Four Freedoms Posters

The Four Freedoms Poster Project is based on the artwork of Norman Rockwell.  The artwork of Norman Rockwell is based on the 1941 State of the Union Speech by FDR.

Commonly known as the Four Freedoms Speech, Roosevelt outlined four essential human freedoms in the speech.

"In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression—everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want—which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation Ca healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants—everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear—which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor—anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb."—Franklin D. Roosevelt, excerpted from the State of the Union Address to the Congress, January 6, 1941

Students start by studying this speech and the following oil paintings by Rockwell that ended on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post, and then as a poster series for the War dept.

The assignment is for students to design, draw, then paint a poster that illustrates one of these four freedoms.