubism. While working as an art teacher in public schools and raising two daughters, she created her first political collection in 1963: The American People Series. These portray racial interactions and the Civil Rights Movement from a female point of view. In 1968, Ringgold co-founded the Ad Hoc Women’s Art Committee with fellow artist Poppy Johnson and art critic Lucy Lippard. When women and African-American artists were excluded from a major Modernist art exhibition at the Whitney Museum, this committee banded together in protest. After more protest activity, Ringgold was arrested in 1970. She then worked with Lippard in the group Women Artists in Revolution (WAR) and was a founding member of the “Where We At” Black Women Artists, a New York-based women’s collective steeped in the Black Arts Movement. Further, she co-founded the National Black Feminist Organization with her daughter Michele Wallace, and the Coast-to-Coast National Women Artists of Color Projects with Clarissa Sligh. In the 80s, Ringgold began making narrative quilts, including Echoes of Harlem (1980), Who’s Afraid of Aunt Jemima (1983), and the Michael Jackson tribute Who’s Bad? (1988). Since then she has organized quilt-making workshops for educators and given talks on this craft. Ringgold is also a successful author and illustrator. Her first published book, the award winning Tar Beach, was published by Random House in 1991 and has won more than 30 awards including a Caldecott Honor. Ringgold was professor emeritus at the University of California, San Diego where she taught art from 1987 until 2002. She is the recipient of more than 75 awards including 22 Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degrees, and has received fellowships and grants that include the National Endowment For the Arts Award for sculpture (1978) and for painting (1989); The La Napoule Foundation Award in France (1990); The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (1987); The New York Foundation For the Arts Award (1988); The American Association of University Women for travel to Africa (1976); and The Creative Artists Public Service Award (1971).