Interested in reframing images from the mass media in provocative new contexts, Hank Willis Thomas produced several works looking at the eventful year 1969 by borrowing advertising and headline text from Ebony/Jet publications, as well as editorial photographs from the same vintage magazines. The boys pictured here, residents of the South Side of Chicago, created a papier mâché and cardboard simulation of the historic 1969 moon landing for a school project. The artist juxtaposes this image with words from an ad that capitalized on the period’s “space-age” sensibility to create a bittersweet image of youthful aspiration. Many leaders of the African-American community and other social activists of the late 1960s and early 1970s questioned the political priorities that would support an ambitious space program when American cities, such as Chicago, suffered from poverty, crime, and physical decay.