Tote Bags from "The 1960s- A Generation on Fire: Judy Baca's Great Wall of Los Angeles"

A canvas tote bag featuring the "Generation on Fire" section from the Great Wall of Los Angeles 1960s expansion, created by artist Judith F. Baca and the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC).

The design depicts a powerful image of diverse activists locking arms across racial lines—a transgressive act in the 1960s—as they face the force of water hoses, recalling the infamous 1963 Birmingham attacks on peaceful civil rights marchers. In the background, a Greyhound bus arrives in Anniston, Alabama, where Freedom Riders were attacked by a white mob on May 14, 1961.

The bus carries notable Freedom Riders who risked their lives to protest racial segregation: Joan Mullholland, Catherine Burks-Brooks, Jean Thompson, Alex Weiss, Robert and Helen Singleton, Lula Mae White, Hank Thomas, Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael), James Farmer, and John Lewis. Their courageous actions led to the U.S. Interstate Commerce Commission banning segregation of bus and train stations on September 22, 1961.

A durable tote for everyday use that carries both your belongings and a piece of civil rights history.

Tote bag measures 15" tall x 14" and has no gusset.  Screen printed on canvas.

In 1974, Baca conceived of the Great Wall as a monument to the people of California, featuring a visual history of ethnic peoples from prehistoric times to the 1950s. Soon after, Baca co-founded the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) and became its artistic director. The Great Wall was SPARC’s first public art project which was completed over five summers and employed 400 young people and their families from diverse social and economic backgrounds working with artists, oral historians, ethnologists, scholars, and hundreds of community members to paint the mural on the walls of the LA River.

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