[2] This group, formed in Chicago to encourage education and performance amongst the city's African American population, was responsible for the famous Wall of Respect.
[3] The wall consisted of a series of portraits dedicated to individuals considered heroes and heroines of African American history.
[3] Jeff Donaldson and Wadsworth Jarrell, two OBAC artists who had contributed to the Wall of Respect, began exploring whether or not a Black art movement could be started on the basis of a common aesthetic creed.
[5] AfriCOBRA was founded on the South Side of Chicago by a group of artists intent on defining a "black aesthetic."
The name change was followed by the addition of new artists, including Napoleon Henderson, Nelson Stevens, Sherman Beck, and Carolyn Lawrence.
Additionally, many of these countries were gaining stature at American universities, many of which were beginning to create their African Studies programs.
Jeff Donaldson was placed in charge of the North American artists delegation, while Jae Jarrell was a chair on the FESTAC Committee of Creative Modern Black and African Dress.
The group had a main purpose of celebrating African identity and calling awareness to the political struggles through the representation of Black Visual Culture.
AfriCOBRA's work incorporated elements of free jazz, vibrant, "kool-aid" colors, and images representing spiritual identity.
[6] In an interview celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Teresa A. Carbone (the Curator of American Art at the Brooklyn Museum) stated, "It's difficult to draw a one-to-one correspondence between a work and an immediate social effect, but graphics from the Chicago artist collective AfriCOBRA, [African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists] really did help reshape the mindset of black communities.
Much of the visual aesthetic of these works are focused on social, political, and economical conditions related to Black Americans.
Jeff Donaldson, Wadsworth Jarrell, Gerald Williams, and Barbara Jones-Hogu were members originally who later on formed AfriCOBRA, as well as Sylvia Abernathy, Myrna Weaver and others.