The Raised Fist’s History Through the Message Cycle
Clenched, raised fists have become widespread at recent racial justice protests. The raised fist, now associated with Black Lives Matter, today symbolizes standing up to police brutality and other oppression facing African Americans in the United States. But the history of the symbol is much more than simply a racial justice movement, as it has undergone multiple rotations of Meredith Davis’ Message Cycle.
The original fist was created in opposition of monarchy; French artist Honore Daumier is credited with the first raised fist in his 1860 painting, The Uprising, featuring a man with his fist raised as a symbol of the 1848 revolutions against monarchs that spread across Europe.
In 1917, industrial workers adopted this image, illustrating workers raising one large fist, as a part of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) movement, a revolutionary union characterized by violence and unrest. Another IWW poster centered around three raised fists. IWW repurposed the original creation into their message of a worker’s revolution.
The symbol continued to gain popularity in the 1930s, first by socialist parties like the one that created this Dutch poster from 1932. Later, in the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) to represent anti-fascism, revolutionary forces coined “the anti-fascist salute” while fighting dictator Francisco Franco.
Starting with the 1968 Olympics, the image was adopted as a symbol of black power. While the National Anthem played, African American medalists Tommie Smith and John Carlos held up a black-gloved fist in solidarity with the resistance against human rights violations that blacks had faced.
The Black Panther Party also used the clenched, raised fist at rallies, protests, and conventions as a symbol against racial injustice and police brutality.
Founded in 1966, the Black Panther Party promulgated a message of black power and socialism, specifically calling for the government to release all blacks convicted and imprisoned, provide housing and education for all blacks, and pay reparations to “end the robbery by the capitalists” in the group’s “Ten-Point Program.”
In 1969, the Black Panthers were deemed a communist organization and enemy of the United States.
In recent years, the fist has been used to represent solidarity against racial injustice, most notably by NFL players in support of Colin Kaepernick’s protest against police brutality and racism in America.
Remarkably similar in its socialist message and often violent methods to the Black Panther Party, Black Lives Matter also uses the raised fist to protest police brutality and racial injustice.
Black Lives Matter started using the symbol after the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown and now has fashioned it as one of their logos.
Though the multiple appropriations of the raised fist all center around revolution of some sort, the symbol’s meaning adopted several meanings over time, indicating different rotations through the Message Cycle.