Artist and activist Keith Knight to present slideshow at UA for Black History Month

Award-winning independent cartoonist Keith Knight will perform his slideshow They Shoot Black People Don’t They: A Cartoonist’s Look at Police Brutality this month in Fayetteville as part of Black History Month.

Keith Knight / (th)ink

Knight is scheduled to appear at 3:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 20 in the Walton Reading Room of Mullins Library on the University of Arkansas campus. His performance will be followed by a Q&A session and book signing.

No registration is required, and the event is free and open to the public.

Created by Knight from a selection of more than two decades of his socio-political cartoons, the slideshow takes a look at police brutality in the African-American community from the 1991 beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers to the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a Ferguson, Missouri police officer in 2014.

“I’ve been creating comics on these issues for over 20 years, but nothing has really changed,” said Knight. “After the events in Ferguson, I thought to myself that it might be a good idea to put a slideshow together in order to engage people in these topics, … to explore why these incidents keep happening.”

Knight is the creator of several comic strips, including The Knight Life, The K Chronicles, and (th)ink, and his comics have been published in several monographs. Two of the titles will be available through the University Libraries this month, The Knight Life: Chivalry Ain’t Dead and The Complete K Chronicles.

For more information about the event, contact the University Libraries’ Dean’s Office at 479-575-6702.