Graduating Girl (Version 2) #1 belongs to a series of works by Ligon based on coloring books created in the 1970s by, for, and about Black people. Ligon asked children between the ages of three and nine to color images from the historic coloring books, then created paintings inspired by their drawings. “The coloring books fascinated me because they were so clearly linked with the project of black liberation,” Ligon explained. “Any depiction of a black person . . . was a little revolution because it meant that our histories, stories, images and heroes mattered.”