FULL DISPLAY AT THE BOTTOM

 

1. A Man was Lynched Tomorrow

JOMO’s haunting painting A Man Was Lynched Tomorrow echoes with the historical weight of Black struggle in America, anchoring itself in the brutal legacy of racial terror while refusing to let us look away from its present-day reality. The title itself is a chilling inversion of the iconic phrase “A man was lynched yesterday,” once flown on a flag outside the National Headquarters of the NAACP in New York City between 1936 and 1938. This flag was raised following every reported lynching of a Black person in the United States, a part of the NAACP’s long and courageous anti-lynching campaign that began in earnest after the horrific 1916 lynching of Jesse Washington in Waco, Texas.

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Where the original NAACP flag mourned a past crime, JOMO’s painting warns of an inevitable future—one that remains deeply entangled with America’s legacy of white supremacy. In doing so, it shifts the narrative from mourning to prophecy. The use of the word tomorrow suggests that, despite the passage of time, the threat of racial violence has not dissipated. It lingers. It evolves. It adapts. It survives in systems, in silence, in institutions, and in the ongoing loss of Black life at the hands of both mobs and mechanisms.

Bordering the canvas are the names of counties—each a place of documented racial terror, each a scar in the American landscape. Among them is Leflore, not just a geographical marker, but a deeply personal connection for the artist: JOMO’s great-great-great-grandfather. This detail transforms the painting from political statement to ancestral reckoning. The artist is not simply chronicling history—he is standing in its aftermath, speaking from within the lineage of those who endured it.

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What makes this work profoundly unsettling is its reminder that lynching, as a symbol and as a reality, did not end with the civil rights movement. It continues today, often under the guise of law enforcement violence, mass incarceration, and the social and economic structures that disproportionately harm Black communities. By invoking a tomorrow that is all too predictable, JOMO confronts us with the truth: the future for African Americans remains uncertain, not because of fate, but because of a failure to reckon with the past.

A Man Was Lynched Tomorrow does not seek to comfort—it demands acknowledgment. It forces us to see the continuum of racial violence as part of America’s unfinished history. And in doing so, it asks a devastatingly simple question: if nothing changes, who will we mourn tomorrow?

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2. What Ye Sow

JOMO’s painting What Ye Sow is a fierce and reverent tribute to Madam Sinclair, a lesser-known yet formidable African American woman gangster who ruled parts of Harlem during the turbulent years of the Great Depression and World War II. In an era when Black women were expected to remain invisible, Madam Sinclair carved out power through wit, strategy, and unapologetic defiance. She operated underground businesses, protected her community from exploitation, and stood toe-to-toe with both corrupt lawmen and rival gangsters. JOMO captures her presence with raw intensity—part myth, part memory, and fully symbolic of the kind of strength born from survival.

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The painting’s title, What Ye Sow, is more than a nod to the Biblical proverb—it’s a historical message of reckoning. As legend has it, those very words—“What ye sow, so shall ye reap”—were delivered to the infamous gangster Dutch Schultz on his deathbed after being gunned down in a Newark chop house. The phrase serves as both warning and prophecy, a coded threat believed to come from those Sinclair aligned with in Harlem's criminal underground. In JOMO’s hands, that phrase becomes a reclaiming of justice, spoken not from pulpits but from street corners and back rooms, where Black resilience took root when the rest of the country turned its back.

What Ye Sow stands as a visual testament to the unbreakable spirit of African Americans during one of the nation’s darkest economic and political periods. Amidst poverty, war, and systemic racism, Madam Sinclair is painted not as a villain, but as a symbol of agency—a woman who refused to be a victim of her circumstances. Through smoke, shadow, and subdued color, JOMO weaves her into the larger narrative of Black resistance, making her story inseparable from the story of Harlem itself. This is not just a painting of a gangster—it’s a portrait of survival, vengeance, and the cost of power when justice is denied.

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3. Indiana

JOMO’s painting Indiana is a searing indictment of a state whose racist past is too often whitewashed or conveniently forgotten. Through layered symbolism and stark visual storytelling, the painting demands a confrontation with the truth—both historical and ongoing—that many would rather ignore.

At the heart of Indiana lies a history that few outside the state realize: during the 1920s, Indiana was the epicenter of the Ku Klux Klan’s national resurgence. Under the leadership of D.C. Stephenson, the Klan infiltrated politics, law enforcement, and even churches. At its peak, it is estimated that one in three white men in Indiana were members. This wasn’t a fringe movement—it was mainstream terror, woven into the fabric of everyday life. JOMO’s painting refuses to let that legacy be buried.

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But Indiana doesn’t just look backward—it captures the ways racism continues to manifest. One of the most jarring elements in the painting is a reference to the arson attack on NBA star Reggie Miller’s home. Despite his fame and wealth, Miller, a Black man, was still targeted—his home burned by racists in a symbolic act of degradation. The date of this incident is subtly embedded in the painting, serving as a reminder that no level of success shields Black Americans from racialized violence and hatred.

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The lower portion of the painting is particularly haunting: it depicts the aftermath of a lynching. At first glance, the figures may seem abstract, but as the viewer draws closer, they become faces—real people—affected by the legacy of racial terror. It is a visual invitation to witness not just the victims, but also the community left behind: the mothers, the children, the neighbors, still grieving, still afraid, still carrying the weight.

JOMO’s Indiana is not just a painting—it’s a reckoning. It calls out the state’s deeply entrenched racism and urges viewers to recognize that denial only deepens the wound. Erasure is not healing, the truth is. And through his work, JOMO insists that the truth be seen.

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4. The Blocks of Life (An Argument With My Community)

JOMO's painting, The Blocks of Life, is a visual monologue—part confession, part confrontation—about the interior struggle of being a Black man in America speaking directly to his own community. The scattered wooden blocks pinned across the canvas echo childhood toys and building pieces, symbols of what we were given and what we’re still trying to construct. Around them, Moore layers handwritten questions—“Who will dream like Martin?” “Who will lead like Harriet?” “Who will challenge like Thurgood?”—as if the canvas itself is asking the community to remember its builders. The bright yellows and reds push outward with urgency, while arrows and circles mimic motion, debate, and friction, suggesting a culture in constant movement yet often stuck in the same arguments with itself.

 

The composition feels intentionally chaotic, mirroring the noise of modern life and the ways we have become “more devices than each other”—connected to screens, disconnected from one another. Pinned notes and scattered shapes interrupt the flow, like notifications pulling attention away from deeper work. The blackened corner that reads “Your normalcy worries me” operates as a warning: comfort has become a trap. In this space, Moore critiques complacency within the community—not to shame it, but to provoke growth. The zigzag line across the middle reads like a pulse or a fault line, a reminder that survival has required adaptation, but thriving demands intention. Even the playful colors are deceptive; they lure you in before revealing the tension underneath.

 

At the bottom, the stark phrase “You lynchin’ yourself, G” lands like a gut punch. It’s not a dismissal of external harm, but an addition to it—an uncomfortable mirror. Moore acknowledges the real, ongoing pressures placed on Black bodies by systems outside the community, while also naming the internal fractures that compound that violence: cycles of self-sabotage, normalized harm, and the quiet ways hope gets worn down. Yet the piece is not hopeless. The blocks are still there. The questions are still being asked. The argument is proof of care. The Blocks of Life insists that what was built before can be built again—stronger, smarter, and more connected—if we choose to turn back toward each other and keep building.

 

5. And the Boat Became My Name

JOMO’s painting And the Boat Became My Name is a haunting and poetic tribute to Phillis Wheatley, the first African American poet and author. Through a modern, layered visual language, the artist captures the trauma of forced migration, the violence of erasure, and the miraculous survival of voice. The title itself references the bitter irony of Wheatley’s identity: she was named after The Phillis, the slave ship that carried her from West Africa to the shores of America. Her name, like so many others, was not hers by birth—but by bondage.

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Two seashells rest in the painting, delicate yet loaded with symbolic weight. They echo with silence and memory—offering the sound of the ocean, but also of loss. Beneath them, subtle shapes at the bottom of the canvas suggest lives lost to the Middle Passage—those who jumped or were thrown overboard, never to reach land, their stories swallowed by the sea. JOMO gives them form, texture, and reverence. These figures do not haunt the painting—they anchor it. They are the unnamed, whose fates contrast sharply with Wheatley’s survival, making her literary achievement even more profound.

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Phillis Wheatley was kidnapped at age seven, enslaved, and brought to Boston, where the Wheatley family taught her to read and write. In 1773, she published Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, becoming not only the first African American to publish a book, but one of the first women in America to do so. Her intellect challenged the lie of Black inferiority and planted the seeds for African American literature. Through And the Boat Became My Name, JOMO doesn’t just portray Wheatley—he situates her within the collective memory of the transatlantic slave trade, elevating her voice as both a singular force and a symbol of survival. Her poetry may have risen from a world that sought to silence her, but through JOMO’s brush, it becomes eternal.

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6. Fourteen Peralta.

JOMO's painting Fourteen Peralta speaks volumes to the masses. It commemorates the historic address of 14th and Peralta in Oakland, a site tied to the legacy of the Black Panther Party and the radical imagination of Black self-determination. The composition references Huey P. Newton’s iconic portrait, where he sits in the peacock chair holding a spear and a rifle—objects that, in this piece, become symbols rather than literal weapons. Rendered against a restless, camouflage-like field of color, the words “Gun, Spear, and Peacock Chair” read like a chant or an invocation, calling forward a memory of resistance. JOMO reframes these elements as artifacts of dignity and self-possession, a reminder that representation itself can be an act of power in a world that once denied Black people the right to be seen as fully human.

 

The phrase “Huey, we ain’t dead—you’re just timid” flips history into a living conversation. It’s not a taunt toward Huey Newton, but a message to the present: the movement didn’t die; what fades is the courage to continue it. “Timid” here speaks to the comfort of assimilation and the fear that comes with challenging systems that reward silence. The hanging letters and skull imagery suggest the constant threat faced by those who speak too boldly, yet the message persists, suspended in space, refusing to disappear. JOMO captures that tension between memory and momentum—the way radical energy can be archived, sanitized, or quietly buried unless actively reanimated by each generation.

 

In the broader quest for freedom and diversity, Fourteen Peralta argues that progress isn’t only about inclusion—it’s about backbone. Diversity without conviction becomes decoration; freedom without courage becomes a slogan. The piece insists that honoring the past means inheriting its bravery, not just its imagery. By revisiting Huey Newton’s visual language and placing it inside a contemporary, chaotic color field, JOMO suggests that today’s struggle is messier, louder, and no less necessary. The work challenges viewers to ask themselves where they’ve grown cautious, where they’ve traded boldness for comfort, and what it would look like to carry the spirit of liberation forward with the same unapologetic presence that once sat, unflinching, in the peacock chair.​​