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Rally Mohawks! Bring out your axes and tell King George we'll pay no taxes on his foreign tea....-a song of 1773
Jacob Lawrence American
Not on view
This painting’s title comes from a protest song that recounted a famous incident led by Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty, a secret organization fighting British taxation of the colonies. On the night of December 16, 1773, a group of colonists, disguised rudimentarily as Mohawk warriors, boarded British ships to dump their cargo of tea into Boston Harbor. The revolutionary act quickly became known as the Boston Tea Party. Although no fighting actually took place, Lawrence recast the charade as a violent combat of arms, fists, and axes between masked and unmasked "Native" figures. The latter forms relate to scenes of racial masquerade the artist was exploring in other works during the 1950s.
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