Photograph of a woman's head with a background of the Chicago skyline and Lake Michigan with a blue outer edge and white text

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Green, yellow pink, red and green illustration of Obama's head four times in a grid with the same colors of text around the outer edge on a black background

The first inauguration of Barack Obama, as the 44^th President of the United States, took place on January 20, 2009. The image of Barack Obama’s face is in the pop art style. It closely resembles the famous Andy Warhol print of Marilyn Monroe, where there are four images of her face, each one of various colors. The colors chosen for the button are also very similar to the colors used in Any Warhol’s print. 

Illustration of Niagara Falls with red text in the bottom right corner

Niagara Falls is the collective name for three waterfalls (Horseshoe Falls, Bridal Veil Falls, and the American Falls) located along the international border of Canada and the United States, between the Province of Ontario and the State of New York. Since the mid-1840s, sight-seeing boat tours such as the Maid of the Mist have operated, making the Falls a popular tourist destination.

White text on a black background

The combination of a question mark and exclamation mark is called an interrobang. This exclamatory rhetorical question punctuation was coined in 1962 and is often represented by !? or ?! because the symbol is not present on standard keyboards.

1976 was the year of the American bicentennial celebration, celebrating 200 years from the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Celebrations were planned across the United States by local communities under the guidance of the state.

Black text on a light green background surrounded by an outer green edge with light green text on it and a small black cirlce with white text at the top center

Women’s suffrage is the legal right of women to vote in a given country. In the U.S., women won the right to vote nationally in 1920. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a leading figure in the early women’s suffrage movement. She was president of the National Woman Suffrage Association from 1892- 1900. After the ratification of the 14th and 15th Amendments, Stanton advocated that the 15th Amendment granted all citizens, including women, the right to vote. However, it took another 50 years for U.S. women to fully obtain this right.

A man with a mustache laying on a down with black text

Burt Reynolds was an award-winning actor. He was a leading movie star in the 1970s and 1980s  and earned an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe for his role in the film, Boogie Nights. He became established as an actor for his part in the film Deliverance, in 1972, and in the same year he became a major sex symbol when he was featured as the first nude male centerfold in Cosmopolitan magazine. The image is of the centerfold photograph.  

Black and white photograph of a man's head with an outer white edge with red text

Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American born minister who was best known as the leader of the African-American Civil Rights Movement during the 1950's and 60's. King used nonviolent based methods, stemming from his background in the Baptist church, to lead a movement towards racial equality throughout the Southern states and then throughout the entire United States. His first famous protest was the 1955-56 Montgomery Bus Boycott, which started when Rosa Parks refused to give her seat on a Montgomery bus to a white woman and ended with the desegregation of Montgomery busses. Martin Luther King Jr. rose to prominence as an important leader of the boycott and, in 1958 he published a book, Strides Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story about his experience with the protest. He included accusations from his opponents that there were no problems in Montgomery until he and his movement caused them. The quote "True peace is not the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice" comes from his response to these accusations.

This button is used to commemorate Martin Luther King's birthday on January 15, the 1963 March on Washington on August 28, or the Riverside Church speech (against the Vietnam War) on April 4, 1967, a year before Martin Luther King's death.

Black text on an orange background

Censorship is the suppression of words, images, or ideas that are "offensive" and happens whenever some people succeed in imposing their personal, political, or moral values on others. Censorship has been criticized as being unfair and hindering progress. Some consider it to also be counterproductive as it prevents the censored topic from being discussed. This button represents censorship through irony by censoring the button itself. 

Black text on a white background and white text on a red box along the bottom

This button is part of a campaign for Banned Book Week sponsored by Random House. Banned Book Week is a response to censorship- the act of suppressing ideas and information that part of the population finds unacceptable- and promotes the First Amendment right to free speech by encouraging people to read books that have been censored. Several organizations, including the Library of Congress and the American Library Association, support this campaign and encourage readers to protect intellectual freedom by opposing censorship. Banned books include the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling, The Color Purple by Alice Walker, and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

Illustration of a black and silver can with white and blue eys and red text

The subject of this button is an illustration of a can covered in eyes with the phrase “I can” at the center. It is a play on words and has humorous undertones.

The font of the phrase on this button closely resembles an iteration of Futura, a typeface frequently used in the second half of the twentieth century, specifically the condensed, extra bold version of Futura. This version of the typeface was used in a near ubiquitous way throughout the 70s and 80s in advertisements and logos, notably by Nike. The universal and commercial aspects of the font was riffed upon by the Guerrilla Girls, an art movement founded in 1985 critiquing the traditions of the art world, as well as Barbara Kruger, whose art deals with issues of capitalism. This button’s illustration carries a similar provocative and playful energy to the Guerrilla Girls and Kruger’s work, using the font ironically in an artistic rather than commercial way.

Considering the fact that the button’s manufacturer was founded in 1972 as well as the style of the button, it is safe to assume that the button was created at some point in the 1980s or 1990s.