The phrase “I’d rather be dead than Red” emerged during the late 1950s as a catchphrase indicating that a person would sooner die than become a Communist. It gained national popularity during Barry Goldwater’s unsuccessful 1964 presidential campaign and was later adopted by student protesters against the Vietnam War. This poster inverts the original meaning of the slogan. The woman in the photograph, dressed like many hippies of the day living in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco, proclaims that she would rather be a Communist than dead in Vietnam like so many American soldiers. While it is intended to function like a typical dorm-room poster of the period, this composition is rife with cultural complications. Dressed like a stereotypical “Indian princess,” with black hair cascading over her shoulders, the woman is supposed to be read as Native American—a fact further underscored by the incorporation of the word “red” that has been pejoratively used to refer to Indigenous skin tones and functions as a racial slur.