The summer of 1966 marked the beginning of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution in China. Angry masses of youth foaming at the mouth from the radical brainwashing of Mao’s Little Red Book brought scores of teachers to the center of Peking University, blackened their faces, and forced them to wear dunces’ caps. Similar scenes reverberated across China as Mao escalated his rhetoric to violence. Those with counterrevolutionary ideas were purged, art that could be perceived to undermine Mao was destroyed, and those who performed or created it were sent to labor camps or killed. Academics either conformed to the tenets of Maoism or suffered persecution, sexual molestation, or death.

It all began, in part, because of a poster.