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The ‘Coming to Jones Road’ series is an example of Faith Ringgold’s story quilts, telling both a personal and historical story. In 1992 she moved to Jones Road in Englewood, New Jersey and encountered animosity from the predominantly white neighbourhood who prevented her from building an art studio. Her freedom to create art was challenged, reminding her how the African American journey to freedom was not over. She responded with a series of painted story quilts and prints based on Jones Road, which narrate the journey of runaway slaves fleeing the north via the Underground Railroad. The figures within the pieces are anonymous, resonant with Ringgold’s practice: ‘What I really am is a people painter… So I do people that are people because I don’t want people to say “Oh, that’s Martin Luther King” or somebody. It isn’t someone else. It’s you.”’

In Coming to Jones Road: Under a Blood Red Sky #7 two silhouetted figures ‘walk to freedom’. Vibrant red sky reflects the anguish and bloodshed African Americans have endured. Ringgold explains, ‘I have tried to couple the beauty of the place and the harsh realities of its racist history to create a freedom series that turns all the ugliness of spirit, past and present, into something livable’.