Who Killed Martin's Dream?

  • Ella Marke

A multi-output campaign focused on institutional racism in the USA.

Systemic and institutionalised racism persists because the people with the power to change it either don’t care enough or care very much about those systems staying in place. This campaign seeks to educate its audience about the very real effects of racism in society – to make people feel uncomfortable in continuing their pattern of apathy whilst aware of racial injustices.

The campaign uses the phrase ‘Who Killed Martin's Dream?' (referencing Martin Luther King Jr's I Have a Dream speech) as an urgent and pressing slogan to emphasise how the dreams of the civil rights era have been lost to a system which still oppresses people of colour.
The typeface and infographics are formed out of dead, shrivelled petals, at once reflecting death and also a sense of hope. By using flowers and saturated colours, the campaign visuals reflect the aesthetic of mid-century civil rights posters which drew on an intense need for hope amongst the anger, frustration and sorrow.

With education at the heart of the campaign, finding new ways of understanding complex data and socio-economic politics was crucial. A short book explores the current position of African Americans through the lens of the original ten-point programme of the Black Panther Party published in the 1960s.

In which ways have these demands for human rights been fulfilled? In which ways have civil rights processes remained stagnant or even reverted since the mid-century? Spoiler: not a huge amount has changed — in fact, not one of the original ten demands have been fulfilled. With economic inequality deeply entrenched in American society, racial equality is still desperately far away.