Ten Voting Rights Posters From Around The World

“Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.” That was the guiding mantra of Fannie Lou Hamer, who two years before she ran for Congress in 1964, didn’t know she had a right to vote.

In honor of Election Day, the Center for the Study of Political Graphics (CSPG) has highlighted ten voting rights posters directed at citizens like Hamer—she later became a civil rights firebrand—who have been disenfranchised from the process, worldwide.

Members of the group Hamer joined, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), were routinely attacked and sometimes severely beaten for helping people register to vote.

“These posters tell a story, largely of what censors don’t want to be told,” says Carol Wells, founder of the Center for the Study of Political Graphics. Based in Culver City, the organization has collected over 90,000 posters from 100 countries. Founded in 1988, the center claims “the largest collection of post-World War II political posters in the U.S. and the largest known collection of posters from and about Los Angeles.”

One of the SNCC’s voting rights posters depicts a seated African-American man with the words, “One Man One Vote.” Another from South Africa shows a ballot dated April 27, 1994, the first election in the country in which every race was allowed to participate. The election marked the end of apartheid.

The poster notes items needed for the election: flashlights, computers, radios, batteries, modems, FAX machines, calculators, bullhorns, walkie-talkies, generators and answering machines, among other items.

People Have Died For The Right To Vote

“People have died to stop wars, get the right to vote, fight segregation, gain access to safe and legal abortions, end apartheid and countless other fights,” Wells says. “Political posters get us out of our comfort zone”

A 1982 poster from El Salvador depicts an arm rising up from opposing armies. The hand holds a piece of paper with the words, “El Voto!”

Wells first developed her passion for social justice posters when she was involved in civil rights and anti-war work in the 1960s. In 1981, she was hired to collect posters in Nicaragua by UCLA professor David Kunzle. “I had an epiphany there,” Wells says. “I saw how posters work, how they catch your attention. They break through your bubble and make you question and try to understand what the message is.”

She parlayed the posters she collected into a traveling exhibit and soon began collecting more. An avid collector of political posters, Kunzle donated about 20,000 posters to CSPG. He died in January 2024.

Many of CSPG’s posters are sourced from bookstores and community centers, a common distribution point.

Poster art is better known in Europe where nearly every country has a poster museum. The Poster House became the first such museum in the U.S. in 2019. Based in New York City, the museum harbors a wide collection that spans international history.

CSPG’s exhibitions have toured to more than 400 venues worldwide. The organization also loans posters to other institutions, including The Getty Center, the Smithsonian National Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum.

The organization’s exhibition page lists numerous themes, including:

• Posters on Affordable Housing
• Posters on Women Fighting for Justice
• Five Decades of Posters Protesting Police Violence
• Posters of LGBTQ+ Struggles & Celebrations
• Posters on Health Activism & Social Justice
• Posters on the Prison Industrial Complex
• Graphic Heritage and Legacies of the United Farm Workers

“There’s never been a moment of social change in the last 500 years where arts is not at the center,” Wells says. “You can’t imagine the civil rights movement without music, it’s what inspired people.”