Painting Harlem Modern: The Art of Jacob Lawrence 9780520944626, 9780520305502

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface
Introduction
Part One The Artist’s Place in Harlem
1 Harlem’s Artistic Community in the 1930s
2 Patrons and the Making of a Professional Artist
Part Two Themes and Issues
3 African American Storytelling: Toussaint L’Ouverture and Harriet Tubman
4 The Great Migration in Memory, Pictures, and Text
5 Confrontations with the Jim Crow South in the 1940s
6 Home in Harlem: Tenements and Streets
7 The Double Consciousness of Masks and Masking
8 The Paintings of the Protest Years, 1955–70
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Appendix: Jacob Armstead Lawrence and His Family
Notes
Selected Bibliography
List of Illustrations
Index

Citation preview

A H M A N S O N • M U R P H Y F I N E

A R T S

I M P R I N T

   has endowed this imprint to honor the memory of       

.

   

who for half a century served arts and letters, beauty and learning, in equal measure by shaping with a brilliant devotion those institutions upon which they rely.

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous contributions to this book provided by Jan and Warren Adelson The Art Endowment Fund of the University of California Press Foundation, which was established by a major gift from the Ahmanson Foundation The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund Dean’s Office, College of Arts and Sciences, Boston University Society for the Preservation of American Modernists

In addition, the publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Publisher’s Circle of the University of California Press Foundation, whose ­members are Ariel Aisiks / Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA) Marcy and Jeffrey Krinsk Bill and Michelle Lerach Judith and Kim Maxwell Gordon E. and Betty I. Moore Marjorie Randolph Jamie Rosenthal Wolf, David Wolf, Rick Rosenthal, and Nancy Stephens / The Rosenthal Family Foundation Angela Westwater Peter Wiley

painting harlem modern

painting harlem modern the art of jacob lawrence patricia hills

university of california press   published with the assistance of the getty foundation

University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

Every effort has been made to identify and locate the rightful copyright holders of all material not specifically commissioned for use in this publication and to secure permission, where applicable, for reuse of all such material. Credit, if and as available, has been provided for all borrowed material either on-page, on the copyright page, or in an acknowledgment section of the book. Any error, omission, or failure to obtain authorization with respect to material copyrighted by other sources has been either unavoidable or unintentional. The author and publisher welcome any information that would allow them to correct future reprints.

University of California Press, Ltd. London, England

Library of Congress CIP Data

University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu.

© 2009 by The Regents of the University of California All artwork by Jacob Lawrence unless otherwise identified. All Jacob Lawrence art © 2009 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation, Seattle/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Frontispiece: Brooklyn Stoop, 1967. Gouache and casein on paper, 21 1 ⁄8 × 161 ⁄8 in. (53.7 × 41 cm). Tacoma Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1990.7. Photo: Richard Nicol. Langston Hughes poems: “Harlem (2) [“What happens to a dream deferred . . .”],” “Ballad of the Landlord,” “Minstrel Man,” “Silhouette,” “Lynching Song,” edited by Arnold Rampersad with David Roessel, Assoc., from THE COLLECTED POEMS OF LANGSTON HUGHES by Langston Hughes, edited by Arnold Rampersad with David Roessel, Associate Editor, copyright © 1994 by The Estate of Langston Hughes. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., and Harold Ober Associates, Incorporated.

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First paperback printing 2019

Hills, Patricia.   Painting Harlem modern : the art of Jacob Lawrence / Patricia Hills.    p. cm.   Includes bibliographical references and index.   ISBN 978-0-520-25241-7 (cloth); 978-0-520-30550-2 (pbk)   1.  Lawrence, Jacob, 1917–2000—Criticism and interpretation.   2.  Lawrence, Jacob, 1917–2000—Themes, motives. I.  Lawrence, Jacob, 1917–2000.  II.  Title. ND237.L29H55 2009 759.13—dc22 2009022224 Manufactured in the United States of America  3  2  1  0  9 10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).

to kevin

contents

Preface  ix

6 Home in Harlem: Tenements and Streets  169

Introduction  1

7 The Double Consciousness of Masks  

and Masking  205

part one the artist’s place in harlem 1 Harlem’s Artistic Community in the 1930s  9 2 Patrons and the Making of a Professional Artist  33

8 The Paintings of the Protest Years, 1955–70  231

Epilogue  259 Acknowledgments  271 Appendix: Jacob Armstead Lawrence  

part two themes and issues

and His Family  275 Notes  277

3 African American Storytelling:  

Toussaint L’Ouverture and Harriet Tubman  57 4 The Great Migration in Memory, Pictures,  

and Text  97 5 Confrontations with the Jim Crow South  

in the 1940s  135

Selected Bibliography  327 List of Illustrations  335 Index  341

preface

This book originated thirty years ago as part of a larger

tury. His subject matter and unique style exemplified the

scholarly project to chart the relationship of socially con-

possibilities of an engaged art—an art that brings to the

cerned twentieth-century artists to radical politics. I first

surface the underlying turmoil of the day, that does not

turned my attention to John Sloan’s socialist politics and

shy away from portraying the struggles for racial and

art in the pre–World War I years. Then, when asked to

economic equality, and that offers hope for change. As he

organize an exhibition for the Bread and Roses Cultural

matured and his style became more nuanced, Lawrence’s

Project of the National Union of Hospital and Health Care

involvement with social issues in his work did not abate—

Employees, I moved on to the art and politics of the 1930s.

not during the 1940s, the decade of World War II and the

Although this decade was one of worldwide economic de-

beginnings of the cold war, nor during the 1950s, when

pression, large-scale unemployment, and growing fascism

the civil rights movement began to gain momentum. And

in Europe, I was struck by how these artists embraced the

he remained faithful to his artistic idiom during the 1960s,

value of working together as a community and their opti-

when activists took to the streets to protest racial inequali-

mism about the future. With the help of Boston University

ties and the savagery of war. His unwavering consistency

students, I put together Social Concern and Urban Realism:

and the power of his political-humanist vision throughout

American Painting of the 1930s, an exhibition, with a cata-

these decades fascinated me. To learn more, I began to

logue, that traveled the country during 1983 and 1984

tape-record interviews with both Lawrence and Gwendo-

under the auspices of the American Federation of Arts.

lyn Knight, his lifelong companion.

Among the artists in this exhibition, Jacob Lawrence

In the 1980s and 1990s curators and scholars together

stood out as someone whose art continued to embody

began to organize and participate in exhibitions of Law-

the democratic spirit of the 1930s well past the midcen-

rence’s work, and I was fortunate to be included in these

ix

endeavors. First came the 1986 traveling retrospective

him not only for his art, but also because he never swerved

exhibition, Jacob Lawrence: American Painter, organized

from his commitment to the struggle for a fair and just

by the Seattle Art Museum, accompanied by a catalogue

society. To be sure, he was not an activist, but he did sign

written by Ellen Harkins Wheat. In the early 1990s scholar-

petitions and lent his name to controversial organizations.

ship deepened with Wheat’s traveling exhibition for the

And he firmly believed he was doing his part to bring about

Hampton University Museum of Lawrence’s Frederick

social change through his art.

Douglass and Harriet Tubman series. Next, Elizabeth Hut-

I think he would have been pleased to witness the elec-

ton Turner, a curator at the Phillips Collection in Washing-

tion of Barack Obama to the presidency. I know he would

ton, D.C., organized the 1993–95 traveling exhibition of

have at least agreed with Obama’s words in his “More

Lawrence’s Migration series. Turner brought together an

Perfect Union” speech in Philadelphia on March 18,

advisory group of historians from different disciplines to

2008, on the subject of race in America: “Working to-

discuss with Lawrence the many facets of this series and

gether we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds,

its historical context. Then in the late 1990s Peter T.

and . . .­ in fact we have no choice if we are to continue on

Nesbett and Michelle DuBois, co-directors of the Jacob

the path of a more perfect union. For the African American

Lawrence Catalogue Raisonné Project, convened two all-

community, that path means embracing the burdens of

day conferences of a similar scholarly group to discuss

our past without becoming victims of our past. It means

the volume of essays, Over the Line: The Art of Jacob

continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every

Lawrence, published as a companion to Jacob Lawrence:

aspect of American life.”

Paintings, Drawings, and Murals (1935–1999): A Cata­

Indeed, Obama’s words resonate with the creed Law-

logue Raisonné. Over the Line subsequently served as

rence lived by—a creed that allowed him not to shy away

catalogue for the artist’s 2001–3 traveling retrospective,

from incorporating disturbing images in his art, especially

organized by the Phillips Collection. Thus, for the last two

when he wanted to symbolize the struggles people had to

decades Lawrence scholarship has been a collective ef-

endure to overcome adversity. However, at the same time

fort, and I, like others, am indebted to the insights of the

this creed encouraged him to embrace the joys of the

many dedicated scholars who participated.

common people and create compositions that balanced

We all agreed that Lawrence was one of the gentlest artists we knew, but also one of the toughest. I admired

x  preface

colors, lines, and shapes into a transforming unity that spoke to them.

introduction The art historian will have to check what he thinks is the intrinsic meaning of the work, or group of works, to which he devotes his attention, against what he thinks is the intrinsic meaning of as many other documents of civilization historically related to that work or group of works, as he can master: of documents bearing witness to the political, poetical, religious, philosophical, and social tendencies of the personality, period or country under investigation.

erwin panofsky, “Iconography and Iconology” (1939) And if an exploration of a particular culture will lead to a heightened understanding of a work of literature produced within that culture, so too a careful reading of a work of literature will lead to a heightened understanding of the culture within which it was produced.

stephen greenblatt, “Culture” (1990)

This is a story about Jacob Lawrence and his art.

rence and guided by the words of the art historian Erwin

It is also a story about Harlem—a community that

Panofsky (see the epigraph above), I plan to interpret Law-

gave him encouragement and from which he drew his

rence’s art against the intrinsic meanings of “documents

strength as a man and as an artist. In interviews Law-

bearing witness to the political, poetical, religious, philo-

rence always acknowledged the importance of this com-

sophical, and social tendencies of the personality, period

munity to him. At a public forum in October 1991 at the

or country under investigation.”3 The complex interaction

Studio Museum in Harlem, when asked to name the “ref-

of events, of the visual and oral culture of Harlem, of peo-

erences” that inspired his art, Lawrence replied: “The

ple important to his artistic life making their entrances and

community let me develop.  .  .  . Of course, there were

exits—together these constitute the thick context out of

books around  .  .  . and West African sculpture.  .  .  . I

which Lawrence created his art.

painted the only way I knew how to paint. . . . I tried to put the images down the way I related to the community. . . . I was being taught . . . to see.”1 He recalled the Harlem community as being polyphonic,

the

1930 s

moment

made up of many and often competing voices—the Garvey-

Following the stock market crash and the onset of the

ites, communists, socialists, and church people.2 Lawrence

Great Depression, many millions of men and women in

reminisced about listening to his teachers in after-school

the United States lost their jobs, walked the streets, rode

black history clubs and to street-corner orators, who told

the rails, or hitchhiked across the country to find decent

stories with “such a spirit and such a belief” that he “re-

employment (or any employment) to support their fami-

sponded with [his] paintings.” In the spirit of Jacob Law-

lies. They pooled their resources and petitioned govern-

1

ment agencies to open up jobs and provide relief. They

claim to the legacy of the 1920s Harlem Renaissance and

picketed, protested, and marched.4

inspired by its writers, poets, and musicians, the visual

For artists living in New York, never before or after has

artists in Harlem came into their own during the 1930s.

there been a decade like the 1930s. Each of these artists

As Romare Bearden and Harry Henderson characterized

can tell a story of hardships, struggles, and camaraderie.

the two decades: “What strongly differentiated this pe-

Many could not sell their artworks; many gave up art al-

riod [the 1930s] from the Harlem Renaissance was that

together. But by the mid-1930s New Deal public relief

the employment of a large number of African American

programs for artists had been put in place by both local

artists gave them self-respect, the feeling that they were

and federal governments, assisted by private agencies,

worthy of their pay and not dependent on patrons who

churches, and philanthropic organizations. Once em-

felt sorry for them. These African American artists be-

ployed, art workers—artists, arts administrators, and

lieved that art was a means through which they could win

teachers—felt a sense of purpose. They were creating the

new respect for their people.”6 Artists were in tune with

conditions for an “art of the people.” Freed of market

their community as never before. Their art captured the

concerns—of the need to adjust their work to appeal to

expressive culture at the heart of that community’s mo-

the whims of wealthy patrons—and paid regularly by local

dernity, and they began to achieve national recognition.

and federal agencies, the artists could paint, sculpt, pho-

Lawrence had the good fortune to come of age during the

tograph, and make prints for a new audience consisting

1930s as an artist in Harlem.

of their neighbors and the people in their communities. A host of librarians, administrators of nongovernmental organizations, art center directors, workshop teachers, and civic leaders helped develop an appreciation of the arts at the community level by staging exhibitions in the

the leftist politics of the 1930 s The 1930s was also the decade when many artists and

neighborhoods. A case in point is Audrey McMahon, who, as executive

writers embraced the ideas of the Left. Some became

secretary of the College Art Association in the early

independent Marxists, others called themselves socialists

1930s, initiated programs to give artists jobs and later

and communists, and many more held progressive ideas

headed the New York office of the Federal Art Project in

about the benefits of an egalitarian nonracist society, the

the late 1930s. She was one of many who advocated pub-

necessity of justice, and the urgency for collective action.

lic art but also affordable art that people could buy for

Marxism and communism seemed to them to offer per-

their own homes. “To hold art a luxury is pernicious to

suasive analyses of the causes of the Depression and the

the public and to all but a few very successful artists,”

failures of capitalism. Communist Party members were

she wrote in 1933. She felt it entirely appropriate that fine

especially respected by many on the Left for their persua-

arts artists receive wages no higher than other artisans:

sive analyses and their organizational savvy and commit-

“If, in the new economic era, the great collector who re-

ment to activism. They were in the forefront of organizing

placed the state and the church of ancient times as a pa-

demonstrations, planning strategies for work relief solu-

tron of art is vanishing and if he in turn is to be replaced

tions, and developing critical responses among the base

by the people, art must be brought within their ken finan-

of people with whom they were working.7 These activists

5

cially as well as emotionally and intellectually.” McMa-

of the Left helped create a movement—one that em-

hon and others were committed to the proposition that

braced writers, artists, actors, and musicians across a

the arts in America should be “of the people, by the peo-

spectrum of progressive political philosophies.

ple, and for the people.” Especially affected by the hard times, African Ameri-

Marxist writers on art also encouraged artists to produce an art of social content. The art historian Meyer

can artists living in Harlem welcomed the relief programs

Schapiro, in his address to the American Artists’ Congress

that offered employment in the arts. While still laying

in February 1936, observed: “Artists who are concerned

2  introduction

with the world around them, its action and conflict, who

work of a growing school of colored artists who paint and

ask the same questions that are asked by the impover-

model the beauty of dark faces and create with new tech-

ished masses and oppressed minorities—these artists

nique the expressions of their own soul-world.”16 With the

cannot permanently devote themselves to a painting com-

encouragement of writers such as Hughes and Alain

mitted to the aesthetic moments of life, to spectacles de-

Locke and art teachers such as Alston, Henry Bannarn,

signed for passive, detached individuals, or to an art of the

and Augusta Savage, young Harlem artists fought for a

studio.”8 Writing sometimes under the pseudonym John

place at the common table, confronted the racism that

Kwait, Schapiro encouraged an explicitly critical art in his

had hobbled the advancement of African Americans in

Masses.9

Louis Lozowick, writing for Art

the past, and created expressive works that incorporated

Front, the journal of the Artists’ Union, specifically urged

the faces and “typical” experiences of their community.

writings for New

artists to embrace themes of “class struggle” for their

In this way the artists were very much a part of the

art—to create a revolutionary art focused on the realities

“American scene” artistic trend of the 1920s, except that

of life under capitalism. To Lozowick, “revolutionary art

they focused on the urban life of their own community,

implies open-eyed observation, integrated experience, in-

often with a politically charged edge.17

tense participation and an ordered view of life.”10 When

In this progressive, populist decade, the audience for

Aaron Douglas, president of the Harlem Artists Guild,

art was as important as the creators of the art. Most art

spoke at the American Artists’ Congress, he praised revo-

world people then understood art as a dynamic human

lutionary art “for pointing a way and striking a vital blow at

activity in which everyone should participate. They val-

discrimination and segregation.”11 Such political art, to Af-

ued paintings that communicated an artist’s personal

rican Americans, was on the right side in their fight against

experiences with the sights and sounds of his or her own

racism, and many joined the movement for a socially pro-

life, everyday encounters as well as more disturbing inci-

gressive art.12

dents of brutality. Influential art world people, such as

It was exactly such an engaged art that Lawrence ex-

Holger Cahill, appointed national director of the Federal

emplified. The artist Charles Alston, his first mentor,

Art Project (FAP) of the Works Progress Administration

wrote several paragraphs on Lawrence for a brochure ac-

(WPA) in 1935, were inspired by the philosopher and Co-

companying an exhibition the twenty-year-old youth had

lumbia Teachers College professor John Dewey and his

at the YMCA in Harlem in February 1938: “Still a very

book Art as Experience (1934).18 Dewey was not a com-

young painter, Lawrence symbolizes more than any one I

munist, but he believed, like the communists, that art

know, the vitality, the seriousness and promise of a new

should be a communal process that involved both the

and socially conscious generation of Negro artists.”13

making of art and the appreciation of it by a democratic

Lawrence fulfilled this promise. Like Lozowick, Lawrence

citizenry. Like Audrey McMahon, mentioned above, both

believed that through his paintings he could help advance

Dewey and Cahill rejected the idea that art should serve

the movement for

change.14

Revolutionary and progressive ideas, however, would

only the wealthy. Artists would and should pay attention to the formal elements of picture making—the arrange-

not have taken hold and been the basis of a movement

ment of color, line, and mass—but they believed that the

without personal and collective experiences of the

communication of an experience was primary, whether as

Depression.15

narrative or as expression of inner emotion. Black communities of artists, however, recognized that because of race their experiences would differ substan-

experience as art During the 1930s personal experiences provided a valued

tially from those of artists in the white community. As Ralph Ellison noted in 1946: “Obviously the experiences of Negroes—slavery, the grueling and continuing fight for

source of subjects for art. Langston Hughes predicted in

full citizenship since Emancipation, the stigma of color,

1926 that he would see “within the next decade . . . the

the enforced alienation which constantly knifes into our

introduction  3

natural identification with our country—have not been

ously gleaned through reading.”22 Lawrence also listened

that of white Americans. And though as passionate be-

to the stories his neighbors told and incorporated their

lievers in democracy Negroes identify themselves with

experiences into his art. For his history series, Toussaint

the broader American ideals, their sense of reality

L’Ouverture, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, John

springs, in part, from an American experience which

Brown, The Migration of the Negro, and Struggle . . . From

most white men not only have not had, but one with

the History of the American People, he did research at the

which they are reluctant to identify themselves even when

New York Public Library on 135th Street.

presented in forms of the imagination.”19 Experience, to

His pictures were thus re-presentations—“typical”

Ellison and others, was contingent on one’s social and

scenes—constructed from his experiences, those of oth-

racial situation. 20

ers, what he read in books and newspapers, and his li-

The Howard University philosopher Alain Locke and

brary research. Lawrence’s need to create the structures

others encouraged young Lawrence to paint his experi-

for communicating experience impelled him to stay on

ences: to represent not only what was unique to his com-

the stylistic course he had early developed. 23 His work

munity and to himself as a black urban artist but also

quickly gained acceptance. In fact, Lawrence’s style and

what he shared with others—white men and women—

subject matter appealed to a range of contemporary art

outside his community. Locke would not waver from en-

advocates at midcentury. The expressive flat collage cub-

couraging artists to express the fullness of their experi-

ist style he forged attracted artists and critics who saw

ences. In 1950 he admonished, “Give us Negro life and

his work as modernist and concerned with form, color,

experiences in all the arts but with a third dimension of

and pattern, even if they puzzled over his insistence on

universalized common-denominator humanity.” 21 For

subject matter. 24

Locke, one could reach the universal through the specific

The very simplicity of his expressive cubism attracted

and the local, and one reached the essential American

not only the modernists but also those art world people

experience through African American experience. Locke

who valued as “authentically American” the objects and

mentored Jacob Lawrence, who absorbed these princi-

paintings made by untutored and naive folk artists. Those

ples and made them his own.

who prized folk art saw Lawrence as a “primitive”; they presumed he painted intuitively, without making the complex compositional decisions that in fact he did make. 25

lawrence’s entrance onto the art scene

Traditionalists advocating an art of racial themes found the figural and expressive elements of Lawrence’s work most appealing. Artists on the Left especially admired

Lawrence came to maturity as an artist in the right place

Lawrence’s emphasis on working-class lives, on ordinary

at the right moment. The first works he created were Har-

people struggling to better their circumstances.

lem genre scenes, using a limited palette and simple

When pinned down, Lawrence would call himself an

shapes and focusing his subjects on the comings and go-

expressionist. In an interview of 1985, he explained that

ings of ordinary people. Lawrence had great powers of

expressionism means “express [ing] yourself in a certain

concentration and an uncanny sense of design that made

manner, not necessarily working from the object or from

his compositions come alive with linear rhythms, patterns,

the scene, but expressing your feelings as to that object

and color; and his teacher Alston had the wisdom not to

or scene.”26 Lawrence’s “feelings” were inevitably com-

tamper with that inborn talent. But as he developed as an

plex and often fraught with contradictions. The result was

artist, Lawrence went beyond design and the observation

an art sometimes lucid, sometimes puzzling in its details,

of his environment. He also thought deeply about what he

and always fascinating.

was seeing and read widely. In 1943 the artist James Por-

Lawrence’s personal qualities of friendliness and po-

ter noted, “His art is founded on reality. It includes the

liteness endeared him to his elders. His background of

vivid moments of actual experience as well as those vicari-

poverty and single-minded focus on his art encouraged

4  introduction

people in the art world to reach out to help him achieve

relationship; one enhances the other. 28 When acknowl-

recognition. Among those who did so were his artist

edging the insights of these scholars, we need to substi-

teachers Augusta Savage, Charles Alston, and Henry

tute “visual language” for “literary language.” However,

Bannarn; his artist friends Gwendolyn Knight, Ronald Jo-

the extended captions that Lawrence provided for many

seph, Bob Blackburn, and Romare Bearden; the writers

of his paintings, particularly his history series, give us a

and critics Alain Locke, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes,

unique opportunity to counterpoise the visual with the

Carl Van Vechten, Arna Bontemps, and Richard Wright;

literary—to probe the potential of conjoining image and

the community arts administrators Gwendolyn Bennett,

text or to test their productive dissonance.

in New York, and Peter Pollack, in Chicago; the museum

I prefer the literary critical phrase close reading. Unlike

curators and directors Alfred H. Barr Jr., Charles Rogers,

the traditional terms invoked by art historians—stylistic

and Lincoln Kirstein (a sometime curator); the Harmon

analysis and iconographic analysis—close reading implies

Foundation director Mary Beattie Brady; leftist artists such

teasing out meanings more relevant to the historical mo-

as Harry Gottlieb, Philip Evergood, and Sol Wilson; the

ment and with deeper resonances to our actual experi-

museum film curator and historian Jay Leyda; and the

ences than the mere formal description of lines, forms,

art dealers Edith Halpert and, later, Charles Alan, Terry

colors, and motifs. 29 Like Gates, I want to show the com-

Dintenfass, Francine Seders, and Bridget Moore. These

plexity of Lawrence’s visual language and its effects on

notables all believed in the originality and authenticity of

us, the viewers.

Lawrence’s art. All, moreover, held influential positions in

And so our charge is twofold, as befits the doubleness

the world of arts and culture from which they could pro-

of “art history”: to interpret Lawrence’s art and to situate

mote his work and advance his career.

it in a coherent context of history and experience. Close

Encountering the full range of his art, we can begin to

readings of Lawrence’s art and the reconstruction of the

understand that Lawrence was painting Harlem modern

thick context of his cultural surround can move us closer

by representing the shapes and forms of modern urban

to what it must have been like for one gifted, black urban

life and by translating them into symbols of struggles,

artist to experience social, civic, and political life in the

hopes, and victories of the human spirit. And Harlem, as

mid–twentieth century in the United States.30

we will come to understand, was not just a site located north of 110th Street in Manhattan but a state of mind that nurtured and expanded creativity. n

from the 1930 s to the 1960 s: thick context

My project is not only to construct a history of Lawrence’s

Throughout this book I have attempted to offer a com-

cultural surround but also to probe that history through

plexly layered, thick context that includes the artists, writ-

close readings of Lawrence’s art and thereby suggest

ers, and educators concerned with issues of race, art,

deeper understandings of both. Literary theorists have

modernity, and the “double-consciousness,” as W. E. B. Du

proved excellent guides to art historians wanting to refine

Bois explains, of being both an American and an African

and add nuance to their interpretations. Insights that

American.31 Chapters 1 and 2 of Part I describe the Harlem

such theorists make about literature often apply with

environment of the 1930s— the people and institutions

equal relevance to the visual arts. For example, “close

that nurtured Lawrence and other young artists and their

readings,” as Henry Louis Gates Jr. has said of his own

impact on Lawrence’s development as an emerging artist

literary approach, “if utilized subtly enough, help readers

and a visual spokesperson for his community.

to understand even more fully how remarkably complex

Part II develops interpretations of the themes and ico-

an act of literary language can be.”27 As Stephen Green-

nographies of Lawrence’s art from the Great Depression

blatt notes in the epigraph above, close readings and the

of the 1930s through World War II in the 1940s and the

heightened understanding of a culture have a reciprocal

cold war of the 1950s to the civil rights movement of the

introduction  5

1950s and 1960s. During these years Lawrence contin-

translated into complex pictorial iconographies focused on

ued to work in an expressive collage style, but his art be-

the motif of masking. Chapter 8 looks at Lawrence’s return,

came more nuanced as his experiences of life and art

during the civil rights movement, to the issues of segrega-

deepened. The simple scenes of Harlem gave way to the

tion, protest, and justice; his moral compass helped to

more sophisticated imagery of his series, including Tous­

guide his artistic responses.

saint L’Ouverture, Harriet Tubman, and The Migration of

In the Epilogue I examine the end of Lawrence’s career,

the Negro, discussed in Chapters 3 and 4. His travels in

briefly discussing his move to Seattle and his relation-

the South during the 1940s, discussed in Chapter 5, ex-

ship to his wife and partner of many years, Gwendolyn

panded his awareness of Jim Crow segregation and its

Knight, and assessing his stature in twentieth-century art

brutalities, and his response to racism and lynchings be-

history.

came both more subtle and more explicit. Chapter 6 fo-

Lawrence was a deeply moral artist—concerned with

cuses on how his return to Harlem after his southern

the fight for racial and social justice and with maintaining

sojourns increased his appreciation of home, street life,

a positive image of the humanity of people who constan­

and the cultural geography of community.

tly struggle for those ideals. He was never self-­righteous

Chapter 7 begins in 1949, when Lawrence, by then thir-

or sentimental. He was sensitive to his surroundings

ty-one and being heralded as the foremost African Ameri-

and aware of possibilities, a visual artist whose art paral­

can artist, experienced a mental breakdown. He voluntarily

le­led the writings of other African American artists who

entered the psychiatric ward of Hillside Hospital in Queens,

pursued the literary arts, especially Langston Hughes.

New York, where his extended stay lasted just over a year.

He spoke to the black community and painted Harlem

He emerged with a greater understanding of the inter- 

modern; he spoke to the nation and painted America

section of self, sociology, and symbolic thinking, which he

modern.

6  introduction

part one

the artist’s place in harlem

1

harlem’s artistic community in the 1930 s Not to know the Negro on the group and historical level is to rob him of his rightful share in the American ­heritage.

j. saunders redding, On Being Negro in America (1951)

early student years Sometime during 1930 Rosalee Lawrence brought her children, Jacob and his younger siblings William and Geraldine, from their foster homes in Philadelphia to live with her at 142 West 143rd Street in New York’s Harlem. Jacob was either twelve years old or thirteen, the age he turned on September 7, 1930.1 Harlem, an area north of Central Park, had originally

only by dingy areaway entrances to the littered backyard about which the rectangle of tenements had been built. . . . Half of all the tenants are on relief and pass their days and nights lolling in the dreary entrances of the 40 apartments which house them or sitting in the ten by fifteen foot rooms which many of them share with a luckless friend or two. Unless they are fortunate their single windows face on narrow courts or into a neighbor’s kitchen and the smell of cooking and the jangle of a dozen radios is always in the air. 3

been populated by German Americans, who built elegant brownstone townhouses but then left when African Amer-

Harlem, much larger and more densely crowded than

icans began to expand into the area in the early twentieth

Philadelphia, opened the eyes of the impressionable

century. 2 By the early 1930s many of the brownstones

young Lawrence (see map, p. 10).

had been converted into one- or two-room kitchenettes

Five years before Lawrence arrived, in 1925, the writer

to accommodate the burgeoning population. The city

and educator James Weldon Johnson had spelled out

block Lawrence lived on—142nd Street to 143rd Street,

Harlem’s special qualities from an insider’s point of view,

bordered by Lenox and Seventh Avenues—was described

in sharp contrast to the New York Herald Tribune report-

in a New York Herald Tribune article in 1934 as

er’s account:

tenanted exclusively by Negroes. On its four sides the area

Harlem is indeed the great Mecca for the sight-seer, the

presents a front of gray and red brick fire escapes broken

­pleasure-seeker, the curious, the adventurous, the enterprising, 

FIG 1  Jacob Lawrence at work on a Frederick Douglass series panel, ca. 1939. Photo: Kenneth F. Space, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Harmon Foundation Collection.

W 147 St

N

4

W 137 St

15 17

11 12

10

W 135 St

W 125 St

W 123 St

14

Lexington Ave

W 127 St W 126 St

W 130 St

Madison Ave

13

Park Ave

W 134 St

18

Lenox Ave (Malcolm X Blvd)

7th Ave (Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Ave)

8th Ave (Frederick Douglass Blvd)

9

St Nicholas Ave

HARLEM HOSPITAL

W 136 St

5th Ave

8

Manhattan Ave

W 138 St

6

7

ve sA ola ch Ni St

Morningside Ave

C

St Nicholas Terr

ve nt A onve

W 141 St

ER

St. Nicholas Park

Morningside Park

5

3

R IV

City College

2

W 143 St

Edgecombe Ave

Convent Ave

W 145 St

EM RL HA

Amsterdam Ave

Hamiton Terr s Ave ichola St N e Ave comb Edge Bradhurst

1

16

19 20

Mount Morris Park

W 119 St

Central Harlem, ca. 1930s–1940s East/west blocks increase by 100 numbers per block. Walking north or south along the avenues takes about 20 minutes to cover 20 blocks. Mount Morris Park is now Marcus Garvey Park. 1 Lawrence’s temporary home in 1940, 292 W 147th 2 Augusta Savage’s first studio, 163 W 143rd 3 Lawrence’s first Harlem address, 1930, 142 W 143rd 4 Lawrences’ home, 1942–43, 72 Hamilton Terr. 5 “306” Alston/Bannarn Studio, 306 W 141st 6 Abyssinian Baptist Church, 136–42 W 138th 7 Ethiopian School of Research (Charles Seifert), 313 W 137th 8 Harlem Artists Guild, 321 W 136th 9 Augusta Savage’s second studio, 239 W 135th 10 NY Public Library, Harlem branch, 103 W 135th

11 Old Harlem YMCA, 181 W 135th 12 New Harlem YMCA (built in 1930s), 180 W 135th 13 Utopia House, 170 W 130th 14 Langston Hughes’s home, 20 E 127th 15 Braddock Hotel, site of 1943 Harlem Riot, 272 W 126th 16 Lawrence’s studio in 1940, 33 W 125th 17 Apollo Theater, 253 W 125th 18 New York Amsterdam News (office in 1930s), 2293 7th Ave. 19 Harlem Community Art Center, 290 Lenox 20 First Harlem Music and Art Center (1937), 1 W 123rd

the ambitious and the talented of the whole Negro world. . . .

Lawrence was fortunate to meet Alston (Fig. 4). At

Harlem is not merely a Negro colony or community, it is a city

Columbia Alston had been briefly enrolled in a pre-archi-

within a city, the greatest Negro city in the world. It is not a

tecture course but switched to the liberal arts curriculum

slum or a fringe, it is located in the heart of Manhattan and

and graduated in 1929. 8 He spent at least a year teaching

occupies one of the most beautiful and healthful sections of the city. It is not a ‘quarter’ of dilapidated tenements, but is made up of new-law apartments and handsome dwellings, with well-paved and well-lighted streets. It has its own churches, social and civic centers, shops, theaters and other places of amusement. And it contains more Negroes to the square mile than any other spot on earth. A stranger who rides up mag-

at Utopia House in the arts and crafts program originally set up by James Wells, also a Columbia graduate (class of 1925).9 Alston returned to Columbia after a year or two to complete a master’s degree at Teachers College.10 In interviews during the 1960s Alston recalled the circumstances of his first encounter with Lawrence and his

nificent Seventh Avenue on a bus or in an automobile must be

determination to let his pupil’s innate talent develop. To

struck with surprise at the transformation which takes place

Harlan Phillips, he remarked:

after he crosses One Hundred and Twenty-Fifth Street. Beginning there, the population suddenly darkens and he rides

I took a job as a director of a boys’ club in a slum area in Har-

through twenty-five solid blocks where the passers-by, the

lem. It was a very small operation. . . . You had kids of ages—

shoppers, those sitting in restaurants, coming out of theaters,

five to 16, 17—which made it very hard to develop a pro-

standing in doorways and looking out of windows are practi-

gram. . . . Among the kids that I had was . . . Jacob Lawrence.

cally all Negroes.4

This kid was not the usual mischievous, hell-raising kid. . . . Jake . . . had this very curious vision that just fascinated me.

Like Johnson, young Lawrence was attracted to the magic of Harlem’s beauty and vitality, with neighbors and strangers moving past each other through the spaces of stoops, sidewalks, and streets. Lawrence would later say, in a

If I gave him crayons or whatever materials were available, there was always a very personal, strange kind of expression. I don’t think at that time he had ever seen African masks or anything like that, but he used to do these fantastic masks . . . in brilliant colors. I kept him supplied with things and sensed

remark familiar to his interviewers: “It was a very cohesive

even that early . . . that this was a kid to leave alone. Don’t let

community. You knew people. You didn’t know their

him start painting like you, don’t start cramming him with

names, but you’d pass people on the street and see the

classical ideas about art.11

face[s] over and over again. It was that kind of a community. It was a very vital, exciting community. At least it

To another interviewer, Albert Murray, Alston added, “He

was for me, and from what I hear from many other people

didn’t work like the other kids. He knew pretty definitely

my age[.] [Y]ou knew the police, you knew the firemen,

what he wanted to do and it didn’t relate to the typical

you knew the teachers, the people on the street. You knew

kind of thing that children of that age do. I’m glad I had

the peddlers. That’s what it was for me” (Figs. 2 and 3).

the sense at that time to realize that this kid had a very

Rosalee Lawrence, sometime after her children arrived

unusual, unique kind of talent, and a way of seeing things.

in Harlem, enrolled them in arts and crafts classes at the

I wouldn’t even let him watch me paint. And I tried my

after-school program of Utopia Children’s House, located

best just to protect this very unique quality in Jake.”12

at 170 West 130th Street, in Central Harlem. Founded in

At Utopia House, Lawrence was introduced to soap

1927 by Daisy C. Reed, its first director, and other social

carving, metalwork, woodwork, and painting. Painting

progressives in Harlem, Utopia Children’s House provided

particularly appealed to Lawrence; to Elton Fax he re-

activities and free lunches for the children of working

called his early attempts at making art unencumbered by

mothers.6 Jacob took lessons from the Harlem artist

rules and academic protocols: “My first paintings con-

Charles Alston, a recent graduate of Columbia College,

sisted of geometric designs, done from my imagination,

walking each day the brief distance to Utopia House from

with poster paints on paper. I was playing with forms and

PS 89, at Lenox Avenue (now Malcolm X Boulevard) and

color with no other thing in mind. Then I began painting

135th Street, where he was in the fifth grade.7

masks out of my imagination. It was only later that I began

harlem’s artistic communit y in the

1930 s 

11

Fig 2  View of 125th Street, looking west from Seventh Avenue, 1943. Photographs and Prints

Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. Fig 3  Sid Grossman, Children Playing on Sidewalk, 1939. Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

As the art historian Elizabeth Hutton Turner has pointed out, Alston no doubt conveyed to Lawrence many of the precepts of the influential artist and educator Alfred Wesley Dow, who had chaired the Fine Arts Program at Columbia’s Teachers College from 1904 until his death in 1922.15 Dow’s book Composition: A Series of Exercises in Art Structure for the Use of Students and Teachers (1899; revised, 1913 and 1938) served as a guide for a generation of artists, particularly those trained at Columbia.16 Inspired by his own study of Japanese art, Dow taught students first to learn and experiment with the “three structural elements” of art: line (and its relationship to space), then notan (“darks and lights in harmonic relations”), and finally color. Dow described notan as the patterning of lights and darks in harmonies and contrasts, not as light and shadow or chiaroscuro. The notan was to effect a harmonious pattern, not to simulate an illusion of three-dimensional depth. Dow’s method differed from tra­ ditional academic art teaching that stressed representation, especially life drawing, as the basis for art. Whereas students in traditional art academies were first taught to draw as realistically as they could from still life objects, Fig 4  Charles Alston in his studio, 1930s. U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Harmon Foundation Collection.

plaster casts of antique statuary fragments, or the live model, for Dow, “mere accuracy has no art-value whatever. Some of the most pathetic things in the world are the pictures or statues whose only virtue is accuracy. The bare truth may be a deadly commonplace.”17 Dow instead

working out of my own experience. I built street scenes

urged exercises for students, such as copying the lines,

out of corrugated boxes—taking them to familiar spots in

light-dark patterns, and colors in textiles and rugs, as a

the street and painting houses and scenes on them, re-

way to develop an artistic sensibility (Fig. 5).18

creating as best I could a three-dimensional image of

Pattern became an important element in Lawrence’s

those spots. And then I began to gradually work freely on

compositions, as the artist explained in a 1968 interview:

paper and with poster color.”13 To another interviewer,

“I look around this room . . . and I see pattern. I don’t see

Lawrence elaborated: “There was a lot of theatre equip-

you. I see you as a form as it relates to your environment.

ment at Utopia. I got absorbed in working on stage sets

I see that there’s a plane, you see, I’m very conscious of

and in making masks. Pictures of Persian rugs and Moor-

these planes, patterns.”19 Lawrence’s procedure as an

ish tiles fascinated me and I started to cover sheets of

artist followed the Dow method: he first drew on the sup-

paper with crayoned webs of small, complicated, geomet-

port (whether paper or a gessoed panel), then painted in

ric repeat-patterns. I was fascinated by patterns from the

the dark colors (which as a contrast to the white support

outset.”14 Even though Alston claimed not to have taught

would help construct the light-dark pattern), and finally

Lawrence academic methods, and Lawrence himself re-

filled in the lighter colors to achieve a harmony.

called his own complete freedom to create at Utopia

Besides the basic elements of line, light-dark pattern,

House, Alston’s own Teachers College training would serve

and color, Dow wanted students to “look for character . . .

the younger artist well.

and to value power in expression above success in

harlem’s artistic communit y in the

1930 s 

13

Fig 5  Page from Arthur Wesley Dow, Composi­ tion: A Series of Exercises in Art Structure for the Use of Students and Teachers, 1938.

drawing.”20 For Alston, and in fact for any teacher setting

­fellows at Mike’s [Henry Bannarn’s 306 studio].” She

up lessons in a children’s after-school program, such exer-

assured her readers, “I have always prided myself that I

cises were far simpler and no doubt produced quicker and

urged Jacob Lawrence not to worry about whether his

more satisfying results than traditional perceptual studio

work was like that of others around him.”22 Lawrence’s

drawing exercises. And since Alston recognized Lawrence’s

style merged Dow’s art-for-composition’s-sake meth­ods

uncanny sense of design, he would naturally steer the

with his own commitment to the representation of

youth toward developing his compositional skills.

­content—to portraying the social life of Harlem and to

This nonacademic method of conceiving pictures first as design structures would stay with Lawrence through-

understanding “art as experience,” as John Dewey advocated.

out his career. Early on he developed his signature style

Turner was the first to make the connection to another

of working with descriptive lines, patterns of light and

Columbia Teachers College influence that filtered through

dark, and a limited palette of flat, unmodulated colors for

Alston to Lawrence: the social pragmatism of John Dew-

composing his pictures, for example, Halloween Sand

ey. 23 Dewey and his followers believed that both the pro­

Bags, 1937 (see Fig. 22). When interviewers later asked

cess of making art and the appreciation of art enriched

him about his distinctive style, he would often say: “I

the lives of individuals and, by extension, the community.

didn’t think about it. It was all I could do. I couldn’t do

In 1939 Holger Cahill, director of the Federal Art Project

anything else. I didn’t know of any other way to paint. So

(FAP) of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), deliv-

it wasn’t an intellectual process. . . . I was encouraged by

ered a tribute to Dewey at the philosopher’s eightieth

various people. They didn’t try to change my style.”21 We

birthday celebration. He emphasized the high regard in

know of only one instance when he expressed doubts

which educational leaders held Dewey:

about his unique style—when he confided to the artist and poet Gwendolyn Bennett that he might be disadvantaged by not having mastered the classical techniques of academic drawing. In an article of 1947 Bennett recalled

John Dewey and his pupils and followers have been of the greatest importance in developing American resources in the arts, especially through their influence on the school systems of this country. They have emphasized the importance and

Lawrence’s words: “I’m worried about the fact that no

pervasiveness of the aesthetic experience, the place of the

matter how I try I just can’t draw like the rest of the

arts as part of the significant life of an organized community,

14  harlem’s artistic communit y in the

1930 s

and the necessary unity of the arts with the activities, the

sounds, and smells of Harlem itself as he hurried from

objects, and the scenes of everyday life. They have insisted

school to the after-school program at Utopia House to

that the teaching of the arts should not be relegated to the

home, and, on Sundays, to the Abyssinian Baptist Church

frills and the extras, but that it is central in any system of

at West 138th Street, where he and his family listened to

education. They have shown that art education, like art itself,

the inspiring sermons of Adam Clayton Powell Sr. 28

involves activity, that art appreciation can best be taught through doing. 24

He confessed to the artist Elton Fax that in Harlem he seldom played with other children:

Dewey’s lectures and writings, particularly his book Art

I’d been used to more space such as we had in Philadelphia.

as Experience (1934), helped shape the discourse about

When I played marbles there, we played in large open lots.

art as an activity, a social responsibility, and a commu-

Here the tenement kids had learned to play in the cramped

nity endeavor. Indeed, Dewey’s goal in his book was “to

quarters of the gutters and I wasn’t used to that. New York

restore continuity between the refined and intensified

City games took on the character of the environment. Stick

forms of experience that are works of art and the every-

ball played in the narrow side streets, with parked cars and

day events, doings, sufferings that are universally recognized to constitute

experience.”25

He and his followers

rejected the separation of the high arts from the popular arts; the goal was to stimulate creativity in everyone. The Dow and Dewey influences coalesced in Alston’s encouragement of Lawrence to see the artistic qualities of line, light-dark pattern, and color in his everyday experience at home and in the streets of Harlem. Lawrence later recalled to Samella Lewis: My mother decorated her house with colors, we were surrounded by them. This was common for people in our economic and social level. I can’t say that it was common throughout the Harlem community—there were families in

manhole covers for bases, was strange and foreign to me. So I withdrew from much of that kind of activity. I was thirteen, and children entering adolescence find it more difficult to adjust than when they are younger. 29

Instead, he stepped back to become an observer of the Harlem environment. He saw and heard the street-corner orators (see Figs. 122 and 123), who stood atop soap boxes and ladders and harangued their audiences about communism, socialism, black nationalism, and religion. He watched kids playing in the streets, mothers and fathers hurrying to work, mourners walking to funeral homes (see Fig. 24), icemen delivering great blocks of ice to sweltering tenement residents, evictions of families for nonpayment

Harlem that were very affluent. I didn’t know those people. I

of rent, blind men tapping their way along sidewalks (see

only knew people on our economic and social level, poor

Fig. 25), prostitutes leaning against lamp posts (see Fig.

people. And like other poor people in Harlem we used a lot of

121). All these would eventually become the subjects of

color to decorate our houses. We had a lot of decorations,

his art, but at the time he focused on acquiring greater

including paper flowers and things like that. This was a part

facility in designing compositions of line, pattern, and

of my cultural experience, so it is reflected in my ­paintings. 26

color; painting masks; and creating the three-dimensional stage tableaux from cardboard shoe boxes at Utopia

The art historian Leslie King-Hammond, drawing on the observations of the anthropologist and novelist Zora Neale

House. When he stopped going to Utopia House after a couple

Hurston about “the urge to adorn” among working-class

of years, he spent the after-school hours helping to sup-

black families, summarizes the aesthetic prevailing in the

port his family by delivering newspapers and working in

Harlem community: “This penchant for decoration, spring-

a laundry and a print shop. 30 He nevertheless kept at his

ing from the poorer segments of the black population, was

art, as he later told the radio personality Randy Good-

one facet of the quest for an aesthetic ideal in the black

man: “I was at Utopia House for about two years. Then I

community in the 1930s.”27

went out and started to work on my own. I got to know

We can imagine that that nascent aesthetic experience for Lawrence also included taking in the forms, colors,

other young artists in Harlem . . . we sort of helped each other.”31

harlem’s artistic communit y in the

1930 s 

15

In 1933 Lawrence returned to study with Charles Alston.

Once basic needs were cared for, the next issue was

“I was trying my hand at everything . . . even designing

jobs. Harlem civic leaders pressed the city government to

masks. One day I ran into Alston, and he told me he was

end policies of segregation and open up jobs for African

giving a course at the library. He asked me to stop by. I

Americans; one result was that 110 subway jobs became

went around with a lot of my things. . . . He got very excited.

available when the Eighth Avenue subway began con-

He said it was original stuff. He advised me to look

struction. 36 Another concern emerged: If there were no

around . . . take the material at hand . . . and develop it.”32

jobs, what would fill the idle hours of the unemployed?

Lawrence would now take classes on a more advanced

Free classes and workshops, which had traditionally been

and institutionally organized level than at Utopia House—

offered by settlement houses, seemed a good solution,

thanks, in part, to the art workshop programs set up in

and these were set up in local churches with the help of

Harlem as partnerships, variously, of the College Art As-

organizations like the Urban League. For those concerned

sociation (CAA), committees of civic-minded citizens,

about artists, such as the staff of the CAA, art workshops

private foundations, universities, city libraries, municipal

seemed a very good solution indeed. Not only would such

and state agencies, and, eventually, the federal

a plan give teaching jobs to indigent artists, but it could

government.33

also instill in adults of all ages an appreciation for the arts. Many in favor of art workshops argued, like John Dewey, that one learns about art “by doing” and that making art enriches not only the lives of the participating

employing artists in the depression

individuals but the community as a whole.

When the Depression deepened in the early 1930s, unemployment increased sharply, especially in Harlem.34 As conditions worsened, Harlem civic leaders and organizations came to the aid of the homeless and the hungry.

organizations advocating for the arts

There are many examples of the creative partnerships

The CAA, the professional association dedicated to pro-

among the nongovernment organizations. For example, in

moting opportunities for both artists and art historians

November 1930 New York City’s Emergency Work Bureau

since its founding in 1912, was fortunate to have on staff

joined with United Neighborhood Houses to set up a

at that time the dynamic and tireless Audrey McMahon,

workshop at the Urban League headquarters to make

who was executive secretary, with Frances Pollak, a CAA

clothing for the families of the unemployed. The Abyssin-

volunteer, as her assistant. McMahon reasoned that ex-

ian Baptist Church announced that married men who

hibiting artists’ work might generate needed income for

applied at the church on Mondays would be given jobs for

them from sales. McMahon and Pollak secured grants

three days a week at the rate of five dollars a day and that

from the Carnegie Corporation to fund traveling exhibi-

the church planned to convert its community house to an

tions in the United States and Canada and to award

overnight shelter. Mayor La Guardia’s Committee on Relief

scholarships, but the Carnegie Corporation pressed the

brought packages of food to a public school near the West

CAA to take an even more active role. 37 The Carnegie

135th Street police station for distribution. The Harlem

Corporation agreed to supply the CAA with teaching

branch of the Salvation Army fed a thousand people a day

equipment; but as grateful as McMahon and Pollak were,

from its soup kitchen. By December the Abyssinian Baptist

they realized they had only limited funds to pay artists’

Church had also set up a soup kitchen. Private individuals

salaries.

pitched in when they could. One grocer gave away vege-

By this time, artists were increasingly visiting the CAA

tables to a needy family each week; a local resident, Sister

offices to bring artworks for the exhibition program, and

Minnie, pushed an old baby carriage filled with blankets

McMahon heard their stories of hardship. She became

that she distributed to families down on their luck. 35

convinced that more needed to be done.38 In 1932, ac-

16  harlem’s artistic communit y in the

1930 s

cording to McMahon, the CAA “petitioned the Emergency

proposed initiatives and potential teachers to run them.45

Work Bureau of the Gibson Committee to create a depart-

She hired Harlem photographer James L. ­Allen to take

ment to put the unemployed artist to work.”39 Harry Knight

photographs to document the workshops’ activities for

became the supervisor for the overall CAA art program

publicity purposes and helped organize ­exhibitions where

and acted as liaison between the CAA and other organiza-

Harlem artists’ work could be shown.46 In 1934 Brady ar-

tions. Pollak took charge of the teaching program, which

ranged for the CAA to co-sponsor a traveling Harmon

was carried out in neighborhood houses, and McMahon

exhibition, one that subsequently antagonized many Har-

oversaw the hiring of artists to paint or restore murals.40

lem artists because of Brady’s patronizing attitudes.47

Mildred Constantine, McMahon’s young secretary in the CAA offices, worked in the exhibition program.41 All four worked out of the CAA offices.42 After President Roosevelt took office in March 1933,

the art workshops of harlem

several agencies of the federal government were estab-

In the four years or so before the grand opening of the

lished to aid the arts, with a consequent shifting of both

Harlem Community Art Center in December 1937, when

funds and personnel between private and state and fed-

workshop activities and exhibition programs were con-

eral agencies. This wreaks havoc with a historian’s desire

solidated, there were four major operations where Har-

to present a tidy chronology, but it also explains the fed-

lem’s older teenaged students seriously interested in art,

eral records of Charles Alston’s employment. Previously

such as Lawrence, could attend workshops taught by

receiving a salary through CAA for his teaching duties at

trained artists: (1) the studios of Augusta Savage, first at

the Harlem Art Workshop held at the 135th Street Library,

163 West 143rd Street and later at 239 West 135th; (2)

he became a “librarian” on the Civil Works Administration

the YMCA at 180 West 135th Street between Lenox and

federal payroll on January 19, 1934, but on April 1, 1934,

7th Avenues; (3) the Harlem Art Workshop, at the 135th

was transferred, still as a “librarian,” to the Temporary

Street branch of the New York Public Library, which held

Emergency Relief Administration (TERA).43 Nevertheless,

classes under the auspices of the Harlem Adult Educa-

to Alston’s friends and to Jacob Lawrence, it was the

tion Committee at both the library and later 270 West

CAA, as the dispensing agency, that deserved credit for

136th Street;48 and (4) Alston and Bannarn’s studio/

library.44

When the Federal

workshop, launched in early 1934 at 306 West 141st

Art Project was set up as an agency within the Works

Street.49 Almost every artist in Harlem was connected

Alston’s employment at the

Progress Administration in August 1935, with Holger Ca-

with one or another of these studio workshops, and sev-

hill as director and McMahon in charge of the New York

eral organizations and philanthropic foundations partici-

office, all the artists—whether teachers, supervisors, mu-

pated, not only the CAA, the Carnegie Corporation, the

ralists, or poster designers—were transferred to the WPA

Harmon Foundation, and the Gibson Committee working

payroll. By that time federal funds were adequate to cope

out of Mayor La Guardia’s office, but also the Urban

with the salaries of all the unemployed artists, although

League, the Progressive Education Association, and sev-

funds to cover artists’ materials and workshop spaces

eral state and federal agencies.50

still had to be obtained elsewhere.

One of the first African American artists to open a ­studio

Another organization working closely with the CAA was

to students in Harlem was the dynamic sculptor Augusta

the Harmon Foundation, which had mounted exhibitions

Savage (Fig. 6).51 Ever since her return from study in Europe

of art by African American artists during the late 1920s

in 1931 she had been teaching small classes in her base-

and early 1930s. During the mid-1930s, as the art historian

ment studio at 163 West 143rd Street.52 In December 1933,

Mary Ann Calo has shown, the Harmon’s director, Mary

the Carnegie Corporation gave the Urban League $1,500

Beattie Brady, took an interest in the development of the

to be regranted to Savage for “training and encouraging

workshops, often conferring behind the scenes with Alain

young artists.”53 Since her salary was already being paid

Locke or Frederick Keppel of the Carnegie Corporation on

by the State Education Department, the funds were no

harlem’s artistic communit y in the

1930 s 

17

Fig 6  Augusta Savage in her

studio, 1930s. U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Harmon Foundation Collection.

doubt used to purchase equipment and materials. Called

Savage organized in Harlem a large exhibition of her

the Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts, its official status

students’ works, titled Artists and Models. Sponsored by

was “the Harlem branch of the adult education project of

the Urban League, it opened February 14, 1935, in the

the University of the State of New York.”54 With this support

auditorium of the YWCA at 144 West 138th Street.58 For

and driven by burgeoning classes, Savage moved to larger

opening night she dedicated a space to portraits of the

quarters in a former garage at 239 West 135th Street,

arriving celebrities sketched on the spot by her students.

which she transformed into a studio space.

These portraits were then considered part of the exhibi-

A forceful teacher, Savage continually championed her

tion. One notable she took special pains to recruit as a

students, who included Gwendolyn Knight, Norman Lewis,

portrait subject was Arthur Schomburg, the bibliophile,

William Artis, Ernest Crichlow, Elton C. Fax, Marvin Smith,

historian, and curator whose extensive collection of books

and, for a time, Kenneth B. Clark, who later turned to so-

on Africa and African American history and culture had

cial psychology.55 She arranged for their work to be ex-

been purchased for the West 135th Street New York Public

hibited in the spring of 1934 at the Metropolitan Museum

Library. Behind Savage’s manipulations was her resolve

of Art, where Lewis and Smith received prizes, and in the

to advance the race in the field of culture, a cause to which

fall of 1934 at New York University.56 Although Lawrence

Schomburg was most sympathetic. She wrote him one

was not her student, he and his family lived just across

month before the event: “The ‘Studio’ is planning to hold

from her first, basement studio.57 On one of his frequent

an exhibition . . . of the work of these students in an at-

visits to her studio, he met Knight, who had posed for one

tempt to gain for them the recognition and assistance of

of Savage’s sculpture busts (Fig. 7). Savage welcomed

those who are interested in the cultural advancement of

everyone, especially young Lawrence, for she recognized

the race. We will attempt to present Harlem to Harlem as

his extraordinary talent and enthusiastically promoted

seen through the eyes of the Artist.”59 No doubt she wrote

him at every opportunity.

to other potential sitters as well; since the exhibition was

18  harlem’s artistic communit y in the

1930 s

called Artists and Models, she would have wanted to have potential sitters/models there. In any event the exhibition and the sketches proved a success. Savage was an expert in generating publicity and buzz for her causes. A reviewer from the New York Herald Tri­ bune understood her goals when reviewing the February exhibition: “The artists have confined themselves to subjects connected with their own race and have not attempted to ape the schools of their white colleagues. There are pictures of dice players, women dancers doing the ‘Lindy Hop’ and a multitude of other Harlem scenes with which the artists obviously are intimately acquainted.”60 To that reviewer, the artists had succeeded in capturing the local American scene. Savage could count on the New York Amsterdam News to document her activities and to affirm her political goal, to give agency to Harlem’s own people in constructing the image of their community. The Harlem weekly devoted three half-columns to the show, praising it and reproducing some of the sketches:

Fig 7  Augusta Savage, Gwendolyn Knight, 1934–35. Painted plaster, 181 ⁄2 x 81 ⁄2 x 9 in. (47 x 21.6 x 22.9 cm). Seattle Art Museum, Gift of Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence. Photo: Susan A. Cole.

At last, Harlem is going to have a chance to see itself as Harlem sees it. Anyway, as it is seen through the eyes of the threescore art students who for more than two years have been attending classes at the Augusta Savage Studio. . . . The show, the first of its kind to be given in Harlem—or, as far as is known, in any part of the city—will indeed attempt to record the life of Harlem in every respect. It will run the picto-

of classes were held. The first was a Boys’ Work Program for twenty-five younger children, instructed by William E. Artis; the YMCA exhibited their arts and crafts during both March and May 1934. A second group—totaling ninety-five older students—had an especially enriched

rial gamut from success to failure, from Striver’s Row to Beale

program. These were taught by Richard Lindsey under

Street, from the cathedral to the gin mill, from Sugar Hill to

the auspices of the Y’s Activities Department in coopera-

the breadline.61

tion with the CAA. The author of a Harmon Foundation article on the Harlem workshops described the full cur-

The article also named the “prominent Harlemites”

riculum: “Motion pictures on art and frequent trips to

sketched from life at the exhibition, but Arthur Schom-

museums and galleries help to build a background of art

burg, whom Savage had written, was not among them.

knowledge and experience which is both instructive and

This was the kind of event that the seventeen-year-old

stimulating.”64 Exhibitions of this older group’s works

Lawrence would have attended. Gwendolyn Knight was

were held at the YMCA in May 1934 and February 1935.

mentioned as one of the exhibiting students. Moreover,

Lindsey saw the classes as a balm for his students as

Alain Locke was named as one of the sponsors, along

they endured the stresses of the times: “I have been hap-

with many other notables.62 Older artists would have en-

pily surprised to find that during the several years of the

couraged the youngsters to attend such major Harlem

depression, a great number of people are turning to arts

exhibitions as a necessary stimulant for young artists

and crafts as an outlet for their mental strife. It is a pleas-

learning to make art.63

ant experience to help people find themselves, and to find

The second site for Harlem art workshops was the

pleasure in creating things to make others happy.”65

135th Street branch of the YMCA, where two categories

When the FAP was created in August 1935, as part of the

harlem’s artistic communit y in the

1930 s 

19

Fig 8  Display of masks at Harlem Art Workshop, 1933. Photo: James L. Allen. Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. Fig 9  Jacob Lawrence (center) and other students at the Harlem Art Workshop, 1933. Photo: James L. Allen. Reproduced in “Art Study through the Workshop,” in Negro Artists: An Illustrated Review of Their Achievements (New York: Harmon Foundation, 1935). U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Harmon Foundation Collection.

WPA, the YMCA teachers’ salaries began coming from

rence’s cohort: Georgette Seabrooke, who made charcoal

that agency.66

drawings and lithographs, and Walter Christmas, who

The third location, which Lawrence attended, was the Harlem Art Workshop and Studio at 270 West 136th

produced textile prints. The reviewer also praised the students’ painted papier-maché masks (Fig. 8).73

Street, established in July 1933 by Mary Beattie Brady of

When Wells returned to his teaching post at Howard

the Harmon Foundation and Ernestine Rose, director of

University in September, Charles Alston took his place at

the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library.67

the Harlem Art Workshop, teaching both children’s and

Earlier, in 1932, the Carnegie Corporation had agreed to

adult classes in the 1933–34 academic year. This was the

support an adult education project for the library that

year when Lawrence returned to studying with Alston.

would focus on music, dramatics, and creative work.68

Alston introduced clay modeling, the use of pastels, and

However, the actual library branch at 135th Street never

design and lettering.74 It was probably at the spacious

had adequate space for all the art classes and work-

270 West 136th Street location that the Harmon Founda-

shops.69 With the sponsorship of the Harlem Adult Edu-

tion commissioned photographs of the workshop activi-

cation Committee, the West 136th Street site, where for-

ties that included Lawrence with a textile instructor and

merly a nightclub had been, seemed to be a good

also in the open workshop space (Figs. 9 and 10).75

solution.70 The instructor, James Lesesne Wells, and his assistant, Palmer Hayden, offered classes in “drawing, painting, sculpture, mask making, block printing, and linoleum cut work.”71 An exhibition of the students’ work

306

west

141st

street studio

was shown at the library in September and October

In early 1934 Alston proposed the fourth major site for a

1933.72 A reviewer for the New York Herald Tribune

workshop. He persuaded his supervisors to allow him to

praised the artwork of two of the young artists in Law-

move his classes to more accommodating quarters he

20  harlem’s artistic communit y in the

1930 s

Fig 10   Jacob Lawrence (standing left) and other students with teacher at the Harlem Art Workshop, 1933. Photo: James L. Allen. U.S.

National Archives and Records Administration, Harmon Foundation Collection. Fig 11   Henry W. Bannarn, ca. 1937. Courtesy of the Federal Art Project, Photographic Division collection, 1935–42, Archives of American

Art, Smithsonian Institution.

had found, in a former horse stable, at 306 West 141st

what in awe of the older artists Ronald Joseph, who was

Street. On April 1, 1934, he was transferred to the payroll

intellectual and liked to talk, and Gwendolyn Knight, who

of TERA; on April 25 he was promoted to “art teacher.”76

had studied at one of the best private high schools in

Alston, called “Spinky” by his students and friends,

Harlem, had gone to Howard University before the De-

moved in with his friend Henry W. Bannarn, nicknamed

pression made her attendance financially impossible, and

“Mike,” a sculptor who had been living at the YMCA (Fig.

was one of Augusta Savage’s students.82 Both Joseph

11).77

Alston and Bannarn took the top two floors as

and Knight would hire Lawrence to pose for them. The

apartments, leaving the ground floor for a large workshop

three of them would talk and visit museums. Younger art-

studio.78

ists who became his good friends were Bob Blackburn

The Alston/Bannarn workshop, known as 306,

became independent of the library’s Harlem Art Workshop, although the library still paid part of the rent as late as April 1936.79

(Fig. 13) and Walter Christmas.83 The Alston/Bannarn studio—306—became not just a teaching studio but an informal gathering place for art-

For the next two years, from about April 1934 to April

ists and writers to discuss art and politics. Thirty years

1936, the 306 workshop received government support as

later Romare Bearden and Harry Henderson pointed to

a teaching workshop, presided over by Alston and Ban-

the cultural importance of 306 as “the main center in

narn, that included students such as Lawrence, Bob

Harlem for creative black people in all the arts.”84 This

Murrell.80

Because his mother had

was no exaggeration, for Harlem, even though its popula-

not been particularly sympathetic to his art interests,

tion had reached 204,000 in 1934,85 was a place where

Blackburn, and Sara

Lawrence rented a corner of Bannarn’s downstairs loft for

artists, civic leaders, and professional people moved in

two dollars a month to have a place to paint away from

the same circles and socialized.86

home (Fig. 12).81

Lawrence and the younger artists benefited from being

Although shy and somewhat taciturn, Lawrence made

in such a stimulating milieu. He later recalled with pleasure

friends with the artists and other students. He was some-

this vital environment, so important for young artists

harlem’s artistic communit y in the

1930 s 

21

Fig 12   Jacob Lawrence in corner of studio at 306, 1930s. Photo: James L. Allen. U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Harmon Foundation Collection. Fig 13   Bob Blackburn working on lithographic stone, 1930s. U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Harmon Foundation Collection.

soaking up experiences and hearing the stories that older

to take place in the South and the need for federal anti-

creative people told:

lynching laws.90 We can speculate that Claude McKay might have talked

During the thirties there was much interest in Black history

about his article on the 1935 Harlem riots for the Nation.

and the social and political issues of the day—this was es-

Norman Lewis might have brought back news of the

pecially true at 306. It became a gathering place for many

meetings of the Artists’ Union, held downtown. Aaron

in the arts from Harlem and other areas of New York. I re-

Douglas and Ernest Crichlow would have relayed discus-

ceived not only an experience in the plastic arts (at 306)—but

sions about the upcoming American Artists’ Congress,

came in contact with older Blacks from the theater, dance, literary, and music fields. At sixteen it was quite a learning experience—Katherine Dunham, Aaron Douglas, Leigh Whipper, Countee Cullen, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Alain Locke, William Attaway, O. Richard Reid—hearing them dis-

held in February 1936. Plans for the Harlem Artists Guild, organized in early 1935, would also have been discussed. Other events of interest in 1935 would have included Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia and the preparations of

cuss the topics of the day—as well as philosophy and creative

Joe Louis (the “Brown Bomber”) to challenge the German

processes pertaining to their own fields. Claude McKay was

boxer Max Schmeling. Exhibitions  held in 1935 outside 

a frequent visitor to 306. He had more than a great inter- 

Harlem that would have generated talk in the 306 group

est in Africa, the philosophy of Garvey, U.N.I.A. [the United

were the two antilynching art shows—one sponsored by

Negro Improvement Association], etc. Augusta Savage was

the John Reed Club and held at the ACA galleries and the

also a strong Black nationalist and a champion of Black

other sponsored by the National Association for the Ad-

women. 87

vancement of Colored People (NAACP) and held at the Arthur U. Newton Galleries, which included the work of

In subsequent interviews, Lawrence would mention other

Alston, among others.

arts people, such as Langston Hughes.88 He clearly enjoyed being a fly on the wall: “They may not have talked to me because I was too young, but I would hear their conversations with each other. And not just blacks, but people from outside the black community—very inter-

the impact of african art The big exhibition event in 1935, besides the two anti-

ested artists. . . . There was this interchange. And, being

lynching shows, that would have interested Harlem art-

a youngster, I guess subconsciously I was influenced by

ists was the African art exhibition held that spring at the

this. They would talk about their involvement in the arts

Museum of Modern Art, which brought Harlemites down

and things like that.”89 At the age of sixteen he was learn-

to West 53rd Street. Lawrence recalls seeing the MoMA

ing that art and its making are intellectual endeavors that

show with Charles Seifert, who led a group of artists and

have a social context.

students there. Seifert, a self-taught historian with a deep

Discussions at 306 might have focused on the contro-

knowledge of African history, owned a building at 313

versial aspects of contemporary theater, the social re-

West 137th Street, which he called the Ethiopian School

sponsibility of art, art as propaganda, and race as a com-

of Research History. Here he made available to school-

ponent of culture, to name a few of the issues. Salient

teachers and students his extensive collection of African

events of 1934 and 1935 no doubt elicited heated discus-

sculpture and artifacts, books, manuscripts, and maps.91

sions: the Scottsboro Boys’ prosecution, the destruction

Like Arthur Schomburg, Alain Locke, and others, Seifert

by Nelson Rockefeller’s workmen of Diego Rivera’s Man

felt it imperative that African Americans learn about their

at the Crossroads mural at Rockefeller Center, articles in

African heritage. Lawrence later described Seifert as “a

the Crisis and Opportunity, Nancy Cunard’s controversial

black nationalist who gave lectures in black history to any

book Negro (1934), and Aaron Douglas’s murals installed

interested groups. . . . One of his projects (besides the

at the West 135th Street YMCA. Unemployment would

collecting of books pertaining to black history) was to get

have been a topic, as well as the lynchings that continued

black artists and young people such as myself who were

harlem’s artistic communit y in the

1930 s 

23

interested in art . . . to select as our content black history. . . . For me, and for a few others, [Seifert] was a most inspiring and exciting man, in that he helped to give us something that we needed at the time.”92 Excited by his visit to the African show with Seifert’s group, Lawrence went home and attempted to carve two sculptures out of wood.93 Alain Locke (Fig. 14) initiated the discourse among African American intellectuals that pointed to African art as the foundational source for European modernism.94 He emphasized the importance of the tribal arts of Africa in his 1924 essay “A Note on African Art” for Opportunity magazine and in his 1925 essay “The Legacy of the Ancestral Arts” for the anthology The New Negro.95 Following the lead of Paul Guillaume in France and Marius de Zayas in the United States, Locke asserted that modern art had begun when French and German artists looked at and absorbed “the idioms of African art.”96 To follow the lead of the first European modernists was sufficient reason for African Americans to pay attention to African art; and besides, looking to Africa would encourage “race pride,” a term Locke often used strategically to counter feelings of second-class citizenship among black people and to boost morale. As Locke stated in “Legacy”: “There is in the mere knowledge of the skill and unique mastery of the arts of the ancestors the valuable and stimulating realization that the Negro is not a cultural foundling without his own inheritance. Our timid and apologetic imitativeness and overburdening sense of cultural indebtedness have,

Fig 14   Winold Reiss, Alain LeRoy Locke, ca. 1925. Pastel on artist

board, 397⁄8 x 215⁄8 in. (101.3 x 55 cm). National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Gift of Lawrence A. Fleischman and Howard Garfinkle with a matching grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

let us hope, their natural end in such knowledge and realization.”97 Like others who thought about modern art,

ideals; . . . it yields up, now this treasure, now that, to any-

Locke promoted creative originality.

one . . . armed with a capacity for personal choices.”98

Locke’s ideas skirt the concept of “the usable past”—a

Whereas Brooks’s idealism saw the past as a “store-

phrase Van Wyck Brooks first employed in early 1918. The

house for apt attitudes and adaptable ideals,” Locke’s

idea took hold during the 1920s among white writers urg-

thinking was tactical. He saw a way past the amateurish,

ing American artists to draw inspiration from the arts of

tepid works young artists produced in imitation of art

colonial New England, Pennsylvania Shaker communities,

school academic naturalism: encourage them to focus on

or the Spanish and Native American traditions of the

the art of the African past as “one of the great fountain

Southwest. Brooks used the concept to jump-start creativ-

sources of the arts of decoration and design.”99 African

ity at a time, World War I, when many writers and artists

art provided a model for young artists by teaching them

had become disillusioned with Western civilization and

to shun sentimentality and naive improvisation and to

modernity: “Discover, invent a usable past. . . . The past is

discipline themselves as artists: “What the Negro artist of

an inexhaustible storehouse of apt attitudes and adaptable

to-day has most to gain from the arts of the forefathers

24  harlem’s artistic communit y in the

1930 s

is perhaps not cultural inspiration or technical innova-

an essay, “The Negro’s Americanism,” which declared

tions, but the lesson of a classic background, the lesson

that there was “not a trace” of African culture in Har-

of discipline, of style, of technical control pushed to the

lem.104 After considerable fieldwork, Herskovits changed

limits of technical mastery.”100 Locke wanted the Ameri-

his mind and wrote The Myth of the Negro Past (1941),

cans not only to learn from the discipline of the Africans

which argued for retentions from Africa. To Locke, how-

but also to be inspired by their art, as French artists in

ever, the role of African art as a cultural inspiration

the circle of Picasso had been.

seemed evident, and even strategically desirable, not be-

Locke has often been misread, especially by writers

cause of a biological essence but because of its formal

during the 1930s, including James Porter and Meyer

beauty. Locke’s admonition that African art be viewed as

Schapiro, and even present-day scholars continue to mis-

a useful model for African American artists became a

read him, insisting that Locke wanted to persuade young

justification for elevating Africa as a source of creativity.

African American artists to emulate—to copy—African art

Young Romare Bearden, for his part, expressed views

101

This was far from the

similar to Locke’s when he wrote in the December 1934

case, but such interpretations are understandable, given

issue of Opportunity magazine that “modern art has bor-

Locke’s maddening penchant, as the literary historian

rowed heavily from Negro sculpture.  .  .  . Artists have

Gene Andrew Jarrett has observed, for planting “his phil-

been amazed at the fine surface qualities of the sculp-

as part of a racialized project.

osophical feet on both sides

simultaneously.”102

ture, the vitality of the work, and the unsurpassed ability

Locke’s writings are impressive, however, not so much

of the artists to create such significant forms.” The qual-

for their theories as for their tactics and strategies to

ity that most appealed to contemporary artists, Bearden

achieve recognition and stature for African American art-

continued, was that “the African would distort his figures,

ists. In his Negro Art: Past and Present (1936) he elabo-

if by so doing he could achieve a more expressive form.

rated on his views:

This is one of the cardinal principles of the modern artist.” Like Locke, Bearden also inveighed against “the ti-

So we need this historical perspective [of African art] at the

midity of the Negro artist of today.”105

very outset to get at the true values of the Negro as artist.

Gwendolyn Bennett was yet another writer of the

After achieving what is today recognized as great art and a

1930s who thought exhibitions of African art an urgent

tradition of great art in Africa, the Negro artist in America had

matter for the cultural development of Harlem artists.106

to make another start from scratch, and has not yet com-

Herself a poet, artist, and writer, she followed Locke’s

pletely recaptured his ancestral gifts or recovered his ancient skills. Of course he must do this in the medium and manner of his adopted civilization and the modern techniques of painting, sculpture and the craft arts. But when this development finally matures, it may be expected to reflect something

lead in her review of the exhibition Negro Art, held at the 138th Street YWCA from March 17 to March 30, 1935, an exhibition of contemporary Harlem art as well as African art borrowed from the Schomburg Collection and pri­

of the original endowment, if not as a carry-over of instinct

vate collections. Bennett first extended generous praise

then at least as a formal revival of historical memory and the

to the sixty-five established Harlem artists plus the stu-

proud inspiration of the reconstructed past.103

dents of the workshop teachers Charles Alston, Rex Gor­ leigh, Richard W. Lindsey, William Artis, Louise E. Jef-

Locke makes clear that he does not really believe in es-

ferson, O. Richard Reid, Augusta Savage, and Grayson

sentialist “instincts” but instead encourages a “revival” of

Walker.107 She then observed the impact of the loans of

the usable past. At the time Locke was also responding to the debate

African art and the context it had created for Harlem artists working in an expressionist style: “This primitive

about whether aspects of African culture had been car-

African art gives more pointed meaning to the naiveté of

ried into the New World. In 1925, the anthropologist Mel-

some of the contemporary artists who have branched

ville J. Herskovits contributed to Locke’s The New Negro

away from the more academic forms of painting and

harlem’s artistic communit y in the

1930 s 

25

sculpture. The conscious and studied distortion in ­African

sponsored had rankled many; they felt it necessary to

sculpture makes similar distinction among the works of

mount their own shows, free from Mary Beattie Brady’s

Har­lem artists understandable. In short, African art, which

preconceptions about what constituted good art by Af­

is reputed to have influenced a great number of the Euro-

rican Americans. Bearden, in the same 1934 Opportu­

pean moderns, served as a worthy ancestry to the work

nity article quoted above, spoke for many artists in crit­

of American Negro artists.”108 Bennett, who in her letters

icizing the Harmon Foundation: “There are quite a few

to Alain Locke often solicited his advice, here echoed

foundations that sponsor exhibitions of the work of

Locke’s own words, quoted above.

Negro artists. However praise-worthy may have been the

In this review, Bennett had another agenda—to pro-

spirit of the founders the effect upon the Negro artist

mote the establishment of a permanent Harlem art cen-

has been disastrous. Take for instance the Harmon Foun-

ter that the sponsors of the exhibition were advocating.109

dation. Its attitude from the beginning has been of a

To underscore this need Bennett quoted from the exhibi-

cod­dling and patronizing nature. It has encouraged the

tion’s brochure:

artist to exhibit long before he has mastered the technical equipment of his medium. By its choice of the type

This exhibit is Harlem’s response to the question “Does New

of work it favors, it has allowed the Negro artist to ac-

York need a city [art] center?” At the same time we hope that

cept standards that are both artificial and corrupt.”112

it will serve to create a greater interest on the part of the

To artists like Bearden, the CAA’s exhibition program had

community in the endeavors of young men and women who

been severely compromised by its association with the

seek to live up to the artistic traditions of their race. These

Harmon Foundation.

traditions are among the noblest in history, coming down from the amazing sculpture of the primitive African in wood, stone, bronze and ivory to the magnificent paintings of Henry O. Tanner. Harlem, no less than other sections of the city, needs to cultivate a greater appreciation of art. If this exhibit to some

Although most Harlem artists employed by the government had joined the Artists’ Union downtown, many felt they needed another organization, based in their own neighborhood, that would more effectively represent their

degree accomplishes that end it will have served its pur-

views and lobby for a large Harlem Art Community Cen-

pose.110

ter.113 Augusta Savage spearheaded the founding of the Harlem Artists Guild in early 1935, along with Gwendolyn

Bennett then reported on the remarks made by Alain

Bennett, Aaron Douglas, Norman Lewis, Charles Alston,

Locke at the opening preview of the Negro Art exhibition,

and a handful of others. Aaron Douglas became presi-

when he had urged the community to nurture its youth in

dent, and Augusta Savage, vice president. By the sum-

the arts: “He stated that a community art center in Har-

mer of 1937 the guild had grown to about ninety mem-

lem should be a place not only for the exhibition of works

bers and had begun mounting exhibitions that included

of art but a place in which artists might create.”111 Al-

Jacob Lawrence.114

though at this time classes were being held at the various

The preamble of the guild’s constitution stated: “We,

workshops, and both the YMCA and YWCA had hosted

the artists of Harlem, being aware of the need to act col-

exhibitions on an ad hoc basis, many felt that Harlem

lectively in the solution of the cultural, economic, social

merited a single center embracing all such activities.

and professional problems that confront us, do hereby constitute ourselves an organization that shall be known as the Harlem Artists Guild.” The goals were, first, to en-

harlem artists guild

courage young talent; second, to foster “understanding between artist and public thru education toward an ap-

In 1935 Harlem might not yet have had an adequate

preciation of art” and through “cooperation with agencies

community art center, but Harlem artists realized they

and individuals interested in the improvement of condi-

needed to form their own organization. The Harmon

tions among artists”; and third, to raise “standards of liv-

Foundation’s exhibition in 1934 that the CAA had co-

ing and achievement among artists.”115

26  harlem’s artistic communit y in the

1930 s

One compelling issue in 1935 was the government’s apparent refusal to assign African American artists as

ferent to high school and was not getting along with his mother, with whom he still lived.124

supervisors of the WPA/FAP projects. Guild members also

Thus on April 13, 1936, he reported to Camp Dix, New

resented the requirement that artists “go to the Harmon

Jersey, and was assigned to Company 246. After three

Foundation to be certified” as professional artists.116 Ac-

days, his company was transferred to Breeze Hill Camp, at

cording to Bearden and Henderson, the guild put in place

Wawayanda, near Middletown, New York. The camp, with

its own grievance committee and hence duplicated some

1,400 black enrollees, was involved in a flood control proj-

of the activities that concerned the Artists’ Union, but this

ect.125 In its February 8, 1936, issue the New York Amster­

benefited both groups. Guild members could also be

dam News had glowingly described the camp as a

counted on to organize community protests and participate in picket lines.117 During the guild’s few years of ex-

modern mountain village of 84 buildings artistically grouped

istence it continued to advocate for African American

across the countryside. The buildings, including the five large

artists.118

ones used for educational, health, recreational and administra-

Alston, in particular, benefited from the political activism of the Harlem Artists Guild. As a result of the guild’s pressure he was promoted, in January 1936, to supervising artist on the WPA payroll, the first African American given that title, and put in charge of a team of young artists designing and painting murals for Harlem Hospital.119

tive purposes, were outfitted by the carpentry and cabinetmaking classes of the youths. An extensive educational program is being advanced at the camp. Academic, vocational and art classes are offered under the supervision of six educational advisors, six WPA instructors and nineteen Reserve Corps officers. Four Negro doctors protect the health of the enrollees.

At about the same time, in early 1936, the WPA withdrew funding from 306. Alston and Bannarn scrambled to raise

The camp also had instructors in arts and crafts and in

funds to maintain their art center, and their landlord, im-

music. The article, which ended with the names of camp

pressed with the activity there, “let the rent slide.”120

personnel, reads like a press release provided by camp officials.126 The Amsterdam News, however, would scrutinize more

lawrence’s enlistment in the civilian conservation corps

carefully the situation at Breeze Hill Camp in subsequent

In early 1936, the eighteen-year-old Lawrence joined the

claimed it had been a gun accident, but investigating au-

Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a public works pro-

thorities linked the murder to a reputed loan shark ring.

issues because of a murder that had occurred there on February 1.127 The alleged perpetrator, a Harlem youth,

gram set up by the Roosevelt administration to put un-

For its next issue, the newspaper sent out its own inves-

employed young men to work on conservation projects.

tigative reporters, who discovered not so much crime as

When Roosevelt proposed the plan to Congress in March

racism. On February 22 the paper reported that “hun-

1933, he predicted that the benefits to the young men

dreds of Negro youths, many of them Harlemites, have

would go beyond their earning a paycheck: “More impor-

deserted the Breeze Hill CCC camp . . . during the last

tant  .  .  . than the material gains will be the moral and

few weeks.” The racism and physical conditions the youth

work.”121

The program, adminis-

had encountered there encouraged their flight: “Accord-

tered by the army, provided over 2.5 million jobs from

ing to reliable information . . . hundreds of youths have

spiritual value of such

1933 until July 1942, when it was curtailed because of the

left the camp because of intolerable conditions allegedly

necessity for wartime military training.122 As of October

imposed by white officials. Many of the deserting youths

1935, 49,000 African Americans, 2,058 of them New

charge a ‘rule by intimidation,’ which includes exploita-

Yorkers, were enrolled in CCC camps.123 Lawrence most

tion at work, beating of enrollees by State Police, impos-

likely had high school classmates who were already in the

ing of heavy fines for minor infractions and unpalatable

program. Moreover, in early 1936 he was becoming indif-

food in the mess halls.” The long article details these 

harlem’s artistic communit y in the

1930 s 

27

allegations and provides names. Working conditions were also a factor: “Thirty of the youths left in a body after they charged that they were ordered to work in water above their knees in 14 degrees below zero weather.” Another complaint was that African American WPA instructors were segregated and housed in a recreation hall with no running water or toilets. Another allegation foreshadowed the “battle royal” described in the first chapter of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man: “The youths also charge that the white officers exploit them by making them go to other camps to box against each other for the amusement of white fight fans.”128 One can well imagine Harlem youths leading the desertions, since the Amsterdam News was delivering the paper to the camp. The Amsterdam News reported in the following week’s issue, on February 29, that enrollees had staged a food strike to protest a banquet held exclusively for white officers and their friends. The paper also charged the Middletown townspeople with racism, reporting that African American youths were banned from the town skating rink, restricted to the balcony of the local movie theater, and prohibited from standing inside the train station (on freezing February nights) to wait for taxis to take them back to Breeze Hill Camp. Another charge was that the enrollees were prevented from reading copies of the New York Amsterdam News! The newspaper assured its readers that it had called for a federal investigation.129 Lawrence and his mother no doubt knew of the Jim Crow conditions awaiting him at Breeze Hill Camp and

Fig 15  Chow, 1936. Graphite on paper, 16 x 20½ in. (40.6 x 52.1 cm). Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta; Gift of Catherine Waddell.

Middletown. But he had already stopped attending Commerce High School in February 1936,130 and the fate of

selves in, such as stints in the infirmary and grabbing for

the 306 classes was up in the air. This would be a new

food in the mess hall (Fig. 15). He did not stay the usual

experience for him, and the CCC would send $25 of his

six months but came home in less than four, on August

monthly paycheck back to his mother to help her meet

6, 1936.133 Nevertheless, the experience marked his pas-

expenses for the

family.131

As in all of his interviews, Law-

sage to adulthood.

rence was loath to admit to any bad experiences he had encountered. He later told Aline Louchheim Saarinen, “It was a good experience, physically hard, but I’m glad I went through it. I learned the feel of lots of things—of a

return to harlem

shovel, of how it feels to throw dirt up above your shoul-

By the time Lawrence returned from his CCC sojourn,

ders, for instance. Like any experience, it had things in it

Bannarn had taken over from Alston the duties of teaching

you never forget for painting.”132 Either at the camp or

the students—informally, one assumes, since government

later, Lawrence made several drawings that show the

funding was no longer available to pay a teaching salary

somewhat humorous situations recruits would find them-

there. At that time Bannarn did not show up on government

28  harlem’s artistic communit y in the

1930 s

payrolls, perhaps because he was getting sculpture com-

which is obvious because I believe that subtleties are

missions that helped pay the bills.134 During 1936 Bannarn

more powerful.”139 By saying “All art is propaganda” Ban-

had two major commissions, one from Howard University

narn was no doubt referring to the famous dictum of

to sculpt a bust of Frederick Douglass in black marble and

W. E. B. Du Bois that “all art is propaganda and ever must

another to provide a sculpture for a Harlem housing proj-

be despite the wailing of the purists. . . . I do not care a

ect.135 Elton Fax recalled Bannarn’s impact on the younger

damn for any art that is not used for propaganda.”140

artists: “Bannarn was magnetic. Young artists gravitated

Lawrence certainly adopted Bannarn’s mission. When

toward him like bees around a hive. Jake Lawrence, Roy

in 1937 Lawrence decided to paint the narrative of Tous-

De Carava, Bob Blackburn were among them. Billye Oliver

saint L’Ouverture, he too showed determination to teach

who liked to draw and paint was a frequent visitor to the

the history of African Americans, to give back to the com-

studio and she worked seriously while her husband, Sy,

munity, and to create an art that showed his roots and

was on the road with the band of Jimmy Lunceford. School-

had universal appeal.

teacher Dorothy Funn, writer William Attaway (Let Me Breathe Thunder), painter Aaron Douglas, and Claude McKay were also habitués of the studio at 306 W. 141st Street.”136 Bob Blackburn recalled that “everyone loved” Bannarn, who was “the stronger influence as a person” and “a better artist” than Alston.137

the harlem community art center Meanwhile, during 1937 plans were unfolding for a per-

Bannarn’s insistence on studying the history of African

manent Harlem Community Art Center. Civic leaders and

Americans in the United States and his firm belief that

artists in Harlem had promoted the idea for years.141 Af-

artists should contribute their talents for the benefit of

ter Holger Cahill took the job as head of the WPA/FAP in

society as a whole would have touched a chord in Law-

August 1935, he hired Audrey McMahon to continue the

rence. In November 1937, Marvel Cooke, a reporter for

work she had done for the CAA, but now she would be

the New York Amsterdam News, was stunned to find in

director of the New York FAP office.142 As an advocate for

Bannarn’s studio sculpted heads of the Arctic explorer

artists in New York, McMahon knew that Harlemites

Matthew Henson, the author and abolitionist Frederick

wanted to establish a comprehensive cultural center that

Douglass, and the actor Richard B. Harrison, famous for

would offer free art and music classes; hold speaking

his portrayal of “de Lawd” in the popular play The Green

events for writers, artists, and cultural figures; and mount

Pastures. Bannarn commented to the reporter that he

exhibitions of the work of both students and professional

wanted to address the needs of African American chil-

artists. Such a center would offer more to African Ameri-

dren: “They know about George Washington . . . and not

cans than the art galleries that the Municipal Art Com-

about Crispus Attucks—about Admiral Peary and not

mittee had set up in midtown Manhattan.143

Matt Henson. That is not as it should be. I want to be a

Mrs. E. P. Roberts, chair of the Harlem Art Commit­

means of them knowing the Attuckses, the Hensons, the

tee, spoke up for the center. She wrote to Cahill praising

Pushkins and the Douglasses. I will not rest until they

the work of African Americans at a YWCA exhibition

do. . . . I want to contribute in the field of art to the cul-

and ending with the plea, “I am writing you to ask you

ture of the Negro in the same manner that the subjects I

to make a direct Federal grant to finance this proj-

portray have contributed to Negro culture and the gen-

ect.” 144 Cahill replied on December 13, 1935, that he

eral culture of America.”138

was “very much interested in the idea” of a center in

Bannarn also let the reporter know his view on “propa-

Harlem and that he wanted to help. He explained: “The

ganda art.” He admired it but would not do it himself: “It

Federal Art Project, however, by Executive Order of the

is all right to know the realities, but we don’t always want

President is not permitted to make grants to individuals

to have them staring us boldly in the face. All art is pro-

or organiza­tions. Our program is limited to employing art­

paganda, of course, but personally, I don’t like anything

ists from the relief rolls and a certain percentage of needy

harlem’s artistic communit y in the

1930 s 

29

unemployed artists who may not be on the relief rolls.”

of the staff. Augusta Savage, as director, and Gwendolyn

He suggested that she try to interest Mayor La Guardia

Bennett, as assistant director, set up classes for both

and the Municipal Art Committee in the project.145 There

children and adults in “painting, drawing, sculpture, metal

was an obvious need for community art centers across

work, pottery and ceramics, hook-rug making and weav-

the country, but the movement did not get rolling until

ing, printed textile design, dress design, wood and leather

Cahill put Thomas Parker in charge of working out partner-

craft” (Fig. 16).148 Music instruction was also offered. In

ships with community groups. In 1936–37, thirty-eight FAP

May 1937 Bennett could report to the New York Amster­

community centers sprang up, with four of them estab-

dam News that the center had registered 1,627 students,

lished in New York City—midtown Manhattan, Harlem,

with over half of them in the painting and drawing

Brooklyn, and Queens.146 The funding for such centers,

classes.149 The West 123rd Street space soon became

as mentioned above, was shared by various agencies. The

cramped, so a new space was found to house the art

FAP paid the artists’ wages, expenses for activities such

activities, at 290 Lenox Avenue, where 7,500 square feet

as exhibitions, and equipment. As was the case with other

could comfortably accommodate concerts, dance perfor-

WPA/FAP workshops, payments by citizens’ groups or

mances, and art demonstrations and exhibitions as well

donations by local government would cover office and art

as studios and workshops for “painting, sculpture, metal-

supplies and rent.

work, pottery, commercial and graphic art and other

By January 23, 1937, the New York Amsterdam News

crafts.”150

could report that plans were moving ahead: “School of-

During December the New York Amsterdam News re-

ficials of the city are pressing plans for a cultural center

ported weekly on the progress of the renovations of the

in Harlem, which they hope will serve as the ‘spiritual

Lenox Avenue site. After several delays, on December 20,

focus’ of the community.” Joseph M. Sheehan, associate

1937, the Harlem Community Art Center had its grand

superintendent of schools, drafted a plan for Mayor La

opening, with a special afternoon preview arranged for

Guardia’s office to move such a center into the YWCA

Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt (Fig. 17), the president’s wife, also

building at 124th Street and Lenox Avenue. Sheehan’s plan

attended by Audrey McMahon and Holger Cahill. The

called for a budget of $100,000 for equipment and staffing

speakers at the opening included A. Philip Randolph,

costs. Sheehan echoed the sentiments of other civic lead-

chairman of the Harlem Citizens’ Sponsoring Committee

ers championing a community art center: “There is much

and president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters;

undeveloped talent—artistic, musical and literary—in Har-

Holger Cahill, director of the FAP, based in Washington, D.C.;

lem. . . . All that is needed to make it flourish is a suitable

the author and civil rights activist James Weldon John­son;

center, properly equipped, where capable and sympa-

and Augusta Savage, the center’s director.151 Gwen­dolyn

thetic leadership will foster and develop the talents of the

Bennett, the assistant director and then also president of

people, where opportunity is provided for musical, artistic

the Harlem Artists Guild, also spoke. Char­les C. Seifert, the

and literary endeavor, where there may be a suitable li-

specialist in African art, was still praising the speeches

brary depicting racial ideas and progress so as to stimu-

delivered at the opening when he wrote his book The

late the population to high achievement.”147 Progressives

Negro’s or Ethiopian’s Contribution to Art, published in

like Sheehan assumed that teaching the history of African

1938. Seifert interpreted the event as marking “the cross-

American achievement was integral to advancing the

roads of the old and new philosophies in art” for African

cause of racial equality.

American artists.152

On March 10, 1937, the WPA music-art center that

The community finally had a center to answer its

Sheehan envisioned was established at 1 West 123rd

needs. Besides Savage and Bennett, the staff consisted

Street opposite Mount Morris Park. Attending the gala

of three office workers, twenty teachers, of whom ten

opening were Mrs. Henry Breckenridge, chair of the Mu-

were African American, and artists’ models.153 Savage,

nicipal Art Committee, and Ellen S. Woodward, an admin-

however, was about to embark on a leave of absence

istrator for the WPA/FAP, which was paying the salaries

from the center to work on a sculpture commissioned for

30  harlem’s artistic communit y in the

1930 s

Fig 16   Savage with her staff at the Harlem Community Art Center, 1930s. Front row: Zell Ingram, Pemberton West, Augusta Savage, Robert S. Pious, Sarah West, Gwendolyn Bennett. Back row: Elton Fax, Rex Gorleigh, Fred Perry, William Artis, Francisco Lord, Louise Jefferson, and Norman Lewis. Gwendolyn Bennett Photograph Collection, 1930s. Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. Fig 17   Gwendolyn Bennett, two instructors, Augusta Savage, and Eleanor Roosevelt at the opening of the Harlem Community Art Center,

December 1937. Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Bennett, as energetic as

associated with the Center.” Her politics and optimism

Savage and experienced as a writer, took charge first as

come through in her conclusion that the center expresses

acting director and later as director of the center.

“a new and better world!” Bennett, like Savage, was a

In the late 1930s Bennett wrote up a report on the cen-

tireless supporter of the arts and culture in Harlem—

ter’s progress in which she bragged about its accom-

putting her work for the center above her own creative

plishments in its first sixteen months of operation. From

work.154

November 1937 through March 1939, 2,467 children and

Bennett also encouraged young Lawrence by including

adults were enrolled in art classes, and close to twenty-

his paintings in one of the first exhibitions of the Harlem

four thousand children and adults had participated in

Community Art Center, held in February 1938.155 The sup-

activities, lectures, and demonstrations, with many thou-

portive community that developed around the center, as

sands more attending exhibitions and lectures. The cen-

well as other people and institutions, constituted a move-

ter’s impact on its own staff had been especially gratify-

ment that would nourish Lawrence in the late 1930s and

ing to her: “A new understanding of the value and

1940s. In the next chapter we will turn to specific individu-

meaning of art teaching in the cultural scheme of things

als who helped him reach a professionalism in these years

has been engraved on the consciousness of every person

that would guarantee his lifetime reputation.

harlem’s artistic communit y in the

1930 s 

31

2

patrons and the making of a professional artist He is particularly sensitive to the life about him; the joy, the suffering, the weakness, the strength of the people he sees every day. . . . Still a very young painter, Lawrence symbolizes more than any one I know, the vitality, the seriousness and promise of a new and socially conscious generation of Negro artists.

charles alston, brochure for Jacob Lawrence exhibition (1938) What impresses me about Lawrence is his ability to combine social interest and interpretation . . . with a straight art approach. . . . His work has a stirring social and racial appeal.

alain locke, recommendation to the Julius Rosenwald Fund (1940) I feel very strongly that Mr. Lawrence has what it takes to succeed. He has developed no attitude, is utterly interested in his work, has a definite objective toward which he is struggling, and he always is willing to give credit where he feels it is due.

mary beattie brady, letter to Charles Alston (1941) I want you to look at the work of Jacob Lawrence, a Negro painter about 23 years old—who has the most powerful and original painting talent I’ve encountered anywhere in the country.

jay leyda, letter to Richard Wright (1941)

A precocious young artist with a knack for design and a

and excitement for young Lawrence, and he absorbed the

curiosity about the life around him, Lawrence was fortu-

experiences and thrived in the artistic milieu that Harlem

nate to have mentors such as Charles Alston, Henry Ban-

offered. During the late 1930s his conceptual powers ma-

narn, and Augusta Savage. He was also welcomed by oth-

tured, he mastered his techniques, and he began to exhibit

ers as a participant in the vital art movement taking place

his art professionally.

in Harlem. At this time civic groups, journalists, church ministers, the city of New York, and the federal govern-

n

ment, along with artists and educators, realized how much

In August 1936, when Lawrence returned to Harlem from

both the individual and the community stood to gain from

the CCC camp in Middletown, New York, he moved back

the teaching, exhibition, and appreciation of art and its

into his routine of painting in his corner space at Charles

history. The early to mid-1930s had been years of struggle

Alston and Henry Bannarn’s studio at 306 West 141st

Fig 18   Moving Day (Dispossessed), 1937. Tempera on paper, 30 x 24 3⁄4 in. (76.2 x 62.9 cm). Private collection. Image courtesy DC Moore

Gallery, New York.

Fig 19   Charles Alston, Magic in Medicine and Modern Medicine, ca. 1936–40. Murals, 17 x 9 ft. Harlem Hospital, Women’s Pavilion, in situ as they face outward toward the street. Collection of the City of New York, courtesy of the Design Commission. Fig 20   Artists on the WPA Harlem Hospital murals project, supervised by Charles Alston, ca. 1936. Standing, left to right: Addison Bates, Grace Richardson, Edgar Evans, Vertis Hayes, Charles Alston, Cecil Gaylord, John Glenn, Elba Lightfoot, Selma Day, Ronald Joseph, Georgette Seabrooke (Powell), O. Richard Reid. At front, left to right: Gwendolyn Knight, James Yeargens, Francisco Lord, Richard Lindsey, Frederick Coleman. Photo © Morgan and Marvin Smith. Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

Street. The time he had spent in a military camp sixty-four

cause “Negroes may not form the greater part of this

miles away had made him aware of the larger world; at

community twenty five years hence,” “Negroes in the

almost nineteen he was ready to become professional.

community might object to the Negro subject matter in

Alston, meanwhile, had turned his attention to finishing

the murals,” and “Harlem hospital is not a Negro hospital.”

the Harlem Hospital murals project, painting Magic in

The Harlem Artists Guild and the Artists’ Union wrote a

Medicine and Modern Medicine for the entrance lobby on

joint statement protesting that Dermody’s reasoning

136th Street (Fig. 19) and supervising the work of some

showed “a definite discriminatory policy against Negroes”

twenty other mural artists. Selma Day, Elba Lightfoot, Sara

and that he was “eminently unqualified to act either as a

Murrell, Vertis Hayes, and Georgette Seabrooke designed

judge of the murals or as spokesman for the Harlem com-

and painted their own murals for the children’s wards and

munity.”3 An appointed citizens group deliberated, they

the nurses’ quarters; others, such as Gwendolyn Knight,

approved the murals, and the project resumed.

worked as assistants (Fig. 20).1 Even though Lawrence

Government cutbacks, however, constantly threatened

was not being paid, he recalls doing some of the tracings

the progress of all mural projects. In November 1936,

to transfer Alston’s cartoons to the walls. 2 Murals by four

when many New York City FAP workers received pink

of the artists had sparked an unanticipated controversy

slips, the Artists’ Union responded with a sit-down strike

in February 1936. Although the Municipal Art Committee

at the FAP headquarters.4 More demonstrations followed,

and Works Progress Administration/Federal Art Project

with Harlem Artists Guild members Vertis Hayes, Ronald

(WPA/FAP) officials had approved the designs, the super-

Joseph, and Gwendolyn Knight, who were still working on

intendent of the hospital, Lawrence T. Dermody, objected

the murals, picketing FAP headquarters on December 19,

that there was “too much Negro subject matter.” African

1936, an event captured on camera by the New York Am­

American subject matter would not be appropriate be-

sterdam News.5

34  the making of a professional artist

american artists school

of affairs, when he seeks to awaken in his audience a de-

At this point Lawrence was feeling the need for further

direct observation of the world about him as well as on

instruction. Perhaps because Alston and Bannarn no lon-

his most intimate, immediate, blistering, blood-sweating

sire to participate in his fight, he is, therefore, drawing on

ger held formal classes at 306, he enrolled in the Ameri-

experience, in the art gallery, in the bread line, in the re-

can Artists School at 131 West 14th Street at the end of

lief office.”13 At the school Lawrence would meet white

1936 or early 1937. Originally called the John Reed Club

artists like Lozowick who encouraged him.

School of Art, it had been set up under the auspices of

We might consider Harry Gottlieb’s response to Law-

the John Reed Club, an organization started by leftist art-

rence as typical of the American Artists School faculty’s

ist members, many in the Communist Party, in 1929.6

antiracist social values. Gottlieb wrote to Lawrence, in a

When the John Reed Clubs folded in mid-1935, largely as

letter postmarked October 4, 1937: “I consider it an honor

a result of a new Popular Front strategy, the artist teach-

to have been of any service to you. Not only was I tre-

ers renamed it.7

mendously impressed by your work as an artist, but also

Lawrence seems to have been most active at the

knowing the difficulties that the Negro artist is confronted

American Artists School during 1937. That spring the

with, I will do what I can to eliminate that unfairness, so

school hosted an exhibition of art by Harlem Artists Guild

that we may all be treated alike[,] you and me, as artists

members, including Lawrence.8 A scholarship Lawrence

and as human beings.”14 Gottlieb was not being patron-

received for the fall of 1937 offered him free classes in

izing; he meant what he said. Lawrence later gave Gott-

either the day or the night school.9 He studied with Anton

lieb credit for arranging the scholarship.15 Gottlieb and

Refregier, Sol Wilson, Philip Reisman, and Eugene More-

his colleagues at the school knew the importance of

ley; he also posed as a model in the life classes as a

training young artists such as Lawrence to qualify them

means of earning extra money.10

as professional artists for the FAP.16

The ideas and outlook of the communist art teachers

The teachers at the school would also have given Law-

must be considered when assessing the influences oper-

rence a Marxist political education. A notice in Art Front

ating on young Lawrence at this time. As part of a mass

spelled out the school’s program:

movement these leftists protested on behalf of the Scottsboro Boys, falsely accused of raping two women,

An innovation in the curriculum of the school will be weekly

and agitated for antilynching legislation being debated in

lectures by recognized authorities planned to give the student

Congress. They also urged antiracist programs, such as

a broad picture of the artist in modern society, his position

the teaching of African American history in the public schools.11

Even during the Popular Front period, when

revolutionary class struggle began to wane as a pictorial theme, leftist artists still produced pictures of bloody

and importance, and the role he can play. These lectures will provide the student with an historical approach to his creative problems, and will introduce those great developments in the exact, natural, and social sciences which have so profoundly influenced the course of development of modern art. The

strikes and lynchings along with their antifascist pictures.

student will gain an understanding of modern society itself,

They took the position that art should comment on the

its forces, tendencies and conflicts[,] which can only serve to

conflicts, struggles, and victories of the socially and eco-

deepen his aesthetic outlook and capacities.17

nomically oppressed.12 Louis Lozowick, probably the artist most informed

The leftist artists teaching at the school, all of whom were

about Marxist theory, expressed the credo of many of the

white, reinforced Lawrence’s own predilection toward a

American Artists School teachers when he wrote in Art

social art.

Front, the journal of the Artists’ Union: “When the revolu-

Indeed, during the fall of 1937, while he was enrolled at

tionary artist expresses in his work the dissatisfaction

the school, Lawrence began to think about the role he

with, the revolt against, the criticism of the existing state

might play as an artist working for social change. He de-

the making of a professional artist  35

Fig 21   William Johnson exhibition, Harlem Community Art Center, June 6, 1939. Lawrence is at the far left, William Johnson, in a smock, left of center, and Gwendolyn Knight in the middle. U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. Photo courtesy Richard J. Powell.

cided that his next project would be historical and based

Turns to Art, sponsored by the James Weldon Johnson

on research—the life of Toussaint L’Ouverture, the eigh-

Literary Guild. Gwendolyn Bennett presided at the open-

teenth-century liberator of Haiti. No doubt his teachers at

ing, which included the performance, by other Harlem

the school encouraged him in this choice.

youth, of original piano compositions, as well as violin

Lawrence had also begun to participate in the exhibi-

pieces.19 A brochure accompanied Lawrence’s show,

tions and activities of the Harlem Community Art Center

listing the works: Bar and Grill, Halloween Sand Bags

(Fig. 21). Moving Day (Dispossessed) (see Fig. 18) was

(Fig. 22), Roof Top, Evening, Feast, Round Up, Fire, Dawn,

included in one of the first exhibitions, Paintings and

The Butcher, Woman, Family, Worker, Christmas Dinner,

Sculpture by 21 New York City Negro Artists, held at the

Woman with Veil, Rain (Fig. 23), and Junk.

center from February 4 to March 4, 1938. Gwendolyn

A preface to the brochure written by Charles Alston

Bennett, the acting director of the Harlem Community

praised the young artist for his artistic sensibility: “Hav-

Art Center while Savage was on leave to work on her

ing thus far miraculously escaped the imprint of aca-

World’s Fair Commission, wrote the catalogue.18 Law-

demic ideas and current vogues in art, to which young

rence’s inclusion in prestigious group exhibitions such as

artists are most susceptible[,] he has followed a course

this one at the HCAC, combined with his training at the

of development dictated entirely by his own inner motiva-

American Artists School, furthered his claim to profes-

tions. . . . Working in the very limited medium of flat tem-

sional status.

pera he achieved a richness and brilliance of color har-

But nothing did more to confirm Lawrence’s status in

monies both remarkable and exciting.” Alston also singled

the art world than a solo exhibition with a catalogue. Al-

out the salient qualities of Lawrence’s socially concerned

though Addison Bates, who had taken over Charles Al-

humanism: “He is particularly sensitive to the life about

ston’s studio, had held at least one informal exhibition of

him; the joy, the suffering, the weakness, the strength of

Lawrence’s paintings at the 306 studio, Lawrence needed

the people he sees every day.  .  .  . Still a very young

a professional venue for public recognition. The Harlem

painter, Lawrence symbolizes more than any one I know,

YMCA gave him that venue. The exhibition opened Febru-

the vitality, the seriousness and promise of a new and

ary 27, 1938, when sixteen paintings by Lawrence went

socially conscious generation of Negro artists.”20 Alston

on view, under the auspices of a program called Youth

would be unflagging in his support of Lawrence.

36  the making of a professional artist

Fig 22   Halloween Sand Bags, 1937. Tempera on paper, 8 3⁄4 x

123⁄4 in. (22.2 x 32.4 cm). The Harmon and Harriet Kelley Foundation for the Arts. Image courtesy DC Moore Gallery, New York. Fig 23   Rain, 1938. Tempera on paperboard, 281 ⁄8 x 201 ⁄6 in.

(71.4 x 51 cm). Courtesy Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York.

The exhibition at the Harlem YMCA and its New York

the Federal Theatre Project, which opened at the Lafay-

Amsterdam News coverage gave Lawrence’s career a big

ette Theatre in March 1938, and was especially moved by

boost. He could now claim the status of a professional

it (see Chapter 3).

artist and be eligible for employment on the FAP. In 1937

His national visibility increased with his inclusion in

Lawrence had gone with Augusta Savage to the FAP of-

exhibitions that traveled to Dillard University, in New Or-

fices to enroll on the projects, only to be turned down

leans; Fisk University, in Nashville; and Brooklyn Col-

because of his age. She now returned with him, and this

lege. 26 Dillard’s exhibition, organized by its art faculty,

time he was accepted, even though he had not yet

opened in May 1938. The jury of selection included Aaron

reached his twenty-first birthday.

21

On April 27, 1938, the

FAP hired him as a senior artist, assigned to the Easel

Douglas, who knew Lawrence through their common involvement in the Harlem Artists Guild exhibitions. 27

Division. For the next eighteen months he would present

From February 2 to 24, 1939, the American Artists

two paintings every six weeks to the FAP in return for a

School hosted a two-artist exhibition featuring Lawrence

paycheck of $95.44 a month. 22

and Samuel Wechsler. Sol Wilson, an artist and Law-

Three decades later, the art historian Francis O’Connor,

rence’s teacher at the school, wrote a brief foreword to

the first scholar to study the FAP in depth, sent question-

the brochure that commented on Lawrence: “His work

naires to FAP artists, including Lawrence. To several ques-

on first glance appears to have a child like quality. But

tions Lawrence replied that had it not been for the FAP he

on closer examination it shows keen observation and a

would have had to work at an outside job, making it difficult

matureness of expression. Unlike the modern sophistica­

to continue as an artist. He enjoyed the Easel Division, felt

ted primitives.” Three of the twenty-three works in the

creatively free, thought the FAP encouraged a “sense of

show were on loan from the WPA / FAP; the others, such

community” among artists, and appreciated being able to

as Dust to Dust (Fig. 24) and Blind Beggars (Fig. 25),

“gain experience through older and more experienced

could potentially be sold, but such outside sales might

artists who were on the project.” He felt that besides the

jeopardize his status on the relief rolls of the FAP. 28 Of

regular paycheck, the FAP’s major benefit was “coming in

the two artists in the exhibition, the reviewer for Art News

contact with those who may have had a more formal art

much preferred Lawrence and wrote at length about his

training—enabling those less fortunate to develop a knowl-

style:

edge of art history and philosophy.”23 In 1963, Lawrence told the Chicago Defender writer Mort Cooper: “My real

A style which it is easy to call primitive marks his versions of

education was the WPA Federal Arts Project. I met people

ice peddlers, the subway, the park and restaurants, but closer

like William Saroyan, just on the edge of fame. They all

inspection reveals draughtsmanship too accomplished to be

used to talk about what was going on in the world. All the artists used to go down to project headquarters on King Street in Manhattan to sign in. We’d meet each other, and talk and talk and talk.”24 He stayed on the FAP for the maximum time allowed—which was then eighteen months— and was terminated on October 27, 1939. 25 In addition to Harlem street scenes, which had earned

called naïve. The bright colors in flat areas and the literal view of the world turn out to be just his manner of expressing his very sensitive reactions to a kaleidoscopic, animated world, in which his spirit is not to be downed by the oppression and neglect of his own people which he sees on all sides. They have little of the mournfulness of spirituals. Rather are they testimony of the unquenchable joie de vivre of the Negro, his inestimable gift to repressed, gloomy Nordics. 29

him a reputation and many of which he was required to submit to FAP offices, he completed his series of panels

Like many reviewers in mainstream publications who

on Toussaint L’Ouverture. He had learned about such he-

could not resist introducing racialized stereotypes of

roes from the history clubs of the Harlem public schools,

“happy darkies” versus “gloomy Nordics,” the reviewer

from lectures by Charles Seifert, and from books he had

probably considered his remarks complimentary.

studied in the Arthur Schomburg Collection at the 135th

The reviewer also did not look carefully at the paintings.

Street Library. He also saw the play Haiti, produced by

A close reading of Dust to Dust would have shown that

38  the making of a professional artist

Fig 24   Dust to Dust, 1938. Tempera on paper, 121 ⁄2

x 181⁄4 in. (31.8 x 46.4 cm). Walter O. Evans Collection of African American Art. Photo: The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation/Art Resource, NY. Fig 25   Blind Beggars, 1938. Tempera on composition board, 201⁄8 x 15 in. (51.1 x 38.1 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of New York City W.P.A., 1943 (43.47.28). Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

the two mourners on their way across the street hold odd

in organizing the exhibition, and Brady expended consid-

objects for a couple on their way to the funeral parlor. The

erable energy to create publicity for the show. The pho-

woman, dressed in a red coat, holds what seems to be a

tographer James L. Allen, who often worked for Brady,

washboard; the man holds a guitar and an outstretched

took photographs of Lawrence delivering his paintings to

cane, which suggests he may be blind. That the woman,

the registrar of the museum (Fig. 27).31 Alain Locke, who

like the man, wears dark glasses suggests that she may

was on the editorial board for Survey Graphic, made cer-

be blind as well. Clearly they are going to the funeral as

tain that two paintings from Lawrence’s Toussaint series

musicians. More unusual are the eyes and mouth of a

were reproduced in the journal’s March 1939 issue. 32

child, walking to the left of the man, who stares up at them.

The press was enthusiastic about the exhibition. The

Because the gray-brown values of the child’s face and

critic A. D. Emmart praised the show and Locke’s cata-

clothing are so close to the colors of the street, the child’s

logue essay in the Baltimore Sun. Of the oil paintings,

eyes and mouth seem to float in space—more like a spec-

Emmart admired Malvin Gray Johnson’s “disciplined,

ter or a memory than a person. Disembodied facial fea-

unself-conscious work,” Archibald J. Motley Jr.’s “sophis-

tures would come to characterize many of Lawrence’s later

ticated skill as well as progress toward a personal idiom,”

paintings, especially the masklike forms that inhabit his

and Palmer C. Hayden’s “technically admirable as well

paintings of the 1950s and 1960s (see Chapters 7 and 8).

as . . . distinctly individual approach.” When discussing

Blindness, as shared by the couple walking along the

the works done in tempera and watercolor, he focused

sidewalk in Blind Beggars, was also a metaphor that would

his praise on Lawrence:

recur in his later paintings. These two paintings suggest that Lawrence’s view of life was considerably more com-

But it seems to me that easily the most remarkable exhibit is

plex than the “unquenchable joie de vivre” ascribed to him

the series of forty-one tempera drawings by Jacob Lawrence

by the Art News critic.

in which he recounts the career of Toussaint L’Ouverture. These small sketches, with their economy of flat, sharply defined forms and their telling variations in a consistent color

mary beattie brady and alain locke

pattern, are charged with feeling and movement. The designs are full of swift, racing vigor and the notable mingling of realistic and symbolic elements of simplified abstract form with the quality of illustration give them a powerful impact. The

Mary Beattie Brady, the director of the Harmon Founda-

theme, moreover, is well developed and the mood finely sus-

tion and a controversial figure to some black artists,

tained, and both individually and as a series, they constitute

came to the reception at the American Artists School and

a striking and original work. 33

posed with Lawrence for her photographer (Fig. 26). She had good reason to be pleased, for she had been taking

The exhibition was the first group show of African Ameri-

an interest in the artist and he was turning out to be a

can artists in a major museum, and Lawrence was privi-

winner. Although we do not know for certain when Brady

leged to have a whole room in which to show the complete

and Alain Locke began to notice Lawrence, correspon-

series (Fig. 28).

dence between the two from 1939 to 1941 suggests that

When the works returned to the Harmon Foundation,

they shared a keen concern with Lawrence’s success as

Brady began to seek other venues where the Toussaint

an artist.

L’Ouverture series might be exhibited. Brady’s letters to

More important to both of them than the American

Locke reveal how much she depended on him for advice

Artists School exhibition was the inclusion of all forty-one

about the artistic worthiness of specific African American

of Lawrence’s Toussaint L’Ouverture panels in the land-

artists; he also served as a sounding board for her ideas

mark exhibition Contemporary Negro Art held almost si-

about promoting individual artists. Locke, in turn, con-

multaneously at the Baltimore Museum of Art from Feb-

fided in her and solicited her comments on his manu-

ruary 3 to 19, 1939.30 The Harmon Foundation participated

scripts before they went to press. In a letter to Locke of

40  the making of a professional artist

Fig 26   Jacob Lawrence with

Mary Beattie Brady at his Amer­ ican Artists School opening, 1939. Jacob Lawrence Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Library. Fig 27   Jacob Lawrence (center), presenting a panel from his Toussaint L’Ouverture series to the registrar at the Baltimore Museum of Art, 1939. Photo: James L. Allen. U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Harmon Foundation Collection. Fig 28   Baltimore Museum installation, wall of Lawrence’s work, 1939. U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Harmon Foundation Collection.

May 10, 1939, Brady reveals her dogged determination to

eager to have a Negro painter on his list. He also is to see

promote deserving artists. She first writes about Hale

Jacob Lawrence’s temperas.”34

Woodruff’s potential to do murals, then turns to Law-

Since Lawrence had been well treated by Brady and

rence’s work: “I talked with Mr. Mussey at the Arden Gal-

the Harmon Foundation, he made it a point to stay in

lery. . . . I think he would be very definitely disposed to

touch with her and to follow her advice. Brady continues

work out some kind of a plan for a one man show there

her letter of May 10 to Locke with a report on Lawrence

this next year, if Mr. Woodruff’s work satisfied him. He is

and how she intends to help him. The letter suggests the

the making of a professional artist  41

extent to which Brady was willing to manipulate people

Manhattan, did materialize. His Toussaint L’Ouverture se-

and institutions to advance her cause to help young Afri-

ries was shown there from May 22 to June 5, 1939. The

can American artists—in particular Lawrence:

New York Amsterdam News published his picture (Fig. 29), accompanied by praise from their critic Marvel Cooke.37

Mr. Lawrence was here in the office the other day and stated

Also in May Opportunity magazine published Alain Locke’s

that his Frederick Douglas [sic] work was completed. We hope

article “Advance on the Art Front,” in which Locke singled

to see it shortly. Life [the magazine] has promised to bring

out Lawrence as an “intuitive genius” and praised his “bril-

out some pictures of Mr. Lawrence’s work, as shown at the

liant” and “modernistic” Toussaint ­panels.38

Baltimore Museum in their issue of May 22. Mr. Lawrence went

Meanwhile, sometime about March 1939, Locke and

up there the other day with the pictures and they decided to

Lawrence were already corresponding about the disposi-

do some photographing themselves to see if they could get better reproductions than the ones Mr. Allen did for us. I believe they also were going to take some pictures of Mr. Lawrence. He is going to do some writing for us regarding his research on this subject and also on Frederick Douglas, which will be

tion of the Toussaint L’Ouverture pictures. Locke told Lawrence that the Haitian ambassador showed an interest in purchasing the series to show either at the Haitian Pavilion at the 1939 World’s Fair or at a museum in Port

available for reference for your use at any time you want to

au Prince. 39 Locke’s concern for Lawrence is indicated by

use it in connection with any article.

these passages:

In order to get the material into Life, we had to go out and manufacture some news. When it came time to send the ex-

Of course there would be some difficulty in case of a sale and

hibit to Dallas, Texas, they cut down their space and it seemed

your relief status. However . . . the Harmon Foundation and I

best to eliminate the Lawrence series, as we believe that they

have an idea as to how that could be managed without in any

will take the entire group as a single exhibition next year. We,

way curtailing your eventual use of the funds. But you must

therefore, had to dig up some news.

not hope too much as I take it the Haitian government is not

The Brooklyn Museum has a rule against one man shows;

on easy street just now.

the New York Public Library is not showing anything in the

I heard . . . that you were considering a donation of the work.

way of loan collections and we, in desperation, called up Fa-

I think you should not do this, as you deserve the eventual

ther LaFarge. It seems that Mr. Hunton is opening a new Inter-

returns for your own advancement, more materials, etc. I am

racial Center on the tenth floor at 20 Vesey Street on the

sure that they will be bought by some agency or other and then

22nd of the month, the day the issue of Life comes out, in

given to some collection or museum.40

which we expect these pictures to appear. The exciting news event, therefore, tying up with the pictures will be the opening of this center, the Patron Saint of which will be Saint de Porres. I understand that he is still the Blessed Martin De Porres, but it is expected he will be sanctified. He was a Negro and is buried in Lima, Peru. 35

One senses that for Brady a Haitian national hero such as Toussaint L’Ouverture was not much different from a Peruvian Dominican friar who had reputedly performed medical miracles.36 Nothing seems to have come of Brady’s plan to get a

In an undated letter, probably written in March or early April 1939, Lawrence replied: As you already know I was very glad to hear of the Haitian Minister’s interest in my work. I can easily understand the Haitian Government’s financial position at this time, however I think it means much more to an artist to have people like and enjoy his work, than it does to have a few individuals purchase his work, and it not have the interest of the masses. As I told you when you were here, selling these things was the last thing I thought of when I conceived them.41

spread of photographs of Lawrence’s work into Life magazine; the May 22 issue showed pictures of an opening at

Lawrence had also staked out another historical figure

the Museum of Modern Art, not Lawrence’s paintings at

for his next major series. In the same letter Lawrence

the Baltimore Museum of Art. But the exhibition at the De

informs Locke that he is at work on a Frederick Douglass

Porres Interracial Center, at 20 Vesey Street in downtown

series and has just transferred his drawings to gessoed

42  the making of a professional artist

panels: “I work on all 33 panels at one time, this keeps them as a complete unit and not as an individual easel painting.” He concludes by asking Locke to visit his studio when he will next be in New York.42 Lawrence wrote a short letter to Locke in September 1939 to report that he was still on the FAP’s Easel Division, had completed his Douglass paintings, and had started yet another historical series on the life of Harriet Tubman. He added that he hoped to apply for a Julius Rosenwald Fund Fellowship and concluded by saying: “I wrote Miss Brady of the Harmon Foundation asking her to get me some professional criticism on my Douglass series, she said she would. In closing I wish to thank you for the interest you are taking in my work.”43 Lawrence, ever diligent about thanking his supporters, hoped that Locke would continue to help him. In October 1939, when Lawrence was dismissed from the FAP because of the “18-month rule,” he needed to find other sources of income to support himself. Brady helped by lending him $100, and he let her keep the Toussaint series.44 With the Toussaint panels physically at the foundation, Brady could more easily have them photographed and sent out to exhibitions, an arrangement Lawrence would have liked. Lawrence also handed over to Brady the Douglass series, for on November 17, 1939, she wrote to Locke about her plans now that the series was in her possession: Jacob Lawrence brought down his thirty-one prints [sic] on

Fig 29   “An Artist of Merit: Pictorial History of Haiti Set on Canvas,” New York Amsterdam News, June 3, 1939. Courtesy New York Amsterdam News.

the life of Frederick Douglass the other day; and I am trying to get some critics down here to look at them, and have some hope that the John Hope Community Center of Providence,

In another letter, probably written in November 1939,

Rhode Island, may give the series a Premier [sic] in a Freder-

Lawrence tells Locke of his progress on the Tubman se-

ick Douglass celebration, that will include an exhibition at the

ries, which he has already begun. He hopes to submit the

Rhode Island School of Design in February. Have you any other

Tubman panels, along with the Toussaint L’Ouverture and

suggestions along these lines. I would like to have you look at

Douglass panels, to the Julius Rosenwald Fund with his

this series. It may be that you will be interested in some of

application for a fellowship. He asks Locke to serve as

them for the folio.45

a reference for his proposed plan “to interpret in a sufficient number of panels (from 40 to 50—18 x 12 [inches])

The folio Brady mentions was the elaborate picture book

the great Negro migration north during the World

on African American art that Locke was busy preparing

War.”46

for press—a book that would feature Lawrence promi-

Locke obliged Lawrence, for by this time he knew Law-

nently. Once again, Brady’s plan for exhibiting the Doug­

rence’s art intimately. In his recommendation to the

lass series did not pan out.

Rosenwald Fund, Locke recalled the L’Ouverture series as

the making of a professional artist  43

“the sensation” of the exhibition in Baltimore: “What im-

he saw artists as categorized along racial lines. Carl Zi-

presses me about Lawrence is his ability to combine so-

grosser, then the director of the Weyhe Gallery, also judged

cial interest and interpretation . . . with a straight art ap-

Lawrence “one of the outstanding Negro artists of our

proach. . . . There is little or no hint of social propaganda

time.”52

in his pictures, and no slighting of the artistic problems

Ever vigilant to help Lawrence, Brady wrote to Locke on

involved, such as one finds in many of the contemporary

April 4, 1940, to make certain he would follow up with the

social-theme painters. Yet his work has a stirring social

Rosenwald Fund; perhaps she did not know that he had

and racial appeal.”47

already written his recommendation. Brady writes: “If you

Locke’s recommendation also speaks of Lawrence’s

have any influence with Mr. Reynolds at the Rosenwald

artistic development and praises the “considerable

Fund, and have not already done so, I would appreciate

growth in maturity and power” of his compositions.48 Ed-

any good word you could write in regarding Mr. Jacob

win R. Embree, director of the Julius Rosenwald Fund,

Lawrence. I am most hopeful that he may be able to get

would not have been surprised by receiving the letter, for

a grant from them to work on his researches on the mi-

he had already urged Locke the previous October to in-

grations North and interpret them in his individual way in

form artists “who may be especially qualified” for Rosen-

tempera studies. I have sent in photographs of some of

wald grants.49

his work, and have just had some snapshots taken of him

Probably because of appeals by Brady and Locke, other

so that those also could be sent.”53 Brady’s letter also

prominent art world people joined in supporting Lawrence

confides her recent activities in support of William Artis

for a Rosenwald Fund Fellowship. Charles Rogers, the

and Bob Blackburn, both friends of Lawrence.

director of the Baltimore Museum of Art, and Lincoln

Lawrence received a grant of fifteen hundred dollars

Kirstein, then the director of Ballet Caravan, also wrote

that April from the Rosenwald Fund. It was slightly more

recommendations that glow with admiration and provide

than he had been receiving from the FAP, and the extra

evidence that Lawrence had already developed a following

money allowed him to rent, at eight dollars a month, a

among the culturati. Rogers praised the artist as “un-

back room in a small building at 33 West 125th Street, in

doubtedly the most talented, sincere and creative” of

the heart of Harlem. Others in the building included the

African American artists and said that Lawrence’s

artists Romare Bearden, Bob Blackburn, and Ronald Jo-

“sketches of the Life of General Toussaint L’Ouverture were

seph; the dancer William Attaway; and the poet and nov-

the finest work in our exhibition and undoubtedly the finest

elist Claude McKay.54

thing of this type that I had ever seen.” It was Lawrence’s

In his new studio space, Lawrence got to know Claude

originality and the fact that he was “not influenced by aca-

McKay even better than at the gatherings at 306. McKay

demic tendencies” that Rogers found refreshing.50 Kir­

encouraged him and gave him an inscribed copy of his

stein’s recommendation was also emphatic:

book A Long Way from Home (1937). Lawrence later re­ called:

In my opinion, Mr. Lawrence is the most capable Negro artist whose work I have ever had the opportunity to look at. His

Having Mr. McKay’s friendship was a warm and valuable

series of paintings seem to me strikingly original, and pos-

experience for me and, in retrospect, has become even more

sessed of great inherent beauty.

valuable. I have come to realize and appreciate his com­ments

Unlike so many others, he is not imitative, but has a ­genuine emotion, and is extraordinarily successful in conveying it. I feel absolutely certain that with the necessary encourage-

and insight. He was a very keen observer and critique of per­ sonalities and of the political and sosial scene of the world in general and of the black experience in particular. He had

ment and slight security, he could be the most important Ne-

a very wry sense of humor. He would offten take from his

gro artist this country has yet produced. 51

pocket a small pad and annoy those around him by notat-  ­ing their comments for future reference. This act, of course,

Kirstein would have thought of himself as supportive of

was not appreciated, as comments that were being made 

African Americans; indeed, he was for his time. But clearly

in regards to both personalities and foundations were

4 4  the making of a professional artist

Fig 30   José Clemente Orozco at work on

the fresco Dive Bomber and Tank, in preparation for the exhibition Twenty Cen­ turies of Mexican Art, Museum of Modern Art, New York, June 1940. Photo: Eliot Elisofon. Art © 2009 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ SOMAAP, Mexico City. Digital image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY.

offtimes not complimentary to those noy present. He was

matter of leaving the drawings in your hands for whatever

especially warm to black-skinned Negroes. At various time (not

strategy you find necessary.”59 It is not known to which

necessarily in this order) his leanings were toard black nation-

drawings Locke referred. The following year, 1942, Law-

alism, communist, Garveyite and Catholic. He died a Catholic.

rence thanked Leyda “for selling the painting for me.”60

I have the feeling that throughout his life he was more of an observer that a participant in political and social affairs. Knowing that his death was imminent, he requested that I serve as one of his pallbearers at his funeral. For me, it was an honor to carry out this request. [Misspellings in original.]55

McKay died of a heart attack on May 22,

1948.56

Gwendolyn Knight and Lawrence were frequent companions. She sometimes worked in his studio, where she painted several portraits of him, all of which are lost. She also helped him on his series, preparing the panels and helping him with the captions for the Migration series.57 At about this time he also met Jay Leyda, the curator of film for the Museum of Modern Art. Leyda, a scholar of Sergei Eisenstein’s films, joined Brady and Locke to work behind the scenes on Lawrence’s behalf. He wrote one of the letters of recommendation when Lawrence reapplied for a Rosenwald Fund Fellowship.58 He also seems to have

Leyda also arranged for Lawrence to meet José Clemente Orozco, in New York during 1940 to paint a fresco portable mural, Dive Bomber and Tank, on site at the Museum of Modern Art for the exhibition Twenty Centu­ ries of Mexican Art (Fig. 30). Orozco, Diego Rivera, and David Siqueiros (“los tres grandes”) had all lived and painted in New York at one time or another during the 1930s, but most New York artists preferred the quiet dignified manner of Orozco to the verbal bombast of Rivera and Siqueiros. Orozco had already painted a cycle of five frescoes at the New School for Social Research on West Twelfth Street, called A Call for Revolution and Universal Brotherhood, which Lawrence would most likely have seen.61 Lawrence appreciated the chance to meet Orozco. Speaking of the meeting on Randy Goodman’s radio show in 1943, Lawrence recalled:

functioned as a sales agent for Lawrence, as a letter to

When Orozco was doing his Dive Bomber mural at the Museum

Leyda from Locke dated March 5, 1940, testifies: “I tele-

of Modern Art he saw my paintings in the office. That was just

phoned Miss Brady . . . and found her sympathetic on the

before they bought them. Orozco said he wanted to meet me.

the making of a professional artist  45

So I rushed down there. I wanted to meet him. When I got

manuscript for 12 Million Black Voices and staying in New

there, he was busy working. He couldn’t talk to me, but he

York to work with a scriptwriter and producer to bring to

turned around and said he would like some cherries. So I ran

Broadway his acclaimed Native Son. Years later, Lawrence

out and got some. Later, we had quite a chat over the cherries.

recalled that powerful book with admiration.67

He showed me the sketch for the mural he was working on. I was amazed.  .  .  . I thought it would be extremely detailed. There were just a few sketchy lines. I remarked about it. Orozco said: “That’s all you need, if you know what you are doing!”62

Lawrence would also have been impressed with Orozco’s attitude about modern art, as was a reporter for the New York Times who interviewed Orozco that summer: “According to the artist, his selection of the subject has no political significance. He wished to paint an aspect of modern life. ‘That is what modern art is,’ Mr. Orozco explained when the commission was announced, ‘the actual feeling of life around us or the mood of whatever is just happening.’ ”63 In later years Lawrence would also insist that his own paintings were not expressions of political protest but evocations of what he felt was happening at the moment. And he often invoked the name of Orozco as an artist who had strongly influenced him. To Elizabeth McCausland he explained that Orozco, like Daumier and Goya, was “forceful. Simple. Human.”64 Leyda, who continued to enlist other influential people to help Lawrence, wrote to Richard Wright in April 1941:

The Harmon Foundation actively continued to support Lawrence’s work during 1940 and 1941. Mary Brady sent his Toussaint L’Ouverture panels to the Exhibition of the Art of the American Negro, 1851–1940, held in Chicago as part of the American Negro Exhibition in July 1940, where he was awarded second prize, and to Columbia University in November 1940.68 She also sent the Douglass and Tubman series to an exhibition held at the Library of Congress in December 1940 celebrating the anniversary of the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment but then recalled the Tubman paintings, to send them on to Chicago in May 1941 for the opening of the South Side Community Art Center, where Peter Pollack, a good friend of Locke’s, was the director.69 In early 1941 Brady was also promoting Lawrence in other ways: she confided to Locke in January that she had encouraged a writer for Opportu­ nity magazine to feature articles on both Lawrence and Charles Sebree.70 In March Brady reported to Locke that the foundation’s photographer had taken pictures of Lawrence (Fig. 31) to accompany an article on the artist in a New Rochelle, New York, newspaper. Her newest project entailed sending African American artists to the Lincoln School, a pre-

I want you to look at the work of Jacob Lawrence, a Negro painter about 23 years old—who has the most powerful and original painting talent I’ve encountered anywhere in this country. Lawrence doesn’t need your financial assistance. He’s enjoyed the mixed blessing of a Rosenwald grant during the past year, and stands a pretty good chance of getting a renewal on

dominantly black school in New Rochelle, for daylong programs focused on African American artists, and Lawrence had gone to New Rochelle at her request. Brady was clearly pleased with the results: “I think it did Lawrence a lot of good to get out on this type of experience. He talked to the children in groups from the first graders

the strength of his year’s work. However a greater need is for

on up.”71 She also wrote to Charles Alston to inform him

interest and advice and encouragement from understanding

that Lawrence “was very gracious in crediting much of

and responsible persons whom he is too shy to seek himself.

his inspiration and early help to you.” She continued to be

He has indicated an enormous respect for you, and I believe

convinced of Lawrence’s prospects as an artist: “I feel

that bringing you together is the most important thing I can

very strongly that Mr. Lawrence has what it takes to suc-

attempt for him.65

ceed. He has developed no attitude, is utterly interested in his work, has a definite objective toward which he is

About a month later, Wright reported back to Leyda that

struggling, and he always is willing to give credit where

he had twice attempted to visit Lawrence’s studio but had

he feels it is due.”72 She was so enthusiastic about intro-

not found him there. He assured Leyda that he would make

ducing African American artists to grade school young-

another attempt.66 Wright was working at this time on his

sters that she wrote to Pollack, urging him to organize

46  the making of a professional artist

Fig 31   Jacob Lawrence lecturing on his art at Lincoln School, New Rochelle, New York, February 28, 1941. Photo: Ray Garner. U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Harmon Foundation Collection.

along the same lines an all-day teaching and exhibition

rence proposition. At least one of his series ought to be

program for Chicago children.73

done as you suggest—silk screen process, and I’ll make soundings in New York, but why not try to have it swung eventually out your way, since the Chicago work in this

the chicago connection

medium is really superior?”76 Locke wrote again on July

Pollack, meanwhile, had his own plans for Lawrence. He

silk screen portfolios” with both Brady and Edith Halpert.

wrote to Locke on June 3, 1941, about the activities at the

They had responded enthusiastically, but Locke had in

South Side Community Center: “Pretty swell show com- 

mind another “angel” who would provide enough funding

ing up next week. Lawrence, [Charles] Sebree, [Vernon]

to pay the technical artists.77 In a July 9 letter to Locke,

6, informing Pollack that he had discussed “the idea of

Winslow book illustrations. The Lawrence stuff excep-

Pollack persisted: “If your ‘Angel’ could raise enough

tional. Spoke with Arna Bontemps about interceding

dough, and it would not require much, we can easily do

with his publishers McMillan & Co. to get the pictures

the job of reproduction of his ‘Toussaint,’ in my opinion,

published. I believe captions or a lengthy foreword on

by silk screen.”78 Nothing seems to have come of this

Tubman—in the same emotional vein—is needed. Bon-

scheme either, but Pollack’s prescient suggestion that

temps seemed interested. Perhaps Harmon can work it

Lawrence’s work would adapt well to silk-screening was

out somehow. I still believe silk screen reproductions best

confirmed some forty years later.79

for his work. With care practically nothing of the original

Lawrence reapplied to the Julius Rosenwald Fund and

colors and tones will be lost.”74 Pollack knew what he was

received a fellowship for another year so that he could

talking about; prior to accepting his job at FAP, he had

research and paint twenty-two panels on the life of John

been connected with the Chicago Artists Group, which

Brown, but he seems to have been oblivious to the nego-

published original limited-edition prints.75

tiations going on between Locke and Pollack that would

Locke replied to Pollack three days later: “I am sure

affect his career. The renewed fellowship would pay only

before or by fall something will come through on the Law-

twelve hundred dollars for the second year, down three

the making of a professional artist  47

hundred dollars from the first year, but he was doubtless

soon, and hope you will still be in New York next week.”

grateful not to have to worry about funds.

He added in his last paragraph: “Have you seen the work

In the late winter Locke’s book The Negro in Art: A

of Jacob Lawrence? And then Sebree has some recent

Pictorial Record of the Negro Artist and of the Negro

stuff that is most interesting. I can and will bring along

Theme in Art, much anticipated by both Brady and Locke,

some photographs.”83

was published. A large picture book, divided into three

Apparently Locke did get to New York. Halpert sent

­sections—“The Negro as Artist,” “The Negro in Art,” and

him a telegram, suggesting that they meet at the Harlem

“The Ancestral Arts”—it had brief essays for each section

Community Art Center on Wednesday, June 25. Perhaps

and 370 reproductions, two-thirds of them works by Afri-

it was there that Halpert and Locke viewed Lawrence’s

can European and African American artists. Eight of Law-

Migration panels.84 A few days later, on July 1, Halpert

rence’s Toussaint panels were published, a number

wrote Locke from her country home in Newtown, Con-

greater than that of works by any other artist except Hale

necticut, to report “very exciting news” from the Fortune

Woodruff, Richmond Barthé, and Malvin Gray Johnson.

magazine staff:

Brady ordered copies for the Harmon Foundation and had ideas about publicity, and Locke began sending out

Mrs. Caulkins [sic] to whom I had sent the Lawrence paintings

his own complimentary copies.80

and notes, ’phoned this afternoon to advise me that the editorial staff was equally enthusiastic about the panels, and that they are planning to use the series in the fall or winter—unless

enter edith halpert Perhaps the most important person to receive a copy of

the war situation makes publication obsolete. I suggested making a payment for an option on the material, and she is sending me a check (made in the name of Jacob Lawrence at my suggestion) for $100., as a first payment. We have not

The Negro in Art from Locke was Edith Halpert (Fig. 32),

discussed the ultimate price, but until some definite plans are

director of the Downtown Gallery, who had created one of

established by the editors, we shall let the matter ride. They

the best galleries of contemporary art in New York.81 In

will be very fair, I know, and I shall see to it that Lawrence gets

June 1941 she wrote to thank him and to discuss some

everything possible.

ideas the book had generated:

The reason I had the check sent here instead of the Harmon Foundation, is that I share your feelings about the situation.

Because so much of this was news to me, and to other persons

Would you advise me to send the money directly to the artist—

in the art world, it occurred to me to introduce Negro art in a

and if so, will you let me have his address? Do you think that

large inclusive exhibition in our new quarters—following the

it would be better to have fortune pay him in installments, etc.

outline in your book, but limiting it entirely to the work of

I should be grateful for your opinion. While the sum involved

American Negroes of the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries.

at the moment is not important, my own experience with artists

Although I know I can have access to the paintings in public

is that it is better to farm it out, and Mrs. Caulkins could have

and private collections, I would not want to start any activity

the bookkeeper make whatever arrangements you suggest.85

until I consult with you. What do you think of such an exhibition? As a matter of fact, I have some elaborate plans which I have

Halpert ends the letter with a suggestion that an exhibition

discussed with several people and there seems to be a good

of the Migration series might tour the country.

deal of enthusiasm regarding this proposed exhibition.82

Lawrence must have been overwhelmed at the prospect that a number of his paintings would be reproduced in

In a letter of June 16, Locke responded that he would be

Fortune, a prestigious business magazine that would

happy to help: “I do hope you can arrange the exhibit,

target potential patrons. But he became concerned when

and will gladly help to the best of my resources. I think I

he saw the actual $150 check, dated July 3, from Time,

can steer you to private canvasses of the same artists

Inc., because it was made out to “David Lawrence.” On

whose work, for the most part, is W.P.A. property. . . . In-

the tear-off portion of the check was written: “Option on

deed I hope I can discuss this whole matter with you

reproduction rights on panels on Migration of the Negro.”

48  the making of a professional artist

Fig 32   Edith Halpert reading at the home of Charles Sheeler, ca. 1935–40. Photo: Charles Sheeler. Downtown Gallery Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Worried about the wrong name and the option clause and

going to ask Mr. Lawrence to hold up the cashing of this

wanting to resolve what his rights were before he left for

check and not to reply to Mrs. Halpert until we have had

New Orleans, where he and Knight had decided to live for

time to do a little exploring and see what the customary

a spell, Lawrence went to see Mary Brady to ask her to

practices are in matters of this sort and also to have an

advise him. She recommended that he hold off cashing

opportunity to hear from you. I feel very strongly that he

the check until she had conferred with Locke, which she

should have a limitation on this option to magazine re-

did in a letter of July 16: “Mr. Jacob Lawrence was in the

production rights, being free to use the pictures in any

office this morning with reference to his plans for going

other way that seems fair to him.” She then added archly:

to New Orleans. We have advanced him $100. in connec-

“I feel a little surprised that Mrs. Halbert [sic] has not

tion with this trip, and it is his hope that he can get

been more specific in making these arrangements. Per-

started as quickly as possible. I thought you should know

haps I am more legalistic than I should be.” She urged

of his plans for leaving in the event that you may be plan-

Locke to get in touch with Lawrence and added: “Naturally,

ning to be in New York shortly.” Brady then explained the

Mr. Lawrence does not wish to be abrupt with Mrs. Halpert,

check situation and added: “I have advised Mr. Lawrence

as he is very appreciative of what she has done. On the

not to cash this check until the option statement is clari-

other hand, he does not wish to be railroaded into some-

fied. As it now stands, the option could be considered a

thing that he may later regret.”

permanent one. There is no statement as to the terms on

Brady was evidently thinking out the solution while dic-

which the sale would be consummated and there might

tating the letter, for she continued with this question:

well be a legal argument that the sale price was up to

“Would it be better for you to write a letter to Mrs. Halp-

Time, Inc. or that the option would continue to go on. Re-

ert, bringing up these points and returning the check to

production rights might easily be indicated as reproduc-

her for correction inasmuch as it is made out to David

tion of all types.” Brady acknowledged that having Law-

Lawrence rather than to Jacob Lawrence? If you feel that

rence’s panels reproduced in Fortune was a great break

it is better for you to do this, Mr. Lawrence, who is sitting

but stated she did “not believe that it is desirable to enter

beside me as I dictate this, would be agreeable to have

blindly into such arrangements.” She continued: “I am

you do it, but we would both like to know in advance.”

the making of a professional artist  49

She emphasized that the matter was somewhat urgent

Lawrence that she planned to show all sixty paintings in

because Lawrence wanted to begin his trip to New Or-

her gallery in November to coincide with the publication

leans right away.86

of the Fortune issue that month.92

They must have decided that Lawrence should be the

On July 24, the day after Halpert wrote her letter telling

one to write to Halpert, because he did, saying that he

Lawrence he could cash the check, Lawrence and Gwen­

could not cash the check because the wrong name was

dolyn Knight were married.93 Lawrence was then twenty-

on it: “Also I did not understand the terms under which

three years old, and Knight, twenty-eight. Lawrence pre-

the check was made out, namely how long a time the op-

pared to leave for New Orleans, but not before July 31, when

tion for publication rights was for.”87 Halpert replied to

he sat for Carl Van Vechten’s photograph of him.

Lawrence on July 23 and assured him that he could cash the check. She then explained the terms:

Van Vechten had photographed many of the notables of the Harlem literary scene—Zora Neale Hurston, Lang­ ston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and W. E. B. Du Bois—and

The sum [of $150] is in full payment of the option to reproduce

thus it was a singular honor to sit for him.94 Van Vechten

all or any of the series of paintings you left there. When a

posed him in front of a cloth backdrop with intricate geo-

decision is made to actually publish the group, you will receive further payment, the amount to be agreed on by you as well as by

fo r t u n e .

I shall handle the transaction in your interest,

but we can have a chat in advance so that the final price may be satisfactory to you before I propose it to the editors of the magazine. The option holds until November 1st, as no action can be

metric designs (Fig. 33). His camera captures the sculpted features of Lawrence’s head as the young artist stares at the camera with his arms folded across his chest. Leading up to this photo sitting was a series of earlier representations of Lawrence that help us chart his growth as an artist. In Figures 9 and 10 we see the fifteen-year-old Lawrence

taken during the summer months. As soon as I hear from the

participating with other students in Harlem Art Workshop

organization, I shall communicate with you accordingly. 88

activities; Figure 12 shows him a few years later, working

From the tone of her letter, Lawrence surmised that Halp-

company of other artists—at art openings (Figs. 21 and

ert must have concluded he was concerned only with the

26) or delivering his paintings to a museum registrar for

in his studio space at 306. In 1939 we find him in the

dollar amount of the transaction, so he wrote to her almost

exhibition (Fig. 27). Figure 31, in which he poses with New

apologetically, explaining: “My main reason for writing you

Rochelle schoolchildren, shows another side to him—the

was to find out how long the option was to last, (since then

image suggests his empathy toward the young pupils. The

both you and Mrs. Calkins have written and told me). I am

Van Vechten photograph is altogether different. Through

very sorry if I caused you any [unnecessary] trouble.”89

the pose and facial expression the photographer has

He wished to please the very powerful art broker Edith

captured Lawrence’s intensity, a sense of the young art-

Halpert, yet he was also learning lessons in the rights he

ist’s will to paint his vision and to succeed.95 It was a

should insist on as an artist. Brady was still in the picture, because the Migration

moment when he was about to embark on new adventures—marriage and a prolonged painting trip.

panels were physically in the Harmon Foundation’s office, but she knew that Lawrence had agreed to Fortune’s

n

terms. When she heard from Calkins in early September,

In New Orleans Lawrence found a temporary place to live

Brady turned the panels over to Fortune for photogra-

at 2230 Dryades Street, one block over from South Ram-

phy.90 Even though Lawrence had not yet met Halpert,

part Street. It seems that Gwendolyn stayed behind in New

then summering in Connecticut, he shifted his allegiance

York for a few weeks until Lawrence could find a more

to her, poised as she was now to give his career the most

permanent home. They eventually rented rooms in a pri-

help.91 In subsequent letters, after the arrangement with

vate home, owned by a Mrs. Jones, at 2430 Bienville Av-

Fortune had been successfully brokered, Halpert informed

enue, with enough space for the two of them to paint.96

50  the making of a professional artist

That summer, Alain Locke was corresponding with Halpert about her plan to hold, in December 1941, a large exhibition of African American art that would include Lawrence’s sixty Migration panels. She was hoping to make her exhibition the first to introduce African American art to the downtown New York art world of museum directors, curators, and patrons. During the summer Locke not only cheered her on but gave her substantial help. He assembled a stellar representation of African American artists from the East Coast and the West Coast, and he enlisted his friend Peter Pollack in Chicago to spread the word there among artists and to organize a jury to make a preliminary selection of works from the Midwest. Their suggestions would be passed along to Halpert, who would make the final choice. Locke and Pollack shrewdly asked Daniel Rich, the director of the Art Institute of Chicago, to be one of the jurors for the Midwest, along with the artist Charles White.97 As Locke, Pollack, and Halpert were making their plans, however, they learned that a potentially competing exhibition of African American art in New York was being planned for the coming October. Kathleen Carroll was in the process of contacting Chicago artists for Eleanor McMillen Brown, an interior decorator who owned the McMillen Gallery at 148 East 55th Street. Locke and Pollack surmised that the McMillen exhibition of contemporary African American artists was window-dressing for a scheme to sell the African art collection of Frank Crowninshield, the editor of Vanity Fair, who was reputedly

Fig 33   Carl Van Vechten, Jacob Lawrence, 1941. Photogravure,

printed 1983, 811 ⁄16 x 57⁄8 in. (22 x 15 cm). National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, NPG.83.188.29. Photo © The Estate of Carl Van Vechten; Gravure and compilation © the Eakins Press Foundation.

short on cash.98 Both Locke and Pollack were outraged at the idea that a gallery would cynically exploit artists by promising them big sales. On July 25, Locke wrote to Pol-

I am sure you will not construe this as trying to meddle in

lack suggesting that he put pressure on the Midwest art-

or dictate to the artists. We only want them to have full infor-

ists not to show at the McMillen Gallery:

mation, so as to decide wisely in their own best interests. While there could be no financial guarantees, it does seem

As you know, Mrs. Halpert’s proposition has been planned

that an exhibition in a recognized major gallery, synchronized

primarily to introduce a representative cross section of the

with definitely assured publicity in Fortune and Time, and with

work of Negro artists, both to the art critics here in New York

an indirect connection with the Museum of Modern Art group,

and to several important museum directors. Mrs. Halpert feels

is something to command our fullest cooperation.

that any considerable showing on a commercial level before an exhibition in December would definitely take the edge off

Locke conceded that “for the less original artists or even

publicity arrangements she has in mind to make and may cause

for the less representative work of the better artists, the

abandonment of her project, whereas, if the order of the two

McMillan [sic] proposition would be worthier of consid-

shows was reversed, one would decidedly help the other.

eration, in my judgment, than it is under these circum-

the making of a professional artist  51

stances.”99 Clearly, Locke did not want the McMillen show

Alston, two by Romare Bearden, two by Ronald Joseph,

to scoop Halpert’s.

and three by Horace Pippin, as well as two sculptures by

Brady of the Harmon Foundation was also skeptical of

William Edmundson and a lithograph by Lawrence’s

the McMillen show. She reported to Locke on Septem­ber 4,

younger friend Bob Blackburn. Lawrence’s works included

1941, what Palmer Hayden had told her about Mrs. Carroll:

paintings he had sent back from New Orleans: Green Table

“She made it clear [to Hayden] that her interest was a

and Catholic New Orleans, as well as the sixty panels of

purely commercial one and not in the general direction of

his Migration series.104

promoting Negro art. My reaction is that if she can per-

The opening date coincided exactly with the entry of

form miracles and get good prices, more power to her. It

the United States into World War II in response to the

would seem to me that such a plan would not in any way

Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, the main U.S. Navy

interfere with Mrs. Halpert’s plan for an exhibition.” But

base in the Pacific, on the morning of Sunday, Decem­

in the next paragraph Brady referred to the over­all project

­ber 7. The next day, Halpert scaled back her plans. Al-

they were all engaged in: to bring the accomplishments

though she invited Lawrence to become one of the artists

of African American creativity to the American public.

her gallery represented, and she also represented Horace

“Here is the question, however: Can the interior decora-

Pippin, the long-range project for other major New York

tor’s ability perform miracles where the art people have

galleries to represent African American artists never

not been able to do so in all these years? I do not think

materialized.

that you nor we would want to stand in the way of any

During 1942 Brady and Locke continued to promote

progress that might be made along these lines.”100 In the

Lawrence. Locke chose four paintings (see Fig. 94) to re-

last analysis, Locke, Pollack, and Brady would have agreed

produce in the November issue of Survey Graphic, a spe-

that any exposure benefited artists; it was merely a ques-

cial issue he was editing on the impact of the war on race

tion of the best strategy for introducing and promoting

relations. Brady encouraged McKinley Helm of Boston to

them.101

acquire Lawrence’s work for a one-man show, but she

Finally, the invitations for the gala opening of Halpert’s

also worked on behalf of other African American art-

Exhibition of American Negro Art, on Monday, December

ists.105 In early 1942 Halpert persuaded Mrs. David Levy,

8, 1941, went out to art world people, the press, and pa-

the daughter of Julius Rosenwald, and Duncan Phillips, of

trons. Halpert’s star-studded sponsorship committee in-

the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., each to pur-

cluded such notables as Mrs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt,

chase half of Lawrence’s Migration series.106 By then

Mr. and Mrs. Edsel Ford, James Weldon Johnson, Wil­

Halpert had begun regularly exhibiting and selling Law-

liam C. Handy, Mrs. William E. Harmon, Carl Van Vechten,

rence’s work in her gallery.

Richard Wright, Archibald MacLeish, A. Philip Randolph,

The entrance of the United States into World War II,

Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller Jr., Countee Cullen, and

however, profoundly changed the direction of many of the

Katherine Dunham. On the invitation, credit was given to

organizations and individuals who had been working on

a coordination committee that included Alain Locke and

behalf of African American artists and Lawrence in par-

the Harmon Foundation. Music would be provided by Josh

ticular. Mary Brady steered the Harmon Foundation away

White and the Harlem Highlanders.102 According to the

from its earlier mandate to help African American artists

announcement, one of the objectives was to create a Negro

and toward a focus on Africa. Peter Pollack managed to

Art Fund in order to purchase art from African Ameri­

keep the community centers going in Illinois but then, in

cans that could then be gifted to museums and public

1943, joined the war effort, working with the American

institutions.103 Another goal, not expressly articulated

Red Cross.107

but understood, was to convince the leading New York

Gwendolyn Bennett was not as fortunate as Pollack.

galleries that each should take on two African American

The Harlem Community Art Center continued to be

artists to represent. The exhibition contained seventy-

plagued by reduced finances. In June 1939 a mass meet-

eight works, mostly paintings, including two by Charles

ing was held at the Lafayette Theatre to protest cut-

52  the making of a professional artist

backs.108 In January 1940 Bennett had written to Alain

advice, but it is unlikely that he got involved with her

Locke of the grim situation: “These are undoubtedly the

problems. While she was politically on the left and there-

darkest days of the Center with the landlord coming up to

fore vulnerable to anticommunist attacks, Locke seems to

see me personally everyday [sic] as though I had rented

have felt more comfortable steering a safer, liberal path.

use.”109

The center held on,

Meanwhile, Lawrence and Knight, after living in New

however, for a year later, in January 1941, Bennett could

Orleans during the early winter, moved to rural Virginia in

the place for my personal

report to Locke: “The Harlem Community Art Center is at

early February (see Chapter 5). When they returned to New

present in [the] process of being moved into space which

York at the end of May, they lived briefly at 1851 Seventh

is leased by the City of New York until December 1942. If

Avenue. By mid-July they had moved into 72 Hamilton Ter-

the projects hold out now, the future of our work is more

race off 141st Street, near the City College of New York

or less assured.”110 In November 1941 she wrote again to

campus.112 Supported by a third year of funding from the

Locke, telling him that she had been red-baited in the

Julius Rosenwald Fund, Lawrence plunged into work on his

press and fired by Audrey McMahon, New York director of

series of Harlem pictures. In the fall of 1942 the young

the FAP. She also announced that she had taken a teaching

couple saw Harlem gearing up for a war effort that aroused

job at the School for Democracy, beginning January

new concerns among African Americans about the extent

1942.111 Bennett thought highly of Locke’s opinions and

of government-supported segregation.

the making of a professional artist  53

part two

themes and issues

3

african american storytelling Toussaint L’Ouverture and Harriet Tubman The American Negro must remake his past in order to make his future. . . . For him, a group tradition must supply compensation for persecution, and pride of race the antidote for prejudice. History must restore what slavery took away.

arthur schomburg, “The Negro Digs Up His Past” (1925) His art is founded on reality. It includes the vivid moments of actual experience as well as those vicariously gleaned through reading.

james a. porter, speaking of Jacob Lawrence, Modern Negro Art (1943)

In the mid-1930s, working alongside his teacher Henry

In the next three years Lawrence would paint three his-

Bannarn at 306 (the Harlem Art Workshop at 306 West

torical series: Toussaint L’Ouverture (forty-one panels),

141st Street), Lawrence determined to expand his subject

Frederick Douglass (thirty-two panels), and Harriet Tub­

matter beyond simple genre scenes of Harlemites, as sat-

man (thirty-one panels). These heroes, all former slaves,

isfying as those paintings were to both himself and his

devoted their lives to the struggle against imperialism

audience. He would paint the histories of people of Afri-

and racism. Toussaint L’Ouverture won independence for

can descent in the Americas, beginning with the Haitian

Haiti by leading a black army to defeat the English but

hero Toussaint L’Ouverture. He knew his community

was later betrayed by the French; Frederick Douglass es-

would support him.

caped from slavery and went on the abolitionists’ lecture

Bannarn no doubt influenced Lawrence’s decision, tell-

circuit to rally support for ending slavery in the United

ing an Amsterdam News reporter in 1937 that black art-

States; Tubman also escaped from slavery and returned

ists should learn about their own history and that he him-

to the South to conduct two to three hundred black slaves

self intended to help them gain that knowledge through

on the Underground Railroad from the South to the North

his own art: “I want to be a means of knowing the At-

before the Civil War. Lawrence chose the series format

tuckses, the Hensons, the Pushkins and the Douglasses.”1

because he wanted to “tell a full story.”3 This chapter fo-

The teachers with whom Lawrence studied at the Ameri-

cuses on two of the three series: the Toussaint panels,

can Artists School in 1937 would also have encouraged

the project during which Lawrence learned to paint a

him. Those leftist artists admired the historical rebels

chronological narrative, and the Tubman panels, in which

who had advocated revolutionary struggle to advance the

he refined his approach and gave the narrative a more

cause of the oppressed. 2

complex unity.

Fig 34   The Life of Harriet Tubman, Panel 7: “Harriet Tubman worked as water girl to field hands. She also worked at plowing, carting, and hauling logs.” 1940. Casein tempera on hardboard, 177⁄8 x 12 in. (45.4 x 30.5 cm). Hampton University Museum, Hampton, Virginia. Photo: The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation/Art Resource, NY.

african americans in american history Heroes from African American history first piqued Law-

alone in encouraging pride in African American history. Nor was he a racial separatist; he was simply calling for a corrective to the Dixie historiography that then dominated the field of history.9

rence’s interest when he was in his early teens. In 1940

Arthur Schomburg was another figure important in the

he recalled: “I’ve always been interested in history, but

movement to recover a black history. A bibliophile who

they never taught Negro history in the public schools.

amassed a large collection of books and other materials

Sometimes they mentioned it in history clubs, but I never

on African and African American history that became the

liked that way of presenting it. It was never studied seri-

core holdings of the 135th Street Harlem branch of the

ously like regular subjects.”4

New York Public Library, Schomburg was famous as a

He was speaking of the early 1930s. By the late 1930s

“race man”—one who celebrates the accomplishments

black and white progressive teachers in Harlem were

of the “Negro race.” In his most famous essay, “The Ne-

challenging that neglect and pressuring white officials to

gro Digs Up His Past,” written for the Survey Graphic and

celebrate Negro History Week.5 The drive to include Af-

reprinted in Locke’s New Negro (1925), Schomburg

rican American history in the public school curriculum

stated: “The American Negro must remake his past in

became part of the movement to end segregation. The

order to make his future. Though it is orthodox to think

135th Street Harlem branch of the New York Public Li-

of America as the one country where it is unnecessary to

brary had already conceived the idea of hiring Harlem’s

have a past, what is a luxury for the nation as a whole

street-corner orators to tell passersby about African

becomes a prime social necessity for the Negro. For him,

American history and to urge them to use the library’s

a group tradition must supply compensation for persecu-

resources.6

Teachers were also lecturing in community

tion, and pride of race the antidote for prejudice. History

centers. Lawrence recalled that when he was still in the

must restore what slavery took away, for it is the social

after-school program at Utopia House, “a Mr. Allen”

damage of slavery that the present generations must

came to lecture on Toussaint L’Ouverture. The speaker

repair and offset.”10 That history had to include the con­

may have been James Egert Allen, in 1934 a school-

tributions of Africans and their descendants and be

teacher and president of the New York branch of the

written with a “truly scientific attitude,” with no “bias or

National Association for the Advancement of Colored

counterbias.”11

People (NAACP).7

Lawrence absorbed Schomburg’s attitudes about black

The historian Carter G. Woodson, who initiated Negro

history by frequenting the Harlem branch of the library

History Week, the second week of February, in 1926, and

and by listening to debates at Alston and Bannarn’s studio

founded the Journal of Negro History, believed in the cen-

306. Indeed, in a statement for a 1940 Harmon Foundation

trality of African Americans to American history. He felt,

press release the artist echoed Schomburg when he said:

moreover, that history needed to emphasize their tri-

“We know little of these people’s achievements. Having

umphs and to be inspirational. On November 11, 1931, the

no Negro history makes the Negro people feel inferior to

New York Amsterdam News reported on an address

the rest of the world. I don’t see how a history of the

Woodson had delivered to the Association for the Study

United States can be written honestly without including

of Negro Life and History: “Dr. Woodson recalled the an-

the Negro.”12 In interviews Lawrence also acknowledged

cient glories of Africa, the industrial and fine arts devel-

the extensive influence of Charles Seifert, who gave lec-

oped there, the exploits of its heroes, the philosophy of

tures, took Harlem youngsters to the Museum of Modern

its sages, its development of political units and commer-

Art’s African sculpture exhibition, and maintained a col-

cial enterprise. ‘These things when properly studied,’ he

lection of African artifacts and books (see Chapter 1).

said, ‘give one a new perspective on the place of the Ne-

Lawrence was thus absorbing from various sources the

gro in world history and enable us to proudly boast of our

principle that an all-embracing revisionist history mat-

black skins and African descent.’ ”8 Woodson was not

tered to the African American community.

58  african american story telling

haiti: the eighteenth-century revolution and the 1930 s

at a brutal price.15 A headline in the New York Amsterdam News on December 25, 1929, declared, “U.S. Marines Slew Hundreds.” An editorial published February 5, 1930,

One can understand why historians, artists, and Law-

asked, “Will we get out of Haiti?” and concluded that the

rence himself would gravitate to the inspiring story of the

United States would not, because of its economic inter-

Haitian hero Toussaint L’Ouverture. Enslaved Africans

ests. African American civic leaders felt they should be

had lived and worked in the Caribbean for almost three

included in the national debates about Haiti, but the gov-

hundred years before the first stirrings of rebellion in

ernment ignored them.16 The United States began to pull

Haiti, though that history was little known. The Haitian

out its troops in 1930, ending the occupation in 1934, but

Revolution, as a major, dramatic event, secured for Haiti

even then continued to control much of Haiti’s finances.

a place in history and became an inspiration for the fu-

Lawrence was no doubt inspired by reading about Haiti

ture. It gave the lie to what some historians had called the

in the newspapers and listening to lectures, but he relied

passivity of Africans in the New World.

on the Schomburg Collection as his primary source of

Indeed, for Lawrence the point of revising history was

historical information and visual cues. As he explained in

to provide guidance for action and revolutionary change.

1940: “I do my research first: read the books and take

Lawrence’s communist teachers at the American Artists

notes. I may find it necessary to go through my notes

School would surely have reminded him of Marx’s famous

three times to eliminate unimportant points. I did all my

maxim: “The philosophers have only interpreted the

reading at Schomburg Library. Most of my information

world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change

came from [John R.] Beard’s book Toussaint L’Ouverture.

it.”13 Toussaint’s life provided a narrative to bring these

I read other books—there were more novels than anything

ideas into visual form. Lawrence already admired him

else. One book—I don’t even remember its name—told

and, like others, saw Toussaint’s story not only as a his-

me of conditions on the island, and its resources. It gave

tory lesson but also as a moral parable for the present.

a short sketch of the history of the Haitian revolution.

He did the Toussaint series, he explained in the 1940

From that, I got mostly the appearance of the island.”17

press release, not “as a historical thing, but because I

Lawrence stressed the seriousness of his project by em-

believe these things tie up the Negro today. We don’t

phasizing this research.

have a physical slavery, but an economic slavery. If these

Perhaps the most stimulating visual sources on the

people, who were so much worse off than the people to-

Haitian Revolution during the 1930s were plays, particu-

day, could conquer their slavery, we certainly can do the

larly those produced by the Federal Theatre Project (FTP)

same thing. They had to liberate themselves without any

of the Works Progress Administration at the Lafayette

education. Today we can’t go about it in the same

Theatre on 131st Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem.18

way. . . . How will it come about? I don’t know. I’m not a

Orson Welles’s production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, set

To emphasize his own role in the continuity

in nineteenth-century Haiti, opened at the Lafayette on

of history, he added, “I’m an artist, just trying to do my

April 14, 1936, and included a dance troupe from Sierra

part to bring this thing about.” He felt he could help to

Leone.19 It is not known whether Lawrence saw Macbeth,

change the world. “This thing,” to Lawrence, meant lib-

but he saw and was enthusiastic about FTP’s Haiti. Written

eration from Jim Crow segregation and, more broadly,

by William DuBois, a white southern reporter, Haiti opened

freedom for all people from economic and social

on March 2, 1938, at the Lafayette Theatre. DuBois had

oppression.

written the work as an argument against miscegenation,

politician.”

14

Haiti was very much in the news in the mid-1930s.

but the director, Maurice Clark, reshaped it into a moral

President Woodrow Wilson had sent U.S. troops there in

and revolutionary drama. The fictionalized heroine, Odette

1915, after a mob lynched the dictator Guillaume Sam, to

Boucher, a Frenchwoman married to one of Napoleon’s

protect American interests from the volatile political situ-

generals, discovers that her real father, Jacques, is not

ation. The United States put some reforms in place, but

only a former slave but one of Toussaint’s top aides spying

african american story telling  59

English when it seemed strategically necessary to his goal of freedom for the slaves. He returned to the French army when news came that the French Jacobins had abolished slavery in 1794 in all French colonies. When the Haitian slaves were finally liberated by his revolution, he continued to believe in maintaining trade and diplomatic ties with Europe, especially France. Although he is credited with establishing the first Haitian Republic, the constitution he endorsed protected the system of large plantations, which generally meant coerced labor. 21 At the 135th Street branch library, Lawrence pored over the rare books Arthur Schomburg had collected about Haiti. He relied on either or both of two books: the original history by John R. Beard, The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture, the Negro Patriot of Hayti, published in London in 1853, or the edited version of Beard published by James Redpath in Boston in 1863. 22 Lawrence simplified the history, not mentioning, for example, Toussaint’s switching sides and not giving the details of the battles. He also ignored the roles played by Toussaint’s wife and sons in Beard’s narrative. In telling Toussaint’s story, he wanted to project a strong mascuFig 35   Rex Ingram in Haiti, 1938. WPA Federal Theatre Photos,

Theater Stills collection. Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

line figure who led his troops into battle, conferred with his peers, and won. To Lawrence the narrative’s moral declared that if oppressed people fight against their oppressors, they will eventually win. The forty-one panels on Toussaint (Fig. 36) focus single-mindedly on the heroism of Toussaint and his men.

on the French while disguised as a servant. At the end she

The ambition of Lawrence’s visual chronicle exceeded

chooses not to betray her father and sides with Henri

anything an American artist had ever done on the history

Christophe and the revolution. 20

of a single hero of the New World. No painter had yet at-

The drama and excitement of seeing Rex Ingram play

tempted a forty-one-part pictorial narrative with carefully

the lead role of Christophe (Fig. 35) in Haiti made a last-

crafted texts on the life of just one figure. Moreover, the

ing impression on Lawrence, although he had already

subject of Haiti and its revolutionaries had been mined by

started planning and painting his Toussaint L’Ouverture

only a few visual artists before Lawrence. 23

series several months earlier. Of the three major generals

Lawrence carefully planned not only the drawings but

of the Haitian Revolution, Lawrence chose Toussaint,

also the extended texts, drawn from his research, for

rather than Henri Christophe or Jean-Jacques Dessalines,

each panel. He told the radio talk show host Randy Good-

because for Haitians Toussaint, though not the first to

man in 1943: “When I did my first series, on the Haitian

lead the rebellion, was its brilliant strategist, with an un-

Revolution, I found that captions gave the pictures a con-

compromising vision of a free Haiti.

tinuity and clarity that individual titles didn’t.”24 His prose

Toussaint rose through the ranks of the French colonial

tends to be straight exposition, much of it culled from the

army but switched sides to fight for the Spanish and the

two versions of Beard’s biography: for example, Panel 3,

60  african american story telling

“Spain and France fought for Haiti constantly, 1665–1691.”

By rejecting Renaissance illusionism, Lawrence elimi-

When rhetorical flourishes creep in, as in Panel 7, “Tous-

nated focus, and hence the hierarchy of values that focus

saint heard the twang of the planter’s whip and saw the

entails. The absence of light and dark modeling relates to

blood stream from the bodies of slaves,” one can find the

Lawrence’s aversion to overpersonalizing the features of

25

Lawrence did not then

his heroes in the Toussaint series. To Lawrence, heroes

consider the question of plagiarism—he was simply using

and heroines are important not as individuals but as

words almost verbatim in Beard.

written history most efficiently for his accompanying

iconic embodiments of collective struggles against

texts. 26

oppression.

Lawrence’s artistic style seems especially fitting for

With an appropriate style in place and with his re-

such a depersonalized historical epic. 27 His expressive

search completed, Lawrence developed a working method

cubism, with its flat shapes, controlled outlines, and lim-

for the series. First he made detailed drawings. Following

ited range of color, kept the emotion restrained and the

traditional techniques, he next prepared the gesso pan-

conceptual goals clear, and moved the sequences in mea-

els, transferring his designs to them. At this point he

sured cadences. He later articulated his admiration for

would line up the panels against his studio wall—from left

cubism, using phrases that could well describe his own

to right—and study them. Finally he mixed powdered

art. Delivering a speech in 1962 entitled “The African Id-

tempera—using a limited palette of red, blue, green, yel-

iom in Modern Art,” he declared: “Of all modernist con-

low, tan, brown, black, and white. First, he painted all the

cepts and styles, cubism has been the most influential.

dark colors, then the lighter ones. Using dark colors on

Because of its rationalism, its appeal has become univer-

the whitened gesso board let him work out the pattern—

sal. And because cubism seeks basic fundamental truths,

the notan—as Arthur Wesley Dow had advised in his book

it has enabled the artist to go beyond the superficial rep-

on composition (see Chapter 1). This method, which en-

resentation of nature to a more profound and philosophi-

sured that hues would have the same values and intensi-

cal interpretation of the material world.”28

ties throughout, also suggests that he considered the

Lawrence, like others, saw the origins of cubism in Af-

parts integral to the whole structure. 31

rican art. Speculating on the responses of French artists who first saw African art in about 1900, Lawrence surmised: “Here was an art both simple and complex—an art that possessed all of the qualities of the sophisticated community. It had strength without being brutal, sentiment without being sentimental, magic but not camou-

the forty-one panels of toussaint l’ouverture The first five panels cover the 250 years before Tous-

flage, and precision but not tightness.”29 His statement

saint’s birth: Columbus’s “discovery” of Haiti, the mis-

certainly echoes the words of Alain Locke, who noted the

treatment of the native Indians by Spanish soldiers, the

qualities of discipline in African art, but also perfectly de-

constant warfare between Spain and France for control of

scribes his own Toussaint L’Ouverture series.

the island, their eventual agreement to divide the island,

Lawrence’s cubist collage aesthetic suited stories of

and the peaking of the slave trade in 1730. Panel 5, “Slave

epic proportions. For one thing, Lawrence’s collage cub-

trade reaches its height in Haiti, 1730,” represents a white

ism is reductive: simplified, flat shapes have an analogue

man, accompanied by a well-dressed white woman with

in the vivid exemplary points of an epic chronicle. It is

two attendants in the background, pointing to the land

also additive: the layered shapes of collage parallel the

and a group of black slaves huddled among the leaves of

accumulation of incidents characteristic of epic narra-

the sugarcane. The black woman seated in front hugs a

tive.

30

It is nonillusionistic: no tricks fool the eye, no fe-

bundled child. The blacks occupy most of the picture.

licities of chiaroscuro obfuscate the message, and no

The whites are the intruders, the colonizers who will ex-

cast shadows divert viewers from the clarity of the story.

ploit Haiti’s resources—the land and the people.

african american story telling  61

1

2

3

1  Columbus discovered Haiti on December 6, 1492. The discovery was on Columbus’ first trip to the New World. He is shown planting the official

Spanish flag, under which he sailed. The priest shows the influence of the Church upon the people. 2  Mistreatment by the Spanish soldiers caused much trouble on the island and caused the death of Anacanca, a native queen, 1503. Columbus left

soldiers in charge, who began making slaves of the people. The queen was one of the leaders of the insurrection which followed. 3  Spain and France fought for Haiti constantly, 1665–1691.

8

9

7

7  As a child, Toussaint heard the twang of the planter’s whip and saw the blood stream from the bodies of slaves. 8  In early manhood his seemingly good nature won for him the coachmanship for Bayou de Libertas, 1763. His job as coachman gave him time to think about how to fight slavery. During this period, he taught himself to read and to write. 9  He read Rynol’s Anti-Slavery Book that predicted a Black Emancipator, which language spirited him, 1763–1776.

Fig 36  The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture, 1938. Tempera on paper (41 panels), 111 ⁄2 x 19 in. or 19 x 111 ⁄2 in. (29.2 x 48.3 cm. or 48.3 x 29.2 cm). Aaron Douglas Collection, Amistad Research Center at Tulane University, New Orleans. Captions follow the catalogue raisonné, which used the captions accompanying each image at the DePorres Interracial Center, New York, in 1939. However, in Panel 23 I have changed the number of troops to 5,000, the figure stated by the history book Lawrence used. Photos: The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation/ Art Resource, NY; except photos for Panels 11, 24, and 25 by Amistad Research Center.

62 

4

6

5

4  Spain and France agree to divide Haiti, 1691. 5  Slave trade reaches its height in Haiti, 1730. 6  The birth of Toussaint L’Ouverture, May 20, 1743. Both of Toussaint’s parents were slaves.

10

11

12

10   The cruelty of the planters towards the slaves drove the slaves to revolt, 1776. Those revolts, which kept cropping up from time to time, finally

came to a head in the rebellion. 11  The society of the Friends of Blacks was formed in England, 1778, the leading members being Price, Priestly, Sharp, Clarkson and Wilberforce. 12   Jean Francois, first Black to rebel in Haiti.

  63

13

14

15

13   During the rebellion of Jean Francois, Toussaint led his master and mistress to safety. 14   The blacks were led by three chiefs, Jean Francois, Biassou, and Jeannot; Toussaint serving as aide-de-camp to Biassou. 15   The Mulattoes, enemies of both the Blacks and the Whites, but tolerated more by the Whites, joined their forces in battle against the

Blacks, 1793.

20

19

21

19   The Mulattoes had no organization; the English held only a point or two on the Island, while the Blacks formed into large bands and slaughtered every Mulatto and White they encountered. The Blacks learned the secret of their power. The Haitians now controlled half the Island. 20   General Toussaint L’Ouverture, Statesman and military genius, esteemed by the Spaniards, feared by the English, dreaded by the French, hated by the planters, and reverenced by the Blacks. 21   General Toussaint L’Ouverture attacked the English at Artibonite and there captured two towns.

64 

17

18

16

16   Toussaint captured Dondon, a city in the center of Haiti, 1795. 17   Toussaint captured Marmelade, held by Vernet, a mulatto, 1795. 18   Toussaint captured Ennery.

22

24

23

22   Settling down at St. Marc, he took possession of two important posts. 23   General L’Ouverture collected forces at Marmelade, and on October the 9th, 1794, left with 5,000 men to capture San Miguel. 24   General L’Ouverture confers with Leveaux at Dondon with his principal aides, Dessalines, Commander of San Miguel, Duminil, Commander of Plaisaince, Desrouleaux, Ceveaux and Maurepas, Commanders of Battalions, and prepares an attack at St. Marc.

  65

25

26

27

25   General Toussaint L’Ouverture defeats the English at Saline. 26   On March 24, he captured Mirebalois. 27   Returning to private life as the commander and chief of the army, he saw to it that the country was well taken care of, and Haiti

returned to prosperity. During this important period, slavery was abolished, and attention focused upon agricultural pursuits.

31

32

33

31   Napoleon’s troops under LeClerc arrive at the shores of Haiti. 32   Henri Christoph, rather than surrender to LeClerc, sets fire to La Cape. Christoph, one of Toussaint’s aides, sent word that the French were in Haitian waters—that he had held them off as long as possible. 33   General L’Ouverture, set for war with Napoleon, prepares Crete-a-Pierrot as a point of resistance. Toussaint took his troops into the mountains,

deciding upon guerrilla warfare.

66 

29

30

28

28   The constitution was prepared and presented to Toussaint on the 19th day of May, 1800, by nine men he had chosen, eight of whom were

white proprietors and one mulatto. Toussaint’s liberalism led him to choose such a group to draw up the constitution. He was much criticized for his choice, but the constitution proved workable. 29   L’Ouverture made a triumphant march into San Domingo on the 2nd of January, 1801, at the head of 10,000 men, and hoisted the flag

of the French Republic. Toussaint did not wish to break with the French, the largest group of Haitian inhabitants. The Blacks themselves spoke patois French. 30   Napoleon Bonaparte begins to look on Haiti as a new land to conquer. Conquest inevitably meant further slavery.

35

34

36

34   Toussaint defeats Napoleon’s troops at Ennery. 35   Yellow fever broke out with great violence, thus having a great physical and moral effect on the French soldiers. The French sought a truce with

L’Ouverture. 36   During the truce Toussaint is deceived and arrested by LeClerc. LeClerc felt that with Toussaint out of the way, the Blacks would surrender.

  67

37

39

38

37   Toussaint is taken to Paris and imprisoned in the dungeon of the Castle Joux—August 17, 1802. 38   Napoleon’s attempt to restore slavery in Haiti was unsuccessful. Desalines, Chief of the Blacks, defeated LeClerc. Black men, women, and children took up arms to preserve their freedom. 39   The death of Toussaint L’Ouverture in the Prison of Le Joux, April, 1803. Imprisoned a year, Toussaint died of a broken heart.

40

41

40   The Declaration of Independence was signed January 1, 1804—Desalines, Clevaux, and Henri Christoph. These three men made up a new constitution, writing it themselves. The Haitian flag shows in the sketch. 41   Desalines was crowned Emperor October 4, 1804, thus: Jean Jacques the First of Haiti. Desalines, standing beside a broken chain, has the powers of dictator, as opposed to Toussaint’s more liberal leadership.

68 

Panels 6 through 9 introduce Toussaint: his birth, his

He will appear, doubt it not; he will come forth, and raise the

witnessing of slavery’s cruelty, his good behavior toward

sacred standard of liberty. This venerable signal will gather

his owners as a young man, and the beginning of his en-

around him the companions of his misfortune. . . . Everywhere

lightenment. Toussaint’s experiences of slavery as a child

people will bless the name of the hero, who shall have rees-

in Panel 7 contrast with his growing knowledge of politi-

tablished the rights of the human race; everywhere will they

cal theory, as he sits at a table in Panel 9 and reads Abbé Raynal’s Philosophical and Political History of the Settle­ ments and Trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies. Beard quotes from it: Nature speaks in louder tones than philosophy or self-interest. Already are there established two colonies of fugitive negroes, whom treaties and power protect from assault. Those light-

raise trophies in his honor. 32

This passage would have appealed to Lawrence for its description of the hero as acting for a cause larger than himself or even his immediate community. He acts for all of humanity even when redressing wrongs inflicted on a specific group of oppressed people. The caption for Panel 10 (Fig. 37) returns to the plant-

nings announce the thunder. A courageous chief only is

ers’ cruelty toward their slaves as a cause of rebellion:

wanted. Where is he? That great man whom Nature owes to

“The cruelty of the planters towards the slaves drove the

her vexed, oppressed, and tormented children. Where is he?

slaves to revolt, 1776. Those revolts, which kept cropping

Fig 37   The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture, Panel 10: “The cruelty of the planters towards the slaves drove the slaves to revolt, 1776. Those

revolts, which kept cropping up from time to time, finally came to a head in the rebellion.” Tempera on paper, 111 ⁄2 x 19 in. (29.2 x 48.3 cm). Aaron Douglas Collection, Amistad Research Center at Tulane University, New Orleans. Photo: The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation/ Art Resource, NY.

african american story telling  69

up from time to time, finally came to a head in the rebel-

next few years with its extended caption: “Returning to

lion.” The painting echoes the subject of Panel 7, but the

private life as the commander and chief of the army, he

witness here is not young Toussaint but the shackled

saw to it that the country was well taken care of, and Haiti

slaves. With a few deft touches, Lawrence shows their

returned to prosperity. During this important period,

eyes; their own consciousness of their humanity helps

slavery was abolished, and attention focused upon agri-

them transcend the brutality. In Panel 11, an interior

cultural pursuits.” In Panel 28 Toussaint’s appointees are

scene, white men involved in the Society of the Friends of

writing the constitution, an event that should have followed

Blacks—Richard Price, Joseph Priestly, Granville Sharp,

Panel 29. Lawrence takes artistic license, much as a movie

Thomas Clarkson, and William Wilberforce—sit around a

scriptwriter might take liberties with historical events to

table in England in 1778.33 Here, as in his later series—

create a more seamless narrative. In other words, the

Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and John Brown—

image of Toussaint at his desk in Panel 27 serves as a

Lawrence gives credit to whites who work for the antislav-

good transition to Panel 28, with its nine figures seated

ery cause.

around a table.

Panel 12 (Fig. 38) shifts the scene back to Haiti, where

Moreover, Lawrence wanted to point out that Toussaint

the blacks, led by Jean François, actively rebel. With fierce

made a tragic mistake by not including blacks among the

expressions they charge through the sugarcane fields with

writers of the Haitian constitution: “The constitution was

swords.34

Toussaint has yet to join the revolt;

prepared and presented to Toussaint on the 19th day of

Panel 13 shows him still protecting the family that owned

May, 1800, by nine men he had chosen, eight of whom were

guns and

him.35 But in Panel 14 he stands beside a table where the

white proprietors and one mulatto. Toussaint’s liberalism

revolutionary leaders—Jean François, Georges Biassou,

led him to choose such a group to draw up the constitution.

and Jeannot Billet—sit, making plans. Panels that follow

He was much criticized for his choice, but the constitution

represent Toussaint’s capturing of the major towns and

proved workable.” Indeed, it did work—for white plantation

regions of Haiti: Dondon, Marmelade, Ennery. Halfway

owners and the mulattos who made up the class of manag-

through the series, Panel 20 (Fig. 39) offers a close-up

ers, but not for the black peasant class. 37

profile of Toussaint in dress uniform with gold braid, ep-

We see a turning point in both the historical account

aulets, and a tricorn hat, an image Lawrence copied from

and Lawrence’s narrative in Panel 29. The text reads:

a lithograph, Toussaint L’Ouverture (ca. 1832), by the

“L’Ouverture made a triumphant march into San Domingo

French lithographer Nicholas Eustache Maurin, which he

on the 2nd of January, 1801, at the head of 10,000 men,

must have seen at the library. A small engraving (reversed, but after Maurin) also served as the frontispiece of Beard’s Toussaint L’Ouverture (Fig. 40). 36 Lawrence

1794, when he and his troops switched to the French side.

Fig 38   The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture, Panel 12: “Jean Francois, first Black to rebel in Haiti.” Tempera on paper, 11 1 ⁄2 x 19 in. (29.2 x 48.3 cm). Aaron Douglas Collection, Amistad Research Center at Tulane University, New Orleans. Photo: The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation/Art Resource, NY.

At this point in the narrative Lawrence portrays Tous-

Fig 39   The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture, Panel 20: “General Tous-

saint’s army as disciplined. Panel 23 (Fig. 41), with its

saint L’Ouverture, Statesman and military genius, esteemed by the Spaniards, feared by the English, dreaded by the French, hated by the planters, and reverenced by the Blacks.” Tempera on paper, 19 x 111 ⁄2 in. (48.3 x 29.2 cm). Aaron Douglas Collection, Amistad Research Center at Tulane University, New Orleans. Photo: The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation/Art Resource, NY.

hews to the basic narrative. He does not, for example, mention that Toussaint fought for the Spanish until May

repetition of men shouldering guns, represents soldiers organized under the command of a general who knows his tactics. More battles follow in Lawrence’s narrative, with Toussaint and his generals now winning for the French at Saint Marc, La Saline, and Mirebalais. Lawrence encapsulates the complicated history in Panel 27, showing Toussaint seated in his study. The text summarizes the

70  african american story telling

Fig 40   Artist unknown, Toussaint L’Ouverture, engraving. Published as the frontispiece in [John R. Beard,] Toussaint L’Ouverture: A Biography and Autobiography, ed. James Redpath (Boston: James Redpath, 1863).

and hoisted the flag of the French Republic. Toussaint did

Lawrence painted four more scenes of the renewed

not wish to break with the French, the largest group of

war— invasion, in Panel 31; retreat, in Panels 32 and 33;

Haitian inhabitants. The Blacks themselves spoke patois

and victory, in Panel 34. Panel 32 represents the destruc-

French.” Historians such as C. L. R. James see Toussaint’s

tion of the landscape when one of Toussaint’s generals,

trust in the French as misplaced. When Toussaint made

Henri Christophe, ordered the burning of the town of La

his triumphal tour on horseback with his sword raised, he

Cape, an action that slowed the French army, as did the

could not have known about the imperialist ambitions of

yellow fever epidemic (see Panel 35).

Napoleon Bonaparte. Lawrence showed artistic shrewd-

As Lawrence winds down his story, he shows the

ness in placing the image of Napoleon immediately after

capture of Toussaint by General Leclerc, who feigned a

that of Toussaint on horseback. Panel 30 is captioned,

truce in order to arrest him (Fig. 42). In the 1853 frontis-

“Napoleon Bonaparte begins to look on Haiti as a new

piece of Beard’s book, titled Toussaint Captured by Strat­

land to conquer. Conquest inevitably meant further slav-

a­gem (Fig. 43), an angry Toussaint pulls his sword on

ery.” The active image of Toussaint on horseback con-

weaponless Frenchmen. Lawrence, however, presents a

trasts with the scheming Napoleon, hand on hip, looking

more dynamic scene by organizing all the lines in the

left—to the west, toward Haiti.

composition, including the swords of four white French

Fig 41   The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture, Panel 23: “General L’Ouverture collected forces at Marmelade, and on October the 9th, 1794, left with 5,000 men to capture San Miguel.” Tempera on paper, 11 1 ⁄2 x 19 in. (29.2 x 48.3 cm). Aaron Douglas Collection, Amistad Research Center at Tulane University, New Orleans. Photo: The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation/Art Resource, NY.

72  african american story telling

military men, to lead the eye to Toussaint in the center.

backs to WPA programs). Lawrence’s caption for the final

The French are clearly the attackers, overwhelming Tous-

panel (41) ends ambiguously: “Des[s]alines, standing be-

saint. In Lawrence’s panel, unlike the Beard illustration,

side a broken chain, has the powers of dictator, as opposed

no open door promises escape.

to Toussaint’s more liberal leadership.”

The last five panels depict a prison scene with Toussaint;

Indeed, Lawrence admired Toussaint for his belief in

blacks continuing to fight “to preserve their freedom”;

liberty as a natural right and for his democratic liberal-

Toussaint, dead in prison; a scene with high-ranking revo-

ism, compassion, and desire to work with the Europeans.

lutionaries declaring their independence, which they won

Like Alain Locke, Lawrence was not a separatist. He be-

in January 1804; and finally Jean-Jacques Dessalines

lieved in the ideal of integration—of the body politic

crowned emperor of Haiti. Lawrence sandwiches Panel 38,

blending peoples to achieve universalism. 38 Lawrence’s

the scene of men, women, and children fighting, between

series does not include the complex history of the politi-

the two prison scenes to highlight the nature of a people’s

cally stormy period after 1805, when personal ambition

war. Generals might be imprisoned, but the people united

and greed corrupted many of Toussaint’s compatriots.

would never be defeated (a slogan Lawrence might have

Lawrence’s series has a clear organization. In Panel

heard during rallies in New York against government cut-

10, we see and read about the first revolts; in Panel 20,

Fig 42   The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture, Panel 36. “During the truce Toussaint is deceived and arrested by LeClerc. LeClerc felt that with Toussaint out of the way, the Blacks would surrender.” Tempera on paper, 11 1 ⁄2 x 19 in. (29.2 x 48.3 cm). Aaron Douglas Collection, Amistad Research Center at Tulane University, New Orleans. Photo: The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation/Art Resource, NY.

african american story telling  73

ments. He achieves spatial recession only with overlapping and the diminution of figures, not with shading or cast shadows. By overlapping forms, he sets up rhythmic motions, for example in Panel 23. The battle scenes especially achieve their dynamism with the diagonal movement of horses, troops, guns, and raised swords. Interior scenes are more static, representing men conferring about tactics for the next action or battle (see Panels 4, 11, 14, 24, 28, and 40). Battles were won, Lawrence knew, through considered thought, careful planning, and a dedicated cadre. Throughout the series leaders sit at tables to plan tactics, in contrast to troops fighting in the countryside. 39 Both theory and planned action are crucial. The images set outdoors usually include tall grasses that animate their scenes and represent the sugarcane fields, the profits from which led European nations to compete so fiercely for control of the island.40 The three portrait panels (20, 30, and 41) offer iconic images of Toussaint the general, Napoleon the ambitious conqueror, and Dessalines the dictator. Not surprisingly, Christophe’s rule falls outside the chronicle Lawrence has developed. During Toussaint’s reign, the fight was clear— blacks against the European colonizers. After Toussaint, civil war pitted black brother against black brother. Even though such fights were part of Haiti’s tragic history, they would not have conformed to Lawrence’s agenda to express in art uplifting narratives of revolutionary Fig 43   Artist unknown, Toussaint Captured by Stratagem, engrav-

ing. Published as the frontispiece in John R. Beard, The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture, the Negro Patriot of Hayti (London: Ingram, Cooke, 1853).

struggles.

pictorial strategies for the harriet tubman series Toussaint appears in a state portrait as the hero general;

When Lawrence finished the Toussaint series, in 1938, he

in Panel 30, the sinister portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte

launched into another series, focused on Frederick Doug-

indicates that the revolution will have a setback; and in

lass. Whereas the Toussaint series seems to be a linear

Panel 41, the state portrait of Dessalines, the next hero,

history of Haiti and its revolutionary leaders that gives

has an ambiguous caption. By assigning Dessalines’s

only a general sense of parts or chapters, the Frederick

panel the number 41, Lawrence suggests a possible sequel

Douglass series has three parts, based on Lawrence’s

to the narrative.

reading of Douglass’s narrative: the slave, the fugitive,

Lawrence’s panels are like storyboards for a movie,

the freeman.41 Harriet Tubman would be similarly struc-

with his style giving each panel its dynamism—his flat

tured according to the phases of Tubman’s biography but

simplified forms, limited palette, and diagonal move-

would feature more varied settings, brighter colors, more

74  african american story telling

subtle harmonies, and more lyrical rhythms than the

nected reality.”45 And Levine observes that slaves’ story-

Douglass series. Lawrence’s running text, as well as the

telling “allowed them to reach back to relive the victories

pictures, continues to draw on historical texts, as well as

of the past, and drew them into the rich future where the

a variety of other sources. This intertextuality indicates

justice and goodness that their ancestors had experienced

Lawrence’s growing consciousness of the artistry of

would exist again; it also made them realists who under-

storytelling.

stood the world as it operated in the present.”46 This

Whether aware of it or not, Lawrence was becoming a

merging of past and present typifies oral traditions. In that

pictorial griot—telling stories of his own African American

of African Americans, as in others, the oral mode rallied

community.42 What linked him to his community’s story-

a community, gave it self-esteem, and kept alive old tradi-

telling traditions was not just the subject matter of Afri-

tions and moral values.47

can American history but, even more, his approach to his

Lawrence recalls thinking that his decision to paint a

subject as he spun out the story, sequencing and group-

Tubman series was appropriate. He had already painted

ing the panels to construct each series. The panels, when

the history of an African American man, Frederick Doug-

laid out from left to right, fall into groups according to

lass, a leader in the American antislavery movement, and

their internal rhythms—rising and falling, loud and soft,

now he would paint a woman. Painting a woman, however,

logical and improvisational—with greater sophistication

was not quite a natural choice in white America during the

in Harriet Tubman than in the Toussaint L’Ouverture and

1930s. In public murals the only American woman cele-

Frederick Douglass series.

brated with any frequency was Betsy Ross. As Lawrence

Lawrence W. Levine, in Black Culture and Black Con­

told Carroll Greene in 1968, “We hear about Molly Pitcher.

sciousness, notes that in the tradition of African Ameri-

We hear about Betsy Ross. . . . The Negro woman has never

can folktales delivery was crucial. A storyteller might

been included in American history. . . . So I think a person

begin with a slow drawl and then speed up his delivery to

like Harriet Tubman is a . . . fascinating person.”48

dramatize events.43 The skilled delivery and pace of a

The Harlem community gave Lawrence good examples

folktale find their analogues in Lawrence’s pairing and

of active, strong women. His own mother had moved her

sequencing of his panels. He contrasts vertical panels

family of three small children from Philadelphia to New

with horizontal; single, iconic images with crowded all-

York once she had found steady work. During the fall

over forms; bright day scenes with night scenes; interior

1930 semester, his first since arriving in Harlem, Law-

with exterior scenes; small-scale full figures seen at a

rence had written a poem, “To all mothers,” printed in the

distance with large partial figures seen close; intense ac-

“Parent-Teacher Bulletin Newsletter” of his grade school,

tion with static, simple forms. In the Tubman series, this

P.S. 89. The poem reads as follows:

orchestration of the panels is better realized than in the earlier series. We can see how each panel contributes to

A mother is the finest thing on earth

the harmony of each group. Just as in storytelling one

From the beginning of your birth

anecdote builds on another to make a grand narrative, so

To the end of her life,

all of Lawrence’s panels construct a single great whole.

You are her trouble’s light.

They are like the lines of a poem to a stanza or the parts

Your mother is your shield,

of a musical composition to its whole.

On a great battlefield.

Levine observes that in African American folk traditions past and present merge. The teller of folktales “evoke[s] the past and make[s] it part of the living present” for the community.44 Slaves in their spirituals were also “able to fuse the precedents of the past, the conditions of the present, and the promise of the future into one con-

Although she is losing, And her heart forever bruising. Your mother is your life, She also is your light, That you may see the way. Jacob Lawrence, 5B3/13 years old

african american story telling  75

The poem may have been prompted by Lawrence’s sepa-

suffrage movement. She ended her days in Auburn, New

ration from his own mother for several years and by his

York, where she died in 1913.52

satisfaction when the family was reunited.49 The value of family was to be a constant theme of his art. Women active in artistic circles in Harlem, moreover,

Lawrence knew this story of Tubman “from the community.” “I knew all about Harriet Tubman before I went to the Schomburg Library,” he told me in 1992.53 Never-

openly encouraged Lawrence when he was young. I have

theless, he went to the library, as he had when he re-

already mentioned Augusta Savage’s imposing presence

searched the Toussaint and Douglass series, and found

(see Chapter 1). Gwendolyn Bennett, who became direc-

there not only photographs of Tubman but also at least

tor of the WPA Harlem Community Art Center in 1938,

three books on her, two of which would supply him with

also figured as a mentor. Not least in importance among

most of his extended captions. Sarah Bradford’s Harriet,

his supporters was the artist Gwendolyn Knight, whom

the Moses of Her People, first published in 1869 and ex-

Lawrence saw frequently at Alston and Bannarn’s 306

panded in 1886, was a sentimental account by an author

studio and who became his wife once the Migration se-

who wanted to raise funds for Tubman’s support.54 Like

ries had been launched, in 1941.

the slave narratives published in the nineteenth century,

Precedents for Harriet Tubman as a subject for art also

the account Bradford wrote of Tubman’s life is framed by

existed. The January 1932 issue of the Crisis reproduced

testimonials to the veracity of the story, including letters

a photograph of Aaron Douglas’s Harriet Tubman mural,

to the author from famous abolitionists such as Gerrit

which had recently been installed at Bennett College for

Smith, Wendell Phillips, and Frederick Douglass.55 The

Women in Greensboro, North Carolina. Douglas wrote of

book’s frontispiece (Fig. 44) shows a full-length Tubman

the work: “I used Harriet Tubman to idealize a superior

in a landscape, holding the rifle she is said to have car-

type of Negro womanhood. Her pioneer work for the

ried on her Underground Railroad journeys to discourage

freedom and education of our people is too well known to

her charges from turning back.

recount here. I depict her as a heroic leader breaking the

The second book Lawrence used was Hildegarde

shackles of bondage and pressing on toward a new day.”50

Swift’s Railroad to Freedom: A Story of the Civil War

Douglas was an artist Lawrence could look up to; he had

(1932), a biography of Tubman that reads like a historical

been founding president of the Harlem Artists Guild in

novel with conversations in Swift’s version of black dia-

1935, had participated in the American Artists’ Congress

lect.56 Swift begins with a section called “Other Voices”

in 1936, and had encouraged the younger artist.51

that includes quotations focused on the slavery debate

The facts of Tubman’s life guarantee her status as an

from Henry Ward Beecher, William Lloyd Garrison, Henry

authentic American heroine. Born in Maryland about

Clay, William H. Seward, Jefferson Davis, Daniel Webster,

1820, she was one of the eleven children of Benjamin and

and Abraham Lincoln. The texts Lawrence edited for use

Harriet (Green) Ross and was named Araminta. Later she

in the Tubman series pictures include thirteen passages

took her mother’s first name; “Tubman” came from her

from the 1869 edition of Bradford and ten from Swift’s

first husband, a free black. She endured slavery, escaped

biography. One other source, from which Lawrence drew

alone to the North in about 1849, and then returned to

for the text for Panel 21, was Robert W. Taylor’s Harriet

lead other slaves to the free states by way of the Under-

Tubman: The Heroine in Ebony (1909), a sixteen-page

ground Railroad. Known as “Moses,” she made as many

pamphlet that ended with words that would have inspired

as nineteen trips to the South, bringing her family as well

Lawrence: “Judging Harriet Tubman by the depths from

as others to freedom—perhaps as many as three hun-

which she came and the sublime heights of unselfishness

dred. She also frequented the homes of noted northern

to which she has attained, she stands without a parallel in

abolitionists, spoke at their meetings, and met with both

history,—solitary, majestic, sunkissed. She has stood the

Frederick Douglass and John Brown. During the Civil War

great test, the supreme test, the Christ test,—which is ser­

she served as a nurse and a spy for the Union troops in

vice.”57 Lawrence probably fashioned the remaining seven

South Carolina. Later she participated in the women’s

extended captions himself; those written in a nineteenth-

76  african american story telling

century prose style probably have another, unidentified textual source.58 Like Bradford, Lawrence knew nineteenth-century slave narratives. From his research on the Douglass series, he would have known that the conventions of that genre included testimonials by well-known persons commenting on or corroborating the account, placed before the actual narrative of the enslaved person. Hence, Lawrence’s first three panels of the series record statements by Beecher, Clay, and Lincoln on the state of American slavery that the artist quotes from the opening pages of Swift’s book. As the series develops, Lawrence borrows other kinds of texts: a reward notice, Tubman herself invoking the Lord, a stanza from a fugitive slave song. Selecting carefully from the many possible textual sources, Lawrence shows he had made himself into a master narrator.59 In Lawrence’s account Tubman is simplified, depersonalized, and curiously ungendered. There is no mention of Tubman’s two marriages; of her first attempt to escape, planned with her brothers, who turned back, fearing capture; or of her rescues of her own family members on her first trips, including her elderly parents. And while religious imagery is present in the series, Lawrence does not dwell on Tubman’s visions or her long talks with God, recounted in the Bradford narrative.60 Although Lawrence presents his own interpretation of the Tubman story, his narrative also conforms to other conventions of slave narratives, which generally downplay the narrator’s personal feelings. The aim, in nineteenth-

Fig 44   Artist unknown, Harriet Tubman, engraving. Published as

the frontispiece in Sarah H. Bradford, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman (Auburn, NY: W.  J. Moses, 1869), later retitled Harriet, the Moses of Her People.

century abolitionist circles, was to convince white readers of the evils of the whole “peculiar institution” and to move them to join the cause. The literary historian William Andrews points out that both the slave narrators and their

mimetic details, even though such details lent credence to the account of events.

white patrons knew that “nineteenth-century whites read slave narratives more to get a first hand look at the institution of slavery than to become acquainted with an individual slave.”61 The depersonalization, however, as Henry

the thirty-one panels of the harriet tubman series

Louis Gates Jr. has observed, also made it possible to

The panels of the series (Fig. 45) are organized into six

shape “the random events of [the slaves’] lives into a

sections: the context of Tubman’s birth (four panels),

meaningful and compelling pattern, while making the

Tubman’s life as a slave (five panels), escape (five pan­

narrative of their odyssey from slavery to freedom an em-

els), Tubman as a conductor on the Underground Railroad

blem of every black person’s potential for higher educa-

(six panels), Tubman among the abolitionists (five pan-

tion and the desire to be free.”62 The impulse to univer-

els), and Tubman’s Civil War (five panels)—plus a final

salize the slave’s narrative inevitably meant minimizing

panel.

african american story telling  77

2

1

1  “With sweat and toil and ignorance he consumes his life, to pour the earnings into channels from which he does not drink.”—Henry Ward Beecher. 2  “I am no friend of slavery, but I prefer the liberty of my own country to that of another

people, and the liberty of my own race to that of another race. The liberty of the descendants of Africa in the United States is incompatible with the safety and liberty of the European descendants. Their slavery forms an exception (resulting from a stern and inexorable necessity) to the general liberty in the United States.”—Henry Clay.

5

6

7

5  She felt the sting of slavery when as a young girl she was struck on the head with an iron bar by an enraged overseer. 6  Harriet heard the shrieks and cries of women who were being flogged in the Negro quarter. She listened to their groaned-out prayer, “Oh Lord, have mercy.” 7  Harriet Tubman worked as water girl to field hands. She also worked at plowing, carting, and hauling logs.

Fig 45  The Life of Harriet Tubman, 1940. Casein tempera on hardboard (31 panels), 12 x 177⁄8 in. or 177⁄8 x 12 in. (30.5 x 45.4 cm or 45.4 x 30.5 cm). Hampton University Museum, Hampton, Virginia. Captions are from the catalogue raisonné. Photos courtesy Hampton University Museum.

78 

3

4

3  “A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe that this government cannot last permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect this union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or the other.”—Abraham Lincoln. 4  On a hot summer day about 1820, a group of slave children were tumbling in the sandy soil in the state of Maryland—and among them was one, Harriet Tubman. Dorchester County, Maryland.

8

9

8  Whipped and half starved to death, Harriet Tubman’s skull injury often caused her to fall faint while at work. Her master, not having any more use for her, auctioned her off to the highest  bidder. 9  Harriet Tubman dreamt of freedom (“Arise! Flee for your life!”), and in the visions of the night she saw the horsemen coming. Beckoning hands were ever motioning her to come, and she seemed to see a line dividing the land of slavery from the land of freedom.

  79

10

11

10   Harriet Tubman was between twenty and twenty-five years of age at the time of her escape. She was now alone. She turned her face toward the North, and fixing her eyes on the guiding star, she started on her long, lonely journey. 11   “$500 Reward! Runaway from subscriber on Thursday night, the 4th inst., from the neighborhood of Cambridge, my negro girl, Harriet, sometimes called Minty. Is dark chestnut color, rather stout build, but bright and handsome. Speaks rather deep and has a scar over the left temple. She wore a brown plaid shawl. I will give the above reward captured outside the county, and $300 if captured inside the county, in either case to be lodged in the Cambridge, Maryland, jail. (Signed) George Carter, Broadacres, near Cambridge, Maryland, September 24th, 1849.”

17

15

16

15   In the North, Harriet Tubman worked hard. All her wages she laid away for the one purpose of liberating her people, and as soon as a sufficient amount was secured she disappeared from her Northern home, and as mysteriously appeared one dark night at the door of one of the cabins on the plantation, where a group of trembling fugitives was waiting. Then she piloted them North, traveling by night, hiding by day, scaling the mountains, wading the rivers, threading the forests—she, carrying the babies, drugged with paragoric. So she went, nineteen times, liberating over 300 pieces of living, breathing “property.” 16   Harriet Tubman spent many hours at the office of William Still, the loft headquarters of the antislavery Vigilance Committee in Philadelphia. Here, she pored over maps and discussed plans with the keen, educated young secretary of that mysterious organization, the Underground Railroad, whose main branches stretched like a great network from the Mississippi River to the coast. 17  Like a half-crazed sibylline creature, she began to haunt the slave masters, stealing down in the night to lead a stricken people to freedom. 

80 

12

13

14

12   Night after night, Harriet Tubman traveled, occasionally stopping to buy bread. She crouched behind trees or lay concealed in swamps by day until she reached the North. 13   “I had crossed the line of which I had been dreaming. I was free, but there was no one to welcome me to the land of freedom.

Come to my help, Lord, for I am in trouble.” 14   Seeking help, Harriet Tubman met a lady who ushered her to a haycock, and Harriet found herself in a strange room, round and

tapering to a peak. Here she rested and was fed well, and she continued on her way. It was Harriet Tubman’s first experience with the Underground Railroad.

18

19

20

18   At one time during Harriet Tubman’s expeditions into the South, the pursuit after her was very close and vigorous. The woods

were scoured in all directions, and every person was stopped and asked: “Have you seen Harriet Tubman?” 19   Such a terror did she become to the slaveholders that a reward of $40,000 was offered for her head, she was so bold, daring,

and elusive. 20   In 1850, the Fugitive Slave Law was passed, which bound the people north of the Mason and Dixon Line to return to bondage

any fugitives found in their territories—forcing Harriet Tubman to lead her escaped slaves into Canada.

  81

21

22

23

21   Every antislavery convention held within 500 miles of Harriet Tubman found her at the meeting. She spoke in words that brought tears to the eyes and sorrow to the hearts of all who heard her speak of the suffering of her people. 22   Harriet Tubman, after a very trying trip North in which she had hidden her cargo by day and had traveled by boat, wagon, and foot at night, reached Wilmington, where she met Thomas Garrett, a Quaker who operated an Underground Railroad station. Here, she and the fugitives were fed and clothed and sent on their way. 23   “The hounds are baying on my tracks,  /  Old master comes behind,  /  Resolved that he will bring me back,  /  Before I cross the line.”

26

28

27

26   In 1861 the first gun was fired on Fort Sumter, and the war of the Rebellion was on. 27   Governor John Andrew of Massachusetts, knowing well the brave, sagacious character of Harriet Tubman, sent for her and asked

her if she could go at a moment’s notice to act as a spy and scout for the Union Army and, if need be, to act as a hospital nurse. In short, to be ready for any required service for the Union cause. 28   Harriet Tubman went into the South and gained the confidence of the slaves by her cheerful words and sacred hymns. She ob-

tained from them valuable information.

82 

25

24

24   It was the year 1859, five years after Harriet Tubman’s first trip to Boston. By this time, there was hardly an antislavery worker who did not know the name Harriet Tubman. She had spoken in a dozen cities. People from here and abroad filled her hand with money. And over and over again she made her mysterious raids across the border into the South. 25   Harriet Tubman was one of John Brown’s friends. John Brown and Frederick Douglass crossed into Canada and arrived at the town of St. Catharines, a settlement of fugitive slaves, former “freight” of the Underground Railroad. Here, Douglass had arranged for a meeting with “Moses.” She was Harriet Tubman: huge, deepest ebony, muscled as a giant, with a small close-curled head and anguished eyes—this was the woman John Brown came to for help. “I will help,” she said.

31

29

30

29   She nursed the Union soldiers and knew how, when they were dying by large numbers of some malignant disease, with cunning skill to

extract a healing draught from roots and herbs that grew near the source of the disease, thus allaying the fever and restoring soldiers to health. 30   The war was over, men were being mustered out, and regiments melted away overnight. For Lincoln’s words were now not paper words:

they had been written in the travail and blood of the men whom Harriet Tubman had known. 31   Harriet Tubman spent the rest of her life in Auburn, New York. When she died, a large mass meeting was held in her honor. And on the

outside of the county courthouse, a memorial tablet of bronze was erected.

  83

The Context of Tubman’s Birth Panel 1 shows nine marching black slaves, slim men and women, lacking individuality, weighed down by heavy bundles they carry on their heads or in their arms but imbued with purpose. They are linked together as a flat interlacing of organic and geometric forms. Lawrence limits his palette to red, yellow, turquoise, dark green, and tan against a red-brown ground. The high horizon line and monotonous dark blue sky underscore the condition of repetitive toil with no hope for freedom. The quotation from Henry Ward Beecher, drawn from the Swift biography (p. xvii), reinforces Lawrence’s image of the slaves’ condition. Destined to labor on the earth, they cart water, carry cotton, and haul logs but realize no rewards for their labor. Panel 2 represents another reality of slavery symbol­ ically. A black man, deeply scarred from the lashes of the whip, hangs like the crucified Christ against a barren ground but suggests, more immediately, the lynched figures seen frequently in newspapers during the 1930s. The accompanying caption, also from the Swift biography (p. xviii), quotes from a speech delivered by Henry Clay, the southern senator credited with engineering the Compromise of 1850. A cotton plant—the economic basis of much of southern society—blooms in the rays of a clear pale yellow sun in Panel 3 (Fig. 46). The caption, yet again from Swift (p. xix), quotes Lincoln’s affirmation, in the debate with Stephen

Fig 46   The Life of Harriet Tubman, Panel 3: “ ‘A house divided

Douglas in 1858, of his belief that a united country, whether

against itself cannot stand. I believe that this government cannot last permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect this union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or the other.’— Abraham Lincoln.” 1940. Casein tempera on hardboard, 17 7⁄8 x 12 in. (45.4 x 30.5 cm). Hampton University Museum, Hampton, Virginia. Photo: The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation/Art Resource, NY.

slave or free, was primary. The second and third panels are both symmetrical single images. Their horizon lines form an almost, but not quite, continuous line. Their iconic verticality makes us pause before moving on to Tubman’s story. Although the captions of the first three panels quote the words of white men removed from the personal experiences of slaves, Lawrence’s pictures convey the sensuous reality of an enslaved people living in the South—with its red dirt, hot sun, and dehumanizing brutality.

a Southern planter. Their shining skins gleamed in the sun, as they rolled over each other in their play, and their voices, as

Lyrical forms and lyrical language in the text character-

they chattered together, or shouted in glee, reached even to

ize Panel 4 (Fig. 47), a horizontal composition inspired by

the cabins of the negro quarter, where the old people groaned

the opening of Sarah Bradford’s biography.63

in spirit, as they thought of the future of those unconscious young revelers; and their cry went up, “O, Lord, how long!”

On a hot summer’s day . . . a group of merry little darkies were

Apart from the rest of the children, on the top rail of a fence,

rolling and tumbling in the sand in front of the large house of

holding tight on to the tall gate post, sat a little girl of perhaps

84  african american story telling

Fig 47   The Life of Harriet Tubman, Panel 4: “On a hot summer day about 1820, a group of slave children were tumbling in the sandy soil

in the state of Maryland—and among them was one, Harriet Tubman. Dorchester County, Maryland.” 1940. Casein tempera on hardboard, 12 x 177⁄8 in. (30.5 x 45.4 cm). Hampton University Museum, Hampton, Virginia. Photo: The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation/ Art Resource, NY.

thirteen years of age. . . . She seemed a dazed and stupid child

slender black children, running and tumbling, dressed in

and as her head hung upon her breast, she looked up with dull

shifts and pants of red, yellow, green, and tan, occupies

blood-shot eyes towards her young brothers and sisters, with-

the center of the composition. A low horizon and an ex-

out seeming to see them. (pp. 13–14)

panse of sky suggest the freedom that slaves can experience only during childhood. In nineteenth-century slave

Bradford hastens to explain the girl’s condition: her mas-

narratives, authors typically make a point of describing the

ter, “in an ungovernable fit of rage threw a heavy weight

innocence of slave children unaware of their legal status.

at the unoffending child, breaking in her skull, and causing a pressure upon her brain” (p. 15). Other accounts attri-

Tubman’s Slavery

bute the master’s assault to Tubman’s foiling his pursuit

In the second group of five panels, Tubman is initiated into

of a runaway slave.64

slavery and becomes a field hand. The captions of the first

Lawrence’s image differs considerably from Bradford’s.

three panels—“She felt . . . ,” “Harriet heard . . . ,” and

In his panel Tubman is a healthy child in the group of

“Harriet Tubman worked . . .”—change from a pronoun to

tumbling children. She seems to be one of them—not

her full name as she becomes increasingly conscious of

isolated because of her handicap. A pinwheel form of

slavery as an institution.

african american story telling  85

Panel 5 (Fig. 48), “She felt the sting of slavery . . . ,” de­ picts the moment when the idyll of childhood innocence ends. It is an epiphanic moment also highlighted in slave narratives, when the child suddenly realizes he or she is enslaved with no rights of personhood.65 Lawrence simplifies Bradford’s narrative account considerably here (pp. 15 and 109). The viewer looks down on Tubman prostrate on soil the color of dried blood, as a black snake slithers toward her and a white man retreats along a path at the upper right. Lawrence would have remembered Douglass’s description of Edward Covey, the merciless slave foreman whom Douglass called “the snake.”66 In a broad­ ­er sense, snakes symbolized slavery, the sin of slavery. This panel shows no sky; the line of brown and tan tree trunks at the left, like prison bars, represents Tubman’s confinement. Panel 6, with its abstracted forms and movement— brown arms and bodies obscured by black and tan streaks—intensifies the image of the cruelty suffered by slave women; the caption from Bradford succinctly captures that experience (p. 15). With Panel 7 (see Fig. 34) the narrative returns to Tubman, now a strong, muscular woman, dressed in a white shirt, striped green skirt, and green print kerchief, who would burst the panel’s frame were she to stand up. The caption, which Lawrence composed himself, emphasizes her work in the fields, in contrast to the accounts of Bradford and Swift, which stress her experiences as a house servant. Lawrence, well aware of the distinction between house and field slaves, wanted to emphasize the most grueling forms of slave labor. Panels 8 and 9, a horizontal pair, end the section fo-

Fig 48   The Life of Harriet Tubman, Panel 5: “She felt the sting of slavery when as a young girl she was struck on the head with an iron bar by an enraged overseer.” 1940. Casein tempera on hardboard, 177⁄8 x 12 in. (45.4 x 30.5 cm). Hampton University Museum, Hampton, Virginia. Photo: The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation/Art Resource, NY.

cused on slavery. The first of the two, showing four white men, bidders at an auction, from the waist up, symbolizes Tubman’s status as a market commodity.67 Panel 9 (Fig.

Caldwell and Bourke-White’s You Have Seen Their Faces

49) shifts to the shackled ankles and feet of three slaves

in 1937 (Fig. 50).69 The Caldwell/Bourke-White caption

in patchwork garments. For Lawrence’s viewers, the image

easily fits Lawrence’s image: “They can whip my hide and

would have recalled the Old Testament story of Joseph,

shackle my bones, but they can’t touch what I think in my

son of Jacob, whose envious brothers sold him into slavery

head.” Bourke-White showed two of her chain gang pho-

after Jacob gave him a “coat of many colors.”68

tographs in the large exhibition In Defense of World De­

This image also recalls Margaret Bourke-White’s pho-

mocracy: Dedicated to the Peoples of Spain and China,

tograph of the lower legs of chain gang prisoners, identi-

held in New York City from December 15 to 30, 1937,

fied as Hood’s Chapel, Georgia, and published in Erskine

at the time of the second American Artists’ Congress.70

86  african american story telling

Fig 49   The Life of Harriet Tubman, Panel 9: “Harriet Tubman dreamt of

freedom (‘Arise! Flee for your life!’), and in the visions of the night she saw the horsemen coming. Beckoning hands were ever motioning her to come, and she seemed to see a line dividing the land of slavery from the land of freedom.” 1940. Casein tempera on hardboard, 12 x 17 7⁄8 in. (30.5 x 45.4 cm). Hampton University Museum, Hampton, Virginia. Photo: The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation/Art Resource, NY. Fig 50   Margaret Bourke-White, Hood’s Chapel, Georgia. Photo in Erskine

Caldwell and Bourke-White’s You Have Seen Their Faces, 1937. Art courtesy estate of Margaret Bourke-White. Margaret Bourke-White Photographs, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Library.

line she saw lovely white ladies awaiting to welcome her, and to care for her” (p. 26). Although Lawrence acknowledged that white abolitionists had aided the cause of freedom, he wanted to emphasize the slaves’ own agency in their efforts to free themselves.

Escape Panels 10–14 deal with Tubman’s escape. Three lyrical scenes represent her escape through the dark blue night, with lush green trees protecting her flight. In Panel 10 (Fig. 52) Tubman breaks free from her chains and from the snake, which rises up at the left. In Panel 11, the fingers of pink light in the sky, like the ancient poet Homer’s “rosyfingered dawn,” point her way. Panel 12 shows her continuing with the North Star to guide her.72 Tubman’s emergence into freedom was a momentous occasion for her as it was for all fugitive slaves. In Panel 13 she “has crossed the line” (Bradford, p. 13) and finds herself on the streets of a northern city. A patchwork of white people, adjacent forms of flat color, move forward, Fig 51   William H. Johnson, Chain Gang, ca. 1939–40. Oil on ply-

while Tubman holds back. She is on the margin, both

wood, 45 3⁄4 x 381 ⁄2 in. (116.2 x 97.8 cm). Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC. Photo: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC/Art Resource, NY.

pictorially and historically, separate and unequal as she takes her first steps in freedom. Frederick Douglass, in his autobiography, described himself as a fugitive in the North, where he experienced

Lawrence probably saw Bourke-White’s photographs, ei-

briefly the illusion of freedom—surrounded by white peo-

ther in the book or in the exhibition, because he was at-

ple yet alienated from them:

tending the American Artists School at the time and teachers and students alike would have been abuzz about

There I was in the midst of thousands, and yet a perfect

the congress and its exhibition. At about the time Law-

stranger; without home and without friends, in the midst of

rence was planning his series, William H. Johnson painted

thousands of my own brethren—children of a common Father,

Chain Gang (Fig. 51) in a consciously flat style similar to

and yet I dared not to unfold to any one of them my sad condi-

71

Lawrence’s and Horace Pippin’s.

Whereas Johnson’s

figures are identified as African American and as members of a chain gang, Lawrence’s shackled feet resonate with a range of images from biblical stories of slavery to the southern prison chain gangs Johnson represented. In the caption for Panel 9, Lawrence skillfully edits an extensive passage from Bradford and ends his quotation

tion. I was afraid to speak to any one for fear of speaking to the wrong one, and thereby falling into the hands of moneyloving kidnappers, whose business it was to lie in wait for the panting fugitive, as the ferocious beasts of the forest lie in wait for their prey. . . . I saw in every white man an enemy, and in almost every colored man cause for distrust. It was a most painful situation; and, to understand it, one must needs experience it, or imagine himself in similar circumstances.73

where Tubman “seemed to see a line dividing the land of slavery from the land of freedom.” Bradford, however,

Like Douglass, Tubman would learn that she could trust

continues the passage thus: “and on the other side of that

some people but not others.

88  african american story telling

Fig 52   The Life of Harriet Tubman, Panel 10: “Harriet Tubman was between twenty and twenty-five

years of age at the time of her escape. She was now alone. She turned her face toward the North, and fixing her eyes on the guiding star, she started on her long, lonely journey.” 1940. Casein tempera on hardboard, 17 7⁄8 x 12 in. (45.4 x 30.5 cm). Hampton University Museum, Hampton, Virginia. Photo: The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation/Art Resource, NY.

In Panel 14 Tubman sits alone at a table laden with food

Fig 53   The Life of Harriet Tubman, Panel 18: “At one time during

and drink, and we see her face clearly for the first time.

Harriet Tubman’s expedition into the South, the pursuit after her was very close and vigorous. The woods were scoured in all directions, and every person was stopped and asked: ‘Have you seen Harriet Tubman?’ ” 1940. Casein tempera on hardboard, 177⁄8 x 12 in. (45.4 x 30.5 cm). Hampton University Museum, Hampton, Virginia. Photo: The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation/Art Resource, NY.

She is living temporarily in a haycock, a haven provided by a white abolitionist farm woman, as Swift described (p. 132). The fruits in the bowl are like the round faces of the whites on the crowded streets in the preceding panel. The skewed perspective seems to reflect Tubman’s turmoil at this moment of temporary safety. Her curving figure brings closure to this section of Lawrence’s narrative.

as a reminder of Tubman’s fugitive status. In Panel 21 Tubman delivers a speech at a meeting of whites. Almost

Conductor on the Underground Railroad The six panels of the fourth group, all set outdoors, deal with Tubman’s years as a conductor on the Underground Railroad. In Panel 15 Tubman is a small distant figure moving in the nighttime with three charges—exposed to

filling the picture frame, Tubman gestures emphatically. Although Bradford makes no mention of Tubman’s speaking at abolitionist meetings, Swift recounts her speaking, at the urging of the white abolitionist Theodore Parker, to his friends gathered in his home:

the elements but guided by the North Star. In Panel 16 the pace quickens; Tubman’s escape party has grown to more than a dozen figures, including children, with their sweeping cloaks. They hurry along, a community of synchronized feet protected by a row of dense trees. The captions, rather than explain the images, provide the viewer with historical information.74 Panels 17 and 18 are symbolic—inspired, perhaps, by

At first, seeing her embarrassment, the kindly minister began to question her, but gradually, as she swung into the stride of her narrative, Harriet’s old assurance returned. She was telling a continuous story now, with vivid dramatic power. Her earnestness, her simple dignity, her deep and thrilling voice, all held her hearers spellbound, and when she ended the room was filled with a silence which no one seemed willing to break. (p. 214)

Tubman’s accounts of her direct communication with God, as if God had stood by her in the woods at night. Panel 17’s lightning flash of electric blue recalls Aaron Douglas’s description of his own Tubman mural: “The beam of light that cuts through the center of the picture symbolizes divine inspiration.”75 The eyes in the moon, stars, and coral pink plant forms of Panel 18 (Fig. 53) suggest that all nature watched out for Tubman.76 The last pair of panels, 19 and 20, returns the viewer to Tubman as the protector of her charges. She moves across Panel 19, cunningly avoiding the white vigilantes. In Panel 20 she moves upward through the blue-white snow, bringing her passengers north into Canada.77

Lawrence captures Swift’s vivid description of Tubman’s hypnotic storytelling skills. Panels 22, 23, and 24 are all horizontal panels. The caption for Panel 22 draws on Bradford (p. 45), as does that of Panel 23, lines of a song called “I’m on the Way to Canada” (p. 49).78 Panel 24 (Fig. 54) shows Tubman up close, her palm turned up to receive a coin from the pink fist of a white Boston abolitionist. The synedochic image, with parts representing much larger wholes, represents Tubman’s relation to the secret world of the abolition-­  ists, where people “filled her hand with money” (Swift, p. 131). In Panel 25, Tubman, John Brown, and Frederick Doug-

Tubman among the Abolitionists

lass sit at a table, a trinity of figures with a Bible at its

The next five panels focus on Tubman’s work among abo-

base; the turquoise rug under the table drops downward

litionists. The first two and last two are interior scenes,

like a vestment.79 This iconic vertical panel balances

with the slave master’s hound occupying the middle panel

Panel 21 and brings this section to a close.

90  african american story telling

Fig 54   The Life of Harriet Tubman, Panel 24: “It was the year 1859, five years after Harriet Tubman’s first trip to Boston. By this time,

there was hardly an antislavery worker who did not know the name Harriet Tubman. She had spoken in a dozen cities. People from here and abroad filled her hand with money. And over and over again she made her mysterious raids across the border into the South.” 1940. Casein tempera on hardboard, 12 x 177⁄8 in. (30.5 x 45.4 cm). Hampton University Museum, Hampton, Virginia. Photo: The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation/Art Resource, NY.

Tubman’s Civil War

that other blacks had shown escaping to the North, in

The final group of six panels, focused on the Civil War,

Panel 27. Lawrence might have known and drawn upon

are all set outdoors with a pattern of vertical, horizontal,

the Currier and Ives chromolithograph The Gallant Charge

vertical, horizontal, horizontal, and vertical. Panel 26, like

of the Fifty Fourth Massachusetts (Colored) Regiment

the preceding panel, emphasizes the vertical with a shell

(1863) or the Kurz and Allston chromolithograph Storm­

that explodes in a bloody red burst against the sky. At the

ing Fort Wagner (1890), both of which represent the regi-

left a white bird flies off, and at the right stands a barren

ment charging Fort Wagner on July 18, 1863. 81 The cap-

sapling.80

tion, from neither Bradford nor Swift, offers infor­mation

The caption comes from Bradford (p. 91). Panel

27 represents black soldiers charging into battle in their

about Tubman herself and is thus independent of the

blue Union uniforms. The horizon line, continuous with

image.

that of Panel 26, suggests the smooth transition of the

Panels 28 and 29 situate Tubman in tableaux suggest-

black soldiers to wartime duty and their disciplined entry

ing Christian iconography. The captions, edited text from

into battle. Black soldiers, in Lawrence’s narrative, were

Bradford (both p. 95), present Tubman as a saintly, heal-

ready to fight and did so with the same sense of purpose

ing figure. Tubman stands in the middle of Panel 28, like

92  african american story telling

the Virgin Mary, with the heads of black women fanned

a children’s book on a subject of his choice. After a meet-

out behind her head like so many attending angels in an

ing or two with the publisher, Lawrence suggested Harriet

altarpiece by the fourteenth-century Italian master Ci-

Tubman:

mabue. Indeed, the gabled roof behind forms a thronelike structure to suggest an altarpiece. In Panel 29 Tubman,

Well, of course, he knew nothing about Harriet Tubman. And

like Mary in an Italian Renaissance Pietà, offers solace to

I gave him a sort of synopsis, an outline of this woman. He said

a wounded soldier. With Panel 30 the war has ended.

it sounded very good to him, and to go on with it. So I started

Rifles thrust into the blood-stained earth mark soldiers’

my research. . . . This was a period of twenty-five years since

graves, as a bird of peace flies off. This panel provides a grim answer to Panel 27, in which the soldiers fight bravely.82 The final painting, Panel 31, draws from Swift’s ac-

I had done the first Harriet Tubman, so naturally I had to go back. And even if I had known what I knew twenty-five years ago about Harriet Tubman it would have been different. Because I like to feel that I have grown, my attitude would have been different, my choice of material out of the life of Harriet

count of Tubman’s last years (p. 354). Three gaunt sap-

Tubman would have been entirely different. So I researched

lings rise out of the barren earth like ghostly crosses on

the material, took many notes. As most of us who do research

a darkened Calvary. The stars stretched out across the

do, we know that nine-tenths of what we take is never used but

sky suggest that peace has come to Tubman. The river in

we have to take all of it in order to get that one-tenth. . . . And

the foreground recalls Jordan, where Christ was baptized.

out of this developed a children’s book of Harriet Tubman,

By including it here at the end of the series, Lawrence

which is just out. 83

suggests a perpetual renewal of faith in struggle. In the Tubman series, as in the other series, Lawrence

Lawrence added that he planned to see the original ­series,

expressed his conviction that history, as well as contem-

then at Hampton University, so he could compare the two.

porary life, has a pattern and a cadence, with each new

He knew that he had grown as an artist and that the recent

incident affecting, modifying, and superseding the telling

version would be subtler and technically ­better.

of the earlier incidents. Lawrence discerned compelling

The Terry Dintenfass Gallery exhibited the individual

truth not just in the subject matter of a good story but in

tempera paintings in December 1967. John Canaday re-

the artistry with which it is told—the setting up of internal

viewed them for the New York Times. The critic called the

harmonies, contrasts, and closures and the borrowings

exhibition “a soft-spoken show by any oratorical stan-

that suggest the many communities to which he belonged:

dard . . . superior to the ‘protest’ shows that, on several

the Bible of the conservative African American Harlem

occasions last year, fell so embarrassingly flat. . . . I dare-

community, the documentary photography of the progres-

say that advocates of vehement statement will find these

sives, and the sorrow songs of migrants recently arrived

illustrations too gentle for their taste, but it was their re-

in Harlem. Lawrence was more than a street-corner griot.

serve that attracted me.”84

By recalling the traditions of African American storytelling

The editors at Windmill Books, an imprint of Simon

and of written slave narratives, he also took African Ameri-

and Schuster, found at least one of Lawrence’s images

can art in the direction of a politically engaged modern-

worrisome. They rejected for publication the painting For­

ism—one that would serve in the present as inspiration to

ward (Fig. 55), representing Tubman carrying a gun as

others seeking to understand and to transmit African

she pushes forward a man showing reservations about

American experiences to all Americans.

the journey to freedom.85 The editors also found Canada Bound inappropriate for a children’s book because of the

n

bloodstains on the snow in the footprints of the fugitives.

In 1967 Lawrence had an opportunity to sharpen the story

Compared with the 1939–40 Harriet Tubman, the new

of Harriet Tubman’s struggle when a publisher at Windmill

series focused more on Tubman’s personal story, especially

Books got in touch with him and asked if he would write

those episodes that might appeal to children: Harriet’s

african american story telling  93

Fig 55   Forward, 1967. Egg tempera on hardboard, 237⁄8 x 3515⁄16 in. (60.6 x 91.3 cm). North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh. Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina. Fig 56   Through Forests, Through Rivers, Up Mountains, 1967. Gouache on paper, 15 5⁄8 x 26 3⁄4 in. (39.7 x 67.9 cm). Hirshhorn Museum

and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, The Joseph H. Hirshhorn Bequest, 1981. Photo: Lee Stalsworth.

birth, her tending to children, working on the farm and in

who points to the North Star. Forest animals—a squirrel,

the Big House, praying, escaping, and returning to bring

deer, owl, and snake—observe them as they journey to

the fugitives to the North. Children inhabit most of the

freedom. This painting, like many others in the series, is

scenes, often accompanied by an array of barnyard ani­

stunningly lyrical and imaginative in line, pattern, and

mals. Through Forests, Through Rivers, Up Mountains (Fig.

color. If the later series does not have the same political

56) shows a group of people—seventeen fugitives, includ-

punch of the 1939–40 series, it shows a complexity of

ing two babies—making their way through the forest

form that resulted from Lawrence’s attainment of greater

and into a clearing as they take directions from Tubman,

technical powers.

african american story telling  95

4

the great migration in memory, pictures, and text With each successive wave of it, the movement of the Negro becomes more and more a mass movement toward the larger and more democratic chance—in the Negro’s case a deliberate flight not only from countryside to city, but from medieval America to modern.

alain locke, “The New Negro” (1925) Look at us and know us and you will know yourselves, for we are you, looking back at you from the dark mirror of our lives!

richard wright, 12 Million Black Voices (1941)

When Jacob Lawrence began his series The Migration of

completed Harriet Tubman, his conceptual powers had

the Negro (see Fig. 59) in 1940, he launched a new theme

matured, and he had full control over his technique. He

in painting for the twentieth century—an imaginative di-

had learned to compose the panels into groups, each

dactic exodus narrative. His grand series of sixty panels

group structured according to harmonies, contrasts, and

representing the great migration of African Americans

closures within its parts. Especially in the Tubman series,

from the South to the industrial cities of the North begin-

vertical panels create syncopations with adjacent hori-

ning during World War I incorporates scenes of labor, the

zontal ones; scenes composed of patchwork-quilt pat-

railroad, the southern landscape, and cities, as well as

terns pair with single, iconic images; indoor scenes con-

families pursuing their daily routines and embarking on a

trast with outdoor ones; and diagonal movements in one

journey that would change the country and themselves

panel shift to rounded and calm forms in another and

irrevocably. What he accomplished, as the emerging sto-

then back again. The results give the panels a cinematic

ryteller, or griot, of his Harlem community, was a tapes-

movement and dramatic urgency. But his Migration se-

try of pictures and text captions that draw the viewer

ries would need to have a more complex orchestration if

through time and geography, struggles and hopes.

1

he were to represent in pictures and texts not just the

By 1940 Lawrence had prepared himself to begin an

phenomenon of people on the move but also the eco-

even more ambitious series than he had attempted in the

nomic and social forces underlying that movement. 2 His

earlier Toussaint L’Ouverture, Frederick Douglass, and

focus would be social history and sociology rather than

Harriet Tubman series. Those had been linear accounts

biographical narrative. He would reenact through his pan-

of an individual hero’s accomplishments. By the time he

els a continually renewing present.

Fig 57   The Migration of the Negro, Panel 18: “The migration gained in momentum.” 1940–41. Casein tempera on hardboard, 18 x 12 in. (45.7 x 30.5 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, NY, Gift of Mrs. David M. Levy. Digital image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY.

As noted in Chapter 2, Lawrence’s Migration series of

Since it has had this effect, I feel that my project would

images and texts made its debut when Fortune magazine

lay before the Negroes themselves a little of what part

published twenty-six of the works with abbreviated cap-

they have played in the History of the United States. In

tions in its November 1941 issue. In the preceding month,

addition, the whole of America might learn some of the

Viking Press had published the photographic book 12 Mil­

history of this particular minority group, of which they

lion Black Voices: A Folk History of the Negro in the United

know very little.”4 He believed that collective pride in past

States, with text by Richard Wright and photo layout by

achievements would help stimulate individual feelings of

Edwin Rosskam. Both Lawrence’s series of panels and the

self-worth in the present.

book had texts and images, and both interpreted the

Besides the psychological benefits to the individual of

causes and effects of the migration of working-class Af-

learning the collective history, Lawrence believed, as he

rican Americans to the northern cities. A comparison of

had when he began his first series, Toussaint L’Ouverture,

the two projects should help us understand the ­artists—​

that reminders of historical progress would spur the whole

Lawrence, Wright, and Rosskam—and their focus on the

community to work for even better social and economic

meaning of the migration: the transformation of rural

conditions in the future. Although Lawrence characterized

African Americans into modern Americans.

the series as didactic, he firmly believed artists can make a difference by visualizing inspiring themes, just as a West African griot can put into words the hopes of his community. The Migration of the Negro differs from Law-

lawrence’s research for the migration series In his fellowship application to the Julius Rosenwald Fund

rence’s earlier series in that it does not single out a particular hero or heroine; instead, it confers a heroic dimension on the people as a whole, acting with a collective will, and downplays differences in their social status,

(see Chapter 2), Lawrence outlines his plan “to interpret

gender, and even skin color, which might have connoted

in a sufficient number of gesso panels . . . the great Ne-

class differences, in order to emphasize their unity.5 Unlike

gro migration during the World War.” He envisions eight

the estimated fifteen million Africans in chains who were

sections of narrative: “Causes of the Migration,” “Stimu-

transported across the Atlantic in the diasporas of the

lation of the Migration,” “The Spread of the Migration,”

Middle Passage to be sold as slaves for the New World

“The Efforts to Check the Migration,” “Public Opinion Re-

plantations, African Americans leaving the South during

garding the Migration,” “The Effects of the Migration on

World War I, though sharply urged by poverty, discrimina-

the South,” “The Effects of the Migration on Various Parts

tion, and promises of greater opportunities in the North,

of the North,” and “The Effects of the Migration on the

were acting of their own free will.6 As Lawrence wrote on

Negro.” Under each heading he includes subheadings, for

his Rosenwald application, their struggles ought to inspire

example, “Talk of higher wages, educational ­opportunities

all African Americans and teach white viewers a valuable

and better housing conditions in the North,” and “Whole-

lesson in history as well.7

sale arrests made by southern policemen of Negroes on the slightest provocation.”3

For Lawrence, the migration theme had a personal dimension: his parents had been part of the Great Migra-

At the end of his “Plan of Work,” Lawrence emphasizes

tion, leaving the South for better working and living con-

that the project is significant for “its educational value.”

ditions in the North. Indeed, the last section of the series

He argues that since the Great Migration has had an im-

listed in Lawrence’s application, “The Effects of the Mi-

pact on the entire nation, African Americans should be

gration on the Negro,” is drawn from the collective expe-

made aware of their contribution to history, and others

rience of his community’s history. The artist later recalled

should know it as well: “It is important as a part of the

neighborhood discussions about the migration from when

evolution of America, since this Migration has affected

he lived in Philadelphia: “As a youngster, you just hear

the whole of America mentally, economically and socially.

stories. This was . . . the time of the migration. I didn’t

98  the great migr ation

know the term ‘migration,’ but I remember people used

books, and, especially, the New Deal documentary pho-

to tell us when a new family would arrive. The people in

tographs published in Life, Look, and other magazines in

the neighborhood would collect clothes for these new-

the late 1930s. Roy E. Stryker, the chief of the historical

comers and pick out coals that hadn’t completely burned

section of the Farm Security Administration (FSA), made

in the furnace to get them started. I didn’t see the migra-

certain that such photographs circulated widely as a way

tion as an historical event, but people were talking about

to promote government public works projects.14 The mag-

it.”8

Lawrence understood that the migration was a con-

tinuing, ongoing phenomenon.

azines also had their own staff and freelance photographers who produced photo essays.

In the late 1930s, the migration intensified. As a result

With respect to both his images and his captions, Law-

of the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which paid land-owning

rence’s series resembles several contemporary photo

farmers not to plant their entire acreage and guaranteed

books that drew on the FSA archive and contributed to

them a higher price for the lower yield, southern sharecrop-

the visual culture of social concern.15 These included

work.9

These landless farmers,

Walker Evans’s American Photographs (1938), Archibald

both white and black, had to find work elsewhere, and many

MacLeish’s Land of the Free (1938), Herman Nixon’s Forty

migrated.10 Lawrence was aware of the effects of the Great

Acres and Steel Mules (1938), Dorothea Lange and Paul

Migration all around him, so even though he read the books

Taylor’s American Exodus (1938), and Walker Evans and

of Scott, Woodson, and others at the public library, he

James Agee’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941),16 as

pers were thrown out of

based the Migration series on his own social awareness

well as two books by Margaret Bourke-White (who photo-

and experience as well as on what he read. The specific

graphed for Life and was not on the government payroll)

sources did not matter; more timely was the communica-

and Erskine Caldwell: You Have Seen Their Faces (1937)

tion of the

story.11

and later Say, Is This the U.S.A. (1941). All these docu-

The Rosenwald Fund Fellowship application shows that

mentary books focused on the people of the United

Lawrence’s research and planning for the Migration proj-

States, both black and white, many rooted in the soil of

ect were under way. Once he received the fellowship and

the rural South. Captions and extended texts, based

did not have to seek other employment, he returned to

partly on research and partly on interviews with ordinary

the Schomburg Collection, housed at the 135th Street

people, accompanied the photographs to help the viewer/

Harlem branch of the New York Public Library, for further

reader understand the social significance of the pictured

study. The main texts he drew on were Carter G. Wood-

people and their struggles with the land, social policies,

son’s Century of Negro Migration, published in 1918, and

and discrimination.17

Emmett J. Scott’s Negro Migration during the War, first

Documentary filmmakers, many of whom began as

published in 1920.12 After months of research and com-

photographers and then found employment making news-

positional studies to fit the design for each panel into his

reels, also turned to storytelling techniques to reach and

overall message, Lawrence crafted his text captions in

influence a mass audience. Films could incorporate not

plain, schoolbook English, with help from Gwendolyn

only moving images but text, voice-over, and music to

Knight.13 Lawrence’s wording in the extended captions never

produce compelling social commentary. Jay Leyda, assistant curator of film at the Museum of Modern Art, who

matches exactly that of the two scholars, Scott and

introduced Lawrence to the classic films, could have

Woodson, since he was writing descriptive prose rather

brought these documentary films to Lawrence’s atten-

than mounting an argument. His text resembles the talk

tion, particularly The River, by Pare Lorentz, made during

of an oral culture, including that of lecturers at commu-

1936 and 1937 under the auspices of the Resettlement

nity centers and street-corner orators, as well as offhand

Administration / FSA to publicize the government’s land

remarks by everyday people. Similarly, Lawrence would

reclamation programs.18

have drawn, consciously or unconsciously, on vernacular

With a musical score by Virgil Thomson and a prose-

visual sources including storybook illustrations, comic

poem script, Lorentz tells the story of the annual spring

the great migr ation  99

rising of the great North American rivers, which flood the

shortages that spurred migration to the northern cities.

valleys and flow on to the Gulf of Mexico. The narrative

The flat shapes and latticework of the station architec-

dwells solemnly on soil erosion brought about by human

ture organize the moving figures. People—dark turquoise,

ignorance and poverty, but it ends with a burst of enthu-

rose, brown, and black shapes—stream toward the pas-

siasm for the harnessing of natural power made possible

sageways to the trains going to those cities.

by government agencies such as the Tennessee Valley

The text for Panel 2 highlights the effect of labor short-

Authority and the Civilian Conservation Corps. Both Law-

ages in the North with an image of a solitary white work-

rence’s Migration series and Lorentz’s film The River end

man driving a steam shovel: “The World War had caused

with messages of hope; both shape their narratives with

a great shortage in Northern industry and also citizens of

such artistic devices as repetition, movement, synecdo-

foreign countries were returning home.” The third panel,

che (in which the part represents the whole), and abrupt

with its flying wedge of people moving left, echoed by

juxtaposition of images.19 And both weave images and

migrating birds in the sky, quickens the pace. 23 The text

words—sometimes as a unified message, at other times

reads: “In every town Negroes were leaving by the hun-

as independent constructions of meaning.

dreds to go North and enter into Northern industry.” The first three panels focus, in sequence, on effects (Panel 1), causes (Panel 2), and again effects (Panel 3).

the sixty panels of the migration series

Panel 4 represents another single figure, but this time he is an African American laborer—a muscular man holding a hammer over his head. The caption reads, “The Ne-

The panels in Lawrence’s series set up visual rhythms that

gro was the largest source of labor to be found after all

parallel those of the text (see Fig. 59). As we walk from

others had been exhausted.” Lawrence highlights the

panel to panel, left to right, our attention shifts to absorb

class differences between the African American and his

new images, read new texts, and ponder new meanings.20

white counterpart in Panel 2. The white man is a skilled

Most of the texts consist of a sentence of about fifteen to

worker driving a vehicle; he has a face and features. The

twenty words; a few have two sentences. Some texts,

black man, in contrast, is a common laborer whose face

tersely written, consist of only four of five words. However,

is obscured by his muscular arm, implying that his iden-

we are always free to return to or glance back at previous

tity resides in his muscle, not his brain. 24 This panel re-

texts and images—to impose a visual looping that we could

veals a pattern in the first four images, independent of

not attempt when experiencing the diachronic progression

the captions: movement, the white worker, movement,

of a film documentary. The viewer’s encounter with Law-

the black worker.

rence’s Migration is thus both kinesthetic and dialectical:

Panel 5, a night scene, presents a partial view of a rail-

we move through space to view the panels of the series,

road locomotive, its headlights ablaze, black smoke pour-

and as we do, interpretations of later panels supersede

ing from its stack, and its bell ringing. Lawrence’s caption

our provisional interpretations of earlier ones, but never

reads: “The Negroes were given free passage on the rail-

rigidly.

roads which was paid back by Northern industry. It was

Because of space constraints, in this section I can of-

an agreement that the people brought North on these

fer readings of only a handful of the sixty panels. All of

railroads were to pay back their passage after they had

them are illustrated in thumbnail reproductions to give a

received jobs.” The night scene conveys the length of the

sense of the whole. 21

migrants’ journey, which often took days. In the context

Lawrence’s Panel 1 (Fig. 58), “During the World War

of the locomotive in Panel 5, the black worker in Panel 4

there was a great migration North by Southern Negroes,”

suddenly takes on the attributes of the folk hero John

shows a crowd of African Americans pushing their way

Henry, “the railroading man.” The large spike he prepares

through gates marked “Chicago,” “New York,” and “St.

to hit encodes the picture as a railroading scene, despite

Louis.”22 Here Lawrence links World War I to the labor

what seems to be an indoor setting.

100  the great migr ation

Fig 58   The Migration of the Negro, Panel 1: “During the World War there was a great migration North by Southern Negroes.” 1940–41.

Casein tempera on hardboard, 12 x 18 in. (30.5 x 45.7 cm). The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC.

Panels 6 and 7, the first a view of a train’s interior with

“What then is the cause? There have been bulldozing,

its sleeping passengers and the second the blur of fields

terrorism, maltreatment and what not of persecution; but

whizzing by outside, read as a pair—one image has hori-

the Negroes have not in large numbers wandered away

zontal stripes of color and the other, vertical streamers.

from the land of their birth. What the migrants themselves

The texts—“The trains were packed continually with mi-

think about it, goes to the very heart of the trouble. Some

grants” and “The Negro, who had been part of the soil for

say that they left the South on account of injustice in the

many years, was now going into and living a new life in

courts, unrest, lack of privileges, denial of the right to vote,

the urban centers”—lead us to conclude that Lawrence

bad treatment, oppression, segregation or lynching. Oth-

meant in Panels 1 through 7 to focus on the railroad and

ers say that they left to find employment, to secure better

its effect on the migration. 25 Because Panels 2 and 5 rep-

wages, better school facilities, and better opportunities

resent vehicles moving leftward, our eyes can trick us

to toil upward.”26 Lawrence would introduce these other

into interpreting the white man in the cab as the engineer

causes in his texts when he assembled his panels. One

of a train bringing the migrants to the North.

hears three voices—each from a different sociological

Not until Panel 8 does Lawrence refer to causes other

geography—intoning facts about the momentum of the

than labor shortages in the North: the floods of 1915, boll

migration, the poverty and racism of the South that the

weevil damage to the crops in 1915 and 1916, and the low

migrants fled, and the promises and hardships of the

wages paid to Negroes in the South. Woodson had said:

North.

the great migr ation  101

1

3

2

1  During the World War there was a great migration North by Southern Negroes. 2  The World War had caused a great shortage in Northern industry and also citizens of foreign countries were returning home. 3  In every town Negroes were leaving by the hundreds to go North and enter into Northern industry.

7

8

9

7  The Negro, who had been part of the soil for many years, was now going into and living a new life in the urban centers. 8  They did not always leave because they were promised work in the North. Many of them left because of Southern conditions, one

of them being great floods that ruined the crops, and therefore they were unable to make a living where they were. 9  Another great ravager of the crops was the boll weevil.

Fig 59   The Migration of the Negro, 1940–41. Casein tempera on hardboard (60 panels), 12 x 18 in. or 18 x 12 in. (30.5 x 45.7 cm or 45.7 x 30.5 cm). The captions are the original 1940–41 captions. In 1993 Lawrence revised these captions as listed on p. 337. Odd-numbered panels: The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. Even-numbered panels: The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Gift of Mrs. David M. Levy; digital images © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY.

102 

4

6

5

4  The Negro was the largest source of labor to be found after all others had been exhausted. 5  The Negroes were given free passage on the railroads which was paid back by Northern industry. It was an agreement that the people brought North on these railroads were to pay back their passage after they had received jobs. 6  The trains were packed continually with migrants.

11

10

12

10  They were very poor. 11   In many places, because of the war, food had doubled in price. 12  The railroad stations were at times so over-packed with people leaving that special guards had to be called in to keep order.

  103

14

13

15

13   Due to the South’s losing so much of its labor, the crops were left to dry and spoil. 14   Among the social conditions that existed which was partly the cause of the migration was the injustice done to the Negroes in the courts. 15   Another cause was lynching. It was found that where there had been a lynching, the people who were reluctant to leave at first left immediately

after this.

19

20

21

19   There had always been discrimination. 20   In many of the communities the Negro press was read continually because of its attitude and its encouragement of the movement. 21   Families arrived at the station very early in order not to miss their train North.

104 

16

18

17

16   Although the Negro was used to lynching, he found this an opportune time for him to leave where one had occurred. 17   The migration was spurred on by the treatment of the tenant farmers by the planter. 18   The migration gained in momentum.

22

23

24

22   Another of the social causes of the migrants’ leaving was that at times they did not feel safe, or it was not the best thing to be found on the

streets late at night. They were arrested on the slightest provocation. 23   And the migration spread. 24   Child labor and a lack of education was one of the other reasons for people wishing to leave their homes.

  105

25

26

27

25   After a while some communities were left almost bare. 26   And people all over the South began to discuss this great movement. 27   Many men stayed behind until they could bring their families North.

31

32

33

31  After arriving North the Negroes had better housing conditions. 32   The railroad stations in the South were crowded with people leaving for the North. 33   People who had not yet come North received letters from their relatives telling them of the better conditions that existed in the North.

106 

28

29

30

28   The labor agent who had been sent South by Northern industry was a very familiar person in the Negro counties. 29   The labor agent also recruited laborers to break strikes which were occurring in the North. 30   In every home people who had not gone North met and tried to decide if they should go North or not.

34

35

36

34   The Negro press was also influential in urging the people to leave the South. 35   They left the South in large numbers and they arrived in the North in large numbers. 36   They arrived in great numbers into Chicago, the gateway of the West.

  107

37

39

38

37   The Negroes that had been brought North worked in large numbers in one of the principal industries, which was steel. 38   They also worked in large numbers on the railroad. 39   Luggage crowded the railroad platforms.

43

44

45

43   In a few sections of the South the leaders of both groups met and attempted to make conditions better for the Negro so that he would

remain in the South. 44   Living conditions were better in the North. 45   They arrived in Pittsburgh, one of the great industrial centers of the North, in large numbers.

108 

41

42

40

40   The migrants arrived in great numbers. 41   The South that was interested in keeping cheap labor was making it very difficult for labor agents recruiting Southern labor for Northern

firms. In many instances, they were put in jail and were forced to operate incognito. 42   They also made it very difficult for migrants leaving the South. They often went to the railroad stations and arrested the Negroes whole-

sale, which in turn made them miss their train.

46

47

48

46   Industries attempted to board their labor in quarters that were oftentimes very unhealthy. Labor camps were numerous. 47   As well as finding better housing conditions in the North, the migrants found very poor housing conditions in the North. They

were forced into overcrowded and dilapidated tenement houses. 48   Housing for the Negroes was a very difficult problem.

  109

49

50

51

49   They also found discrimination in the North although it was much different from that which they had known in the South. 50   Race riots were very numerous all over the North because of the antagonism that was caused between the Negro and white

workers. Many of these riots occurred because the Negro was used as a strike breaker in many of the Northern industries. 51   In many cities in the North where the Negroes had been overcrowded in their own living quarters they attempted to spread out.

This resulted in many of the race riots and the bombing of Negro homes.

57

55

56

55   The Negro being suddenly moved out of doors and cramped into urban life, contracted a great deal of tuberculosis. Because of this the death rate was high. 56   Among one of the last groups to leave the South was the Negro professional who was forced to follow his clientele to make a living. 57   The female worker was also one of the last groups to leave the South.

110 

53

54

52

52   One of the largest race riots occurred in East St. Louis. 53   The Negroes who had been North for quite some time met their fellowmen with disgust and aloofness. 54   One of the main forms of social and recreational activities in which the migrants indulged occurred in the church.

59

58

60

58   In the North the Negro had better educational facilities. 59   In the North the Negro had freedom to vote. 60   And the migrants kept coming.

  111

Lawrence thus shifts in Panels 8 and 9 to statements about the southern agricultural economy. Panel 8 reads: “They did not always leave because they were promised work in the North. Many of them left because of Southern conditions, one of them being great floods that ruined the crops, and therefore they were unable to make a living where they were.” Panel 9 reads: “Another great ravager of the crops was the boll weevil.” Panel 7 also relates visually to these two panels: all are vertical and focus on the countryside. What differs in them is the perspective: Panel 7 suggests a viewer on a moving train, looking out over long, fluttering ribbons of color that suggest fields of crops; Panel 8, a stationary viewer contemplating a poor crop drowned in a flood; Panel 9, a stationary viewer focusing on the invading weevils doing their mischief to cotton bolls. A rhythm of horizontal (a) and vertical (b)

Fig 60   The Migration of the Negro, Panel 13: “Due to the South’s

losing so much of its labor, the crops were left to dry and spoil.” 1940–41. Casein tempera on hardboard, 12 x 18 in. (30.5 x 45.7 cm). The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC.

panels emerges for the first nine paintings: a-a-a; b-a-b; b-b-b. Similar rhythms occur throughout the series, but as improvisations rather than formulaic patterns.27

migration. Panels 14, 15, and 16 form a unit that addresses

Panels 10 and 11 introduce the impoverishment of

the issue of southern justice from an African American’s

southern families; figures sit or stand in interiors stripped

point of view. The scenes change from interior to exterior

of material possessions and at kitchen tables set with

back to interior, and the format shifts from vertical to

meager provisions. The texts emphasize the poverty

horizontal back to vertical. Moreover, the placement of

(Panel 10: “They were very poor”) and cite one of the fac-

forms in each panel enhances the ensemble of the three

tors contributing to it (Panel 11: “In many places, because

panels. The captions read as follows: “Among the social

of the war, food had doubled in price”). Poverty, Lawrence

conditions that existed which was partly the cause of the

tells us, led to increased migration. In Panel 12, people

migration was the injustice done to the Negroes in the

crowd the ticket windows of a train station: “The railroad

courts” (Panel 14); “Another cause was lynching. It was

stations were at times so over-packed with people leaving

found that where there had been a lynching, the people

that special guards had to be called in to keep order.” By

who were reluctant to leave at first left immediately after

including the policemen called on to monitor a voluntary

this” (Panel 15); “Although the Negro was used to lynching,

migration, Lawrence portrays the intrusion of the state.

he found this an opportune time for him to leave where

The migration, the product of economic causes, itself

one had occurred” (Panel 16). In Panel 14, the lamp on

causes further economic deterioration in the South, exem-

the judge’s desk swings to the right; in Panel 15, the rope

plified in the horizontal image of Panel 13 (Fig. 60): “Due

noose for the lynching hangs in the middle; in Panel 16,

to the South’s losing so much of its labor, the crops were

the grieving woman’s massive body, turned to the left,

left to dry and spoil.” From this panel to the end of the

provides closure for the group of images.

series, Lawrence underscores the dialectical relationship

The succeeding panels address discrimination, with

between the migration and the economic and social condi-

panels of migration interspersed among them. People

tions as they affect each other mutually and reciprocally.

work, talk among themselves, go to the railroad station,

Cause becomes effect that becomes another cause.

endure police harassment, desert their homes. Panel 19

Not until Panels 14 (Fig. 61) and 15 (Fig. 62)—a quarter

has an especially terse caption: “There had always been

of the way into his story—does Lawrence introduce dis-

discrimination.” At the upper left a white woman drinks

crimination in the courts and lynchings as motivations for

from a water fountain; at the lower left a black woman also

112  the great migr ation

Fig 61   The Migration of the Negro, Panel 14: “Among the social conditions that

existed which was partly the cause of the migration was the injustice done to the Negroes in the courts.” 1940–41. Casein tempera on hardboard, 18 x 12 in. (45.7 x 30.5 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, NY, Gift of Mrs. David M. Levy. Digital image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY. Fig 62   The Migration of the Negro, Panel 15: “Another cause was lynching. It was found that where there had been a lynching, the people who were reluctant to leave at first left immediately after this.” 1940–41. Casein tempera on hardboard, 12 x 18 in. (30.5 x 45.7 cm). The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC.

drinks from a fountain. A river of water that separates

grants that range from appeasement to terrorism. In Panel

them symbolizes the racial gulf between them. Panel 22

41 the labor agent sent to recruit southerners is jailed; his

shows handcuffed men “arrested on the slightest provoca-

white fingers grip the bars of a small window high up in a

tion.” The static composition of this panel stops the

stone wall. In contrast, the policeman in Panel 42 (Fig.

viewer; Panel 23, however, moves the viewer forward.

65) stretches out his arms and legs to block the door of

The pace of the narrative quickens. Although each

a railroad car in order to prevent the migrants from escap-

scene is self-contained—a patchwork of form and color—

ing their imminent arrest. In Panel 43 a white man on

each contributes to the rhythmic pattern of a sequence.

stage at a community meeting hall spreads his arms, his

Art-historical quotations and references occur in the im-

hands touching a table top in a gesture of appeasement;

agery: the figures in Panel 24 resemble the workers rep-

the racially mixed figures on stage reinforce the caption’s

resented on the walls of a pharaoh’s tomb; Panel 25

statement that “leaders of both groups met and attempted

evokes the abstract paintings of the 1930s. As we move

to make conditions better.” Unlike the more dynamic

from panel to panel, we interpret what we see, remember

migration scenes, these last three are bilaterally sym-

the images, and reinterpret them along with the text. 28

metrical; the figures in them suggest a rigid social struc-

Midway through the series, at Panel 31 (Fig. 63), Law-

ture intolerant of change. In contrast, Panel 44 (Fig. 66)

rence paints the first scene of the urban North as seen by

says, “Living conditions were better in the North,” and

the arriving migrants. The caption suggests a positive

shows an image that includes a large slab of ham, gener-

view of the migrants’ situation: “After arriving North the

ous slices of bread, and more bread waiting to be cut from

Negroes had better housing conditions.” The flat wall of

a plump loaf. The ham and bread, out of scale with the

building fronts in Lawrence’s image resembles Piet Mon-

forms in the preceding and subsequent panels, look

drian’s paintings of the 1940s. It is punctuated by open

enormous—suggesting the blessings of abundance. This

and shaded windows, a metaphor for the city, where

is the only still life of the series.

openings, or opportunities, occur in a seemingly indiffer-

At Panel 45 (Fig. 67), in response to the scene of plenty,

ent facade. According to the text of Panel 32, “The rail-

Lawrence presents an extended family looking hopefully

road stations in the South were crowded with people

out of a train window at the industrial North. The next

leaving for the North.” In the image, people sit on five

three panels, all vertical, represent the crowded living

rows of benches, waiting patiently for their train. A young-

conditions the migrants found in the North—conditions

ster at the upper right symbolizes the new generation

both Scott and Woodson discussed at length in their stud-

that will grow up in the North. At this point the northern

ies. In Panel 48 (see Fig. 75) we see only parts of iron

scenes become predominant.

beds, with valises tucked under them; the fragmentary

The message of Panel 20’s text—“In many of the com-

view suggests an endless row of beds. Lawrence switches

munities the Negro press was read continually because of

to another narrative device in Panel 49 (Fig. 68), where

its attitude and its encouragement of the movement”—​is

he presents a literal map of segregated seating in northern

repeated in Panel 34: “The Negro press was also in­fluential

restaurants: “They also found discrimination in the North

in urging the people to leave the South.” The image depicts

although it was much different from that which they had

a person reading the newspaper much larger than the one

known in the South.” Lawrence does not idealize the

in the earlier panel—as if the impulse to read about the

North, which had its own racial discriminations; he ac-

migration movement had swollen in proportion.

knowledges, however, that in the North, overall, the mi-

Increasingly Lawrence’s scenes fill out the landscape of the North: the Chicago stockyards (Panel 36), steel

grants found their situation better than in the South. Panels 50, 51, and 52 consider the migration’s effects

manufacturing (Panel 37), railroad work (Panel 38, Fig.

on existing populations. In the first two images, Lawrence

64). Panels 39 and 40 focus on the moving migration.

explains the causes of racial violence. “Race riots were

Then Lawrence shifts his attention to the South, where

very numerous all over the North because of the antago-

whites have enacted measures to stay the exodus of mi-

nism that was caused between the Negro and white

114  the great migr ation

Fig 63   The Migration of the Negro, Panel 31: “After arriving North the Negroes had better housing conditions.”

1940–41. Casein tempera on hardboard, 12 x 18 in. (30.5 x 45.7 cm). The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. Fig 64   The Migration of the Negro, Panel 38: “They also worked in large numbers on the railroad.” 1940–41.

Casein tempera on hardboard, 12 x 18 in. (30.5 x 45.7 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, NY, Gift of Mrs. David M. Levy. Digital image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY.

Fig 65   The Migration of the Negro, Panel 42: “They also made it

very difficult for migrants leaving the South. They often went to the railroad stations and arrested the Negroes wholesale, which in turn made them miss their train.” 1940–41. Casein tempera on hardboard, 18 x 12 in. (45.7 x 30.5 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, NY, Gift of Mrs. David M. Levy. Digital image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY. Fig 66   The Migration of the Negro, Panel 44: “Living conditions

were better in the North.” 1940–41. Casein tempera on hardboard, 12 x 18 in. (30.5 x 45.7 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, NY, Gift of Mrs. David M. Levy. Digital image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY.

Fig 67   The Migration of the Negro, Panel 45: “They arrived in Pittsburgh, one of the great industrial centers of the North, in large numbers.” 1940–41. Casein tempera on hardboard, 12 x 18 in. (30.5 x 45.7 cm). The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. Fig 68   The Migration of the Negro, Panel 49: “They also found dis-

crimination in the North although it was much different from that which they had known in the South.” 1940–41. Casein tempera on hardboard, 18 x 12 in. (45.7 x 30.5 cm). The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC.

Fig 69   The Migration of the Negro, Panel 52: “One of the largest race riots occurred in East St. Louis.” 1940–41. Casein tempera on hardboard, 12 x 18 in. (30.5 x 45.7 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, NY, Gift of Mrs. David M. Levy. Digital image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY.

workers. Many of these riots occurred because the Negro

the figures. The white man prostrate in the background is

was used as a strike breaker in many of the Northern in-

twice the size of the others, suggesting the significance

dustries” (Panel 50). Lawrence believed that antiunion

of his defeat. Here Lawrence employs the concept of

bosses, not workers, fomented racial violence. In Panel

ideational size, whereby the focus is not the location of a

29, he had already shown in his image and in text that

figure but the relative size of figures in a composition—a

“The labor agent also recruited laborers to break strikes

technique characteristic of Egyptian wall drawings. 29 The

which were occurring in the North.” Panel 51, a painting

black man, to the right, appears in control of his situation

depicting buildings in flames, looks at housing: “In many

as he grips the knife-wielding white man in a headlock.

cities in the North where the Negroes had been over-

The Fortune magazine editors made this panel the largest

crowded in their own living quarters they attempted to

of those reproduced in the November 1941 spread.

spread out. This resulted in many of the race riots and the

The next three panels represent the different social

bombing of Negro homes.” Panel 52 (Fig. 69), however,

experiences of the migrants in the African American ur-

simply states: “One of the largest race riots occurred in

ban community, including class discrimination: “The Ne-

East St. Louis.” Three white men and two black men (so

groes who had been North for quite some time met their

identified by their hands) fight in the street. Lawrence

fellowmen with disgust and aloofness” (Panel 53); “One

suggests the outcome of the fight by the relative sizes of

of the main forms of social and recreational activities in

118  the great migr ation

Fig 70   The Migration of the Negro, Panel 58: “In the North the Negro had better educational facilities.” 1940–41. Casein tempera on

hardboard, 12 x 18 in. (30.5 x 45.7 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, NY, Gift of Mrs. David M. Levy. Digital image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY.

which the migrants indulged occurred in the church”

“Among one of the last groups to leave the South was the

(Panel 54). The third, Panel 55, presents a bleak picture

Negro professional who was forced to follow his clientele

of disease, with pallbearers, dressed in black, carrying a

to make a living.” Lawrence’s mentor, Alain Locke, had

coffin: “The Negro being suddenly moved out of doors

commented in his introduction to The New Negro (1925)

and cramped into urban life, contracted a great deal of

that it was the professionals who trailed their clients on

tuberculosis. Because of this the death rate was high.”30

the migration to the North: “In a real sense it is the rank

The horizon slopes downward to the left, as if toward the

and file who are leading, and the leaders who are follow-

coffin’s destination, the earth beneath. Because this panel

ing.”31 To both Locke and Lawrence the strength of the

follows a church interior, shown in Panel 54, the two im-

people rested on their ability to conduct a leaderless

ages can be read as a funeral service followed by a burial.

revolution—like the migration.

Lawrence continually makes such links for the viewer to discover.

The penultimate panels show children at school and a voting booth: “In the North the Negro had better educa-

Near the end of the series Lawrence takes us briefly

tional facilities” (Panel 58, Fig. 70) and “In the North the

back to the South with scenes of the last groups to leave:

Negro had freedom to vote” (Panel 59). To Lawrence, as

Negro professionals (Panel 56) and female workers, such

to W. E. B. Du Bois and others, both better educational

as laundresses (Panel 57). The caption for Panel 56 reads:

facilities and the franchise meant greater self-respect and

the great migr ation  119

true citizenship. The presence of a white policeman hold-

conditions. With each successive wave of it, the movement of

ing a billy club and the regimentation of the voters stand-

the Negro becomes more and more a mass movement toward

ing rigidly in line, however, suggest that white political

the larger and more democratic chance—in the Negro’s case

control compromised the freedom won with the vote. 32

a deliberate flight not only from countryside to city, but from

Of the sixty panels, sixteen show migrants on the move, waiting in railroad stations or on trains, including the first and the last. That recurrent motif energizes the work. For example, Panel 18 (Fig. 57), captioned “The migration

medieval America to modern. 35

Lawrence’s Migration echoes what Locke envisioned in these remarks.

gained in momentum,” shows two groups of people moving from the lower and upper left toward the upper right, in his 1926 film Potemkin, where people stream across

richard wright’s 12 million black voices

recalling a compositional device Sergei Eisenstein used roads, up stairs, and across strips of land, out to the docks

When Richard Wright wrote to Jay Leyda in May 1941

of Odessa, toward the anchored ship Potemkin to pay

promising that he would visit Lawrence’s studio on 125th

homage to the rebellious sailor killed by his officers. Law-

Street in Harlem to see the recent work (see Chapter 2),

rence’s friend Jay Leyda, an Eisenstein scholar, may have

he was writing his manuscript for 12 Million Black Voices:

discussed the film or perhaps even shown it to Lawrence

A Folk History of the Negro in the United States, a project

from the Museum of Modern Art’s film archive. The final

originally conceived by Edwin Rosskam. Rosskam, a pho-

panel swings back to the horizontal format with dozens of

tographer and designer who worked for the FSA, had been

migrants standing by the railroad track waiting for their

planning a photography book on urban blacks, and Wright

train, over a caption that reads, “And the migrants kept

was a logical candidate to supply the text.36 He had spent

coming.” Lawrence aims to tell a story, a hopeful story,

his youth in the South; knew how it contrasted with the

that circles back and has no closure. 33 His panels, as we

urban North, especially Chicago; and had gained acclaim

move along, viewing them and sometimes looping back,

for his powerful book Native Son. Wright’s thinking in 1941

give us a pleasure much like that of hearing a good

was informed by Marxist texts and the scholarship of the

preacher’s rhetorical flourishes, the cadences of spirituals,

Chicago School of Sociology.37

or repetitions in the

blues.34

In January 1941 Wright joined Rosskam in Washington,

The Migration series is greater than the sum of its parts.

D.C., to pore over some of the sixty-five thousand photo-

Lawrence’s chronicle tells more than a series of events or

graphs in the archives of the FSA.38 Rosskam persuaded

a catalogue of causes and effects. It presents the story of

his boss, Roy E. Stryker, the chief of the historical section

African Americans moving into modern life. As Alain Locke

of the FSA, to assign the FSA photographer Russell Lee

noted in his introduction to The New Negro:

to take photos in Chicago for the 12 Million Black Voices project. In April 1941 Wright and Rosskam, along with their

The tide of Negro migration, northward and city-ward, is not

wives, and Lee, spent two weeks photographing blacks

to be fully explained as a blind flood started by the demands

living in the South Side ghettos familiar to Wright. They

of war industry coupled with the shutting off of foreign migration, or by the pressure of poor crops coupled with increased social terrorism in certain sections of the South and Southwest. Neither labor demand, the bollweevil nor the Ku Klux Klan is a basic factor, however contributory any or all of them

also met with Horace R. Cayton, whom Wright knew as a student of the sociologist Robert E. Park and who, as the director of the Good Shepherd Community Center, had developed a large archive on Chicago’s black community

may have been. The wash and rush of this human tide on the

funded by the WPA. Cayton gave them “advice and guid-

beach line of the northern city centers is to be explained pri-

ance in the taking of photographs” in Chicago. 39 Wright

marily in terms of a new vision of opportunity, of social and

and Rosskam eventually selected eighty-two photographs

economic freedom, of a spirit to seize, even in the face of an

from not only the fifteen hundred Lee and Rosskam had

extortionate and heavy toll, a chance for the improvement of

made in Chicago but also the FSA archive—by the pho-

120  the great migr ation

tographers Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Jack Delano, Carl Mydans, Arthur Rothstein, Ben Shahn, Marion Post, and John Vachon. Another four photographs by news services (International News Photos, New York Daily News, Times Wide World) were added, along with one by Wright himself and one by Louise Rosskam.40 It is tempting to think that Wright actually carried out Jay Leyda’s recommendation to see Lawrence’s paintings in the summer of 1941 and that he was impressed by the artist’s skill in organizing and sequencing the panels.41 Lawrence, relying on his own experiences like Wright, also aimed to depict the rural working classes of black America rather than elite social groups. Wright’s subjects in his collection of short stories Uncle Tom’s Children (1938) were poor rural southern blacks coping with segregation; his acclaimed novel Native Son (1940) focused on the raging resentment of Chicago’s black unemployed. For 12 Million Black Voices the focus would be the same—on the “folk” of the subtitle.42 As Wright explained in his foreword, in language appropriate to Lawrence’s series as well: This text, while purporting to render a broad picture of the processes of Negro life in the United States, intentionally does not include in its considerations those areas of Negro life which comprise the so-called “talented tenth,” or the isolated islands of mulatto leadership which are still to be found in many parts of the South, or the growing and influential Negro middle-class professional and business men of the North who have, for the past thirty years or more, formed a sort of liaison corps between the whites and the blacks. Their exclusion from these

Fig 71   Jack Delano, Sharecropper and Wife, Georgia. Photo in Richard Wright and Edwin Rosskam, 12 Million Black Voices: A Folk History of the Negro in the United States (New York: Viking Press, 1941), 29. Library of Congress, Farm Security Administration Collection.

pages does not imply any invidious judgment, nor does it stem from any desire to underestimate their progress and contributions; they are omitted in an effort to simplify a depiction of a

tographs. The first of four parts, “Our Strange Birth,”

complex movement of a debased feudal folk toward a twenti-

discusses the years of the slave trade, the realities of

eth-century urbanization.43

plantation slavery, and the conflicts between the Lords of the Land (the plantation owners) and the Bosses of the

Whether aware of it or not, Wright was paraphrasing Alain

Buildings (northern industrialists) that erupted into the

Locke’s words (quoted above) that “the movement of the

Civil War.44 The second part, “Inheritors of Slavery,”

Negro becomes . . . a deliberate flight not only from coun-

opens with a photograph by Jack Delano, Sharecropper

tryside to city, but from medieval America to modern.”

and Wife, Georgia (Fig. 71). Two figures, concerned and

Whereas Lawrence writes impersonally, drawing from

dignified looking, sit on a quilt-covered cot, hands clasped

the language of sociological studies, Wright speaks in the

in front of them, and stare out at the viewer. Behind them

first-person plural—the collective voice of “we”—produc-

on the wall hang two large oval photographic portraits of

ing a passionate text to accompany the eighty-eight pho-

ancestors, who remind the viewer of the continuity of the

the great migr ation  121

Fig 72   Marion Post, Cotton Buyer and Negro Farmer Discussing Price, Mississippi. Photo in Richard Wright and Edwin Rosskam, 12 Mil­

lion Black Voices: A Folk History of the Negro in the United States (New York: Viking Press, 1941), 42. Library of Congress, Farm Security Administration Collection. Fig 73   The Migration of the Negro, Panel 17: “The migration was spurred on by the treatment of the tenant farmers by the planter.” 1940–41. Casein tempera on hardboard, 12 x 18 in. (30.5 x 45.7 cm). The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. When published by Fortune (November 1941): 104, the caption read: “Another was the treatment of the tenant farmer by the planter. Sometimes he gave short weight or charged unfair prices at the store . . . ”

generations.45 The photograph is a suitable opening for

tion to emphasize the persistent psychological effects of

the chapter.

living an embattled life amid racism and poverty:

In Wright’s text the Lords of the Land see the South as a beautiful land, “charming, idyllic, romantic,” whereas blacks live “full of the fear of the Lords of the Land, bowing and grinning  .  .  . , toiling from sun to sun, living in unpainted wooden shacks that sit casually and insecurely upon the red clay” (p. 25). Working for the white planter, they will most likely be underpaid. Marion Post’s photo-

Two streams of life flow through the South, a black stream and a white stream, and from day to day we live in the atmosphere of a war that never ends. Even when the sprawling fields are drenched in peaceful sunshine, it is war. When we grub at the clay with our hoes, it is war. When we sleep, it is war. When we are awake, it is war. When one of us is born, he enters one of the warring regiments of the South. When there are days of

graph (Fig. 72) suggests this; Lawrence’s image (Fig.73)

peace, it is a peace born of a victory over us; and when there

and its caption, “The migration was spurred on by the

is open violence, it is when we are trying to push back the

treatment of the tenant farmers by the planters,” make

encroachments of the Lords of the Land. (p. 46)

such exploitation explicit. Wright describes the growing restlessness of African

And a page later, he continues: “To ask questions, to

Americans in the early twentieth century as they began

protest, to insist, to contend for a secure institutional and

to leave the plantations of their birth and roam the South,

political base upon which to stand and fulfill ourselves

with some going north. To them the South is where “we

is equivalent to a new and intensified declaration of war”

cannot fight back; we have no arms; we cannot vote; and

(p. 47). War, to Wright, is not just a trope but the reality

the law is white” (p. 43). “Fear is with us always, and in

of class conflict.

those areas where we black men equal or outnumber the

Using Wright’s text, Rosskam probably wrote the short

whites fear is at its highest” (p. 46). Wright uses repeti-

captions for the photographs that make up the two-, four-,

122  the great migr ation

Fig 74   Dorothea Lange, Hoeing Cotton,

Alabama. Photo in Richard Wright and Edwin Rosskam, 12 Million Black Voices: A Folk History of the Negro in the United States (New York: Viking Press, 1941), 52. Library of Congress, Farm Security Administration Collection.

and six-page spreads. One example of a six-page spread,

Wright’s text and Rosskam’s photo editing offer images

with one photograph per page, has three photographs by

of struggles and hopes.

Dorothea Lange followed by one each by Ben Shahn, Ar-

When speaking of the religion of the black folk, Wright

thur Rothstein, and Walker Evans. The texts for Lange’s

adopts the narrative voice of an evangelical preacher. On

photographs read: “Our lives are walled with cotton” (p.

Sundays bodies and souls are renewed:

50); “We plow and plant cotton” (p. 51); and “We chop cotton” (p. 52, Fig. 74). The spread continues with the

and the preacher’s voice is sweet to us, caressing and lash-

Shahn photograph, captioned “We pick cotton” (p. 53),

ing . . . filling us with a sense of hope that is treasonable to the

and ends with the Rothstein photograph, captioned “When

rule of Queen Cotton. As the sermon progresses, the preach-

Queen Cotton dies . . . ” (p. 54), and the Evans photograph, captioned “ . . . how many of us will die with her?” (p. 55). This last photo shows a recent grave piled high with sandy dirt and a headstone, a footstone, and an empty kitchen

er’s voice increases in emotional intensity, and we, in tune and sympathy with his sweeping story, sway in our seats until we have lost all notion of time and have begun to float on a tide of passion. The preacher begins to punctuate his words with sharp rhythms, and we are lifted far beyond the boundaries of

plate resting in the middle. The six photographs form a

our daily lives, upward and outward, until, drunk with our

self-contained story about the monotony of a one-crop

enchanted vision, our senses lifted to the burning skies, we do

economy in which people work hard and fail when the crop

not know who we are, what we are, or where we are. (p. 73)

fails. The pessimism of the text—“Days come and days go, but our lives upon the land remain without hope” (p.

As the literary historian John M. Reilly points out, Wright’s

57)—is balanced a few pages later by Wright’s paean to

narrative is “simulated oral utterance derived from the

the community’s shared love, especially the love directed

spontaneous arts that shape the orations of the preacher;

to its children.46 Like Lawrence’s Migration narrative,

it is a secularization of the sacred oral voice of the folk.”47

the great migr ation  123

Wright continues by describing the lasting effects of

tions: “The migration gained in momentum” (Panel 18),

that “enchanted vision”: “We take this feeling with us each

“And the migration spread” (Panel 23), “And the migrants

day and it drains the gall out of our years, sucks the sting

arrived in great numbers” (Panel 40), “They arrived in

from the rush of time, purges the pain from our memory

Pittsburgh . . . ” (Panel 45), “And the migrants kept com-

of the past, and banishes the fear of loneliness and death.

ing” (Panel 60). Wright’s use of the first-person plural

When the soil grows poorer, we cling to this feeling; when

suggests that he himself is actively caught up in the mi-

clanking tractors uproot and hurl us from the land, we

gration; Lawrence’s use of the omniscient narrator’s third

cling to it; when our eyes behold a black body swinging

person makes him more of an observer than a passionate

from a tree in the wind, we cling to it . . .” (p. 73). Wright

participant.

ends with the ellipsis. The first sentence offers four verbs

Many of Wright’s sentences remind us of the visual

to describe the effects of the feeling the sermon elicits—

images of Lawrence’s Migration panels. Wright’s “Our

drains, sucks, purges, and banishes—each verb suggest-

hearts were high as we moved northward to the cities” (p.

ing a progressively more extreme action. The second

98) matches the mood of the migrants in Lawrence’s Panel

sentence consists of three statements, in each of which

45 (Fig. 67). Wright’s “Night and day, in rain and in sun,

the verb is cling, as if our bodies, our material selves,

in winter and in summer, we leave the land” (p. 98) recalls

embraced that “enchanted vision” of hope that Wright in

the many panels of people walking toward or waiting at

the next sentence calls “this spark of happiness under

train platforms in Lawrence’s series. Wright’s “The train

adversity” (p. 73). The oratorical tradition of southern

speeds north and we cannot sleep” (p. 99) reminds us of

preachers echoes in Wright’s words. The words are the

Lawrence’s Panel 6, the text of which reads, “The trains

balm that makes life bearable.

were packed continually with migrants.” Wright’s “The

In another passage, Wright’s description of soil erosion

apartments in which we sleep are crowded and noisy” and

is similar to that heard in Pare Lorentz’s film The River, in

“There are not enough houses for us to live in” parallel the

which a voice intones the names of trees and rivers over

captions for Lawrence’s Panels 47 and 48 (Fig. 75).

a montage of images. The repetition unifies Wright’s

Wright discusses the tensions generated when white

prose just as it unifies Lorentz’s narrative in his film and

trade unions bar blacks from membership and when

Lawrence’s texts in his panels.

blacks work as scabs, with “bloody riots break[ing] forth

Before Part 2 ends, Wright turns to the causes of the

over trifling incidents that would ordinarily be forgotten

migration and mentions factors identical to the subjects

in the routine of daily living” (p. 123). Three of Lawrence’s

of Lawrence’s panels: men are “threatened with jail sen-

paintings, Panels 50, 51, and 52 (Fig. 69), comment on

tences” and terrorized by lynching. Wright ends the sec-

racial riots by workers. But to Wright, at the end of the

tion with a verbal image of people in motion: “We listen

working day, blacks “go home to our Black Belts and live,

for somebody to say something, and we still travel, leav-

within the orbit of the surviving remnants of the culture

ing the South.  .  .  . From 1890 to 1920, more than

of the South, our naïve, casual, verbal, fluid folk life.”

2,000,000 of us left the land” (p. 89).

Nothing in Lawrence’s series quite parallels this descrip-

Part 3 of 12 Million, “Death on the City Pavements,”

tion of urban folk life, except perhaps his Panel 54, whose

focuses on leaving the South for life in the northern city.

caption states that blacks found “their main forms of so-

It opens with the passage: “Lord in Heaven! Good God

cial and recreational activities . . . in the church.”49

Almighty! Great Day in the Morning! It’s here! Our time

In the final, fourth part of his 12 Million, “Men in the

has come! We are leaving! We are angry no more; we are

Making,” Wright presents an optimistic coda that pleads

leaving! We are bitter no more; we are leaving! We are

for multiracial efforts to effect social change. A new class

leaving our homes, pulling up stakes to move on” (p. 92).

and antiracist consciousness, “the beginning of living on

The paragraph continues with the chanted refrain “But

a new and terrifying plane of consciousness,” as Wright

we are leaving. . . . But we are leaving. . . . We are leav-

said earlier in the text (p. 99), expresses the drive away

ing. . . . For we are leaving.”48 Compare Lawrence’s cap-

from the “old folk lives” toward freedom, modernity, and

124  the great migr ation

Fig 75   The Migration of the Negro, Panel 48: “Housing for the Negroes was a very difficult problem.”

1940–41. Casein tempera on hardboard, 12 x 18 in. (30.5 x 45.7 cm). The Museum of Modern Art,  NY, Gift of Mrs. David M. Levy. Digital image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY.

conscious subjectivity explicit in Wright’s text and im-

and photography) in communicating the underlying shared

plicit in Lawrence’s panels.50

message of Lawrence, Rosskam, and Wright—that twelve

If Wright did not make contact with Lawrence in the summer of 1941 when he was revising his drafts of 12 Mil­

million black voices represented a strong collective voice for America.

lion Black Voices, he must have known that he had much

Rosskam’s inventive photo editing gave 12 Million Black

in common with the younger artist.51 Jack Moore’s as-

Voices a certain coherence, despite the multiple styles of

sessment of Wright—that his “verbal montages, the text’s

the photography. At least twenty photographs depict

photographs, and the narrator’s voice again telescope

people working (mostly in the cotton fields) or walking to

black history, now despairing, now hoping, always return-

work; several show people participating in church ser-

ing to the vision of attainable progress”—could apply

vices; two focus on violence; and one shows a burning

equally well to Lawrence. Indeed, Lawrence’s last panel

house. Twenty to thirty others show people looking di-

of Migration (Fig. 76), whose caption reads, “And the mi-

rectly at the camera or looking off camera in a way that

grants kept coming,” compares with Wright’s last line,

nonetheless conveys the emotions behind their expres-

“Voices are speaking. Men are moving! And we shall be

sions. In such images, the subjects reach out for our em-

with them . . .” (p. 147; Wright’s ellipsis). The photograph

pathetic response. In Lawrence’s series, only four scenes

by Carl Mydans following Wright’s words on the last page

show blacks working, and those include a physician exam­

(p. 147; Fig. 77) also projects a positive image, with a black

ining a patient (Panel 56) and a domestic female worker

man standing in front of his ramshackle house and looking

(Panel 57). Only one of Lawrence’s works pre­sents a

up into the sunlight. The we in this last sentence suggests

church scene (Panel 54). Like Rosskam, Lawrence in-

that for Wright, a committed Marxist at the time, all of

cludes two scenes of racial violence (Panels 50 and 52)

humanity would join in this working-class movement of

and one of burning houses (Panel 51). Because of Law-

African Americans to advance equality; Wright’s ellipsis

rence’s flat simplified style, one that rendered faces with

suggests that the situation will continue. Lawrence would

just a few lines for eyes and mouths, we cannot say that

have seen it that way, for his figures in Panel 60 turn to

the faces of any of the figures reveal a complex subjectiv-

face the viewer. The idea that African Americans repre-

ity. The artist wanted, instead, to present iconic general-

sented all Americans was a deeply felt conviction of the

ized figures and hence relied on the various activities in

painter throughout his life. “We are you.”52

which they engage, their positions, and their body language to project their attitudes and motivations. Law-

rosskam’s 12 million black voices It was not only Wright’s text that made 12 Million Black

rence’s migrants read letters and newspapers about opportunities in the North, meet with white agents, speak among themselves, and pick up their portable possessions and move. In the North they go to school and vote.

Voices famous but also Rosskam’s organization and se-

Lawrence conveys his message not through mimetic

quencing of photographs drawn from several sources:

realism but through symbolic details of gesture, clothing,

archival photographs, those shot by Rosskam and Lee

and spatial relations, with color augmenting the mood—for

especially for the project, and those of news services.

example, his use of bright colors to suggest the happy

Whereas Lawrence controlled the formal design of each

anticipation of the family riding the train in Panel 45 (Fig.

panel, its content, and its sequencing in the series as a

67). For Lawrence the overall representational goal is to

whole, Rosskam was restricted by having to select and

assert the modernity and humanity of a people who act

create his own representation from numerous works by

to change their oppressive conditions. His figures have

others, though he had thousands in the FSA archive from

agency through their collective will. Some sixteen of his

which to choose.53 That said, comparisons between the

panels show people on the move, whereas only one image

painted panels and the photographs may throw into relief

does so in Rosskam’s assembled photographs, Evicted

the possibilities and drawbacks of each medium (painting

Sharecroppers, Missouri, by Arthur Rothstein (p. 89). 54

126  the great migr ation

Fig 76   The Migration of the Negro, Panel 60: “And the migrants kept

coming.” 1940–41. Casein tempera on hardboard, 12 x 18 in. (30.5 x 45.7 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, NY, Gift of Mrs. David M. Levy. Digital image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY. Fig 77   Carl Mydans, Back Yard of Alley Dwelling, Washington, D.C.

Photo in Richard Wright and Edwin Rosskam, 12 Million Black Voices: A Folk History of the Negro in the United States (New York: Viking Press, 1941), 147. Library of Congress, Farm Security Administration Collection. 

Fig 78   John Vachon, Courtroom Scene, Virginia. Photo in Richard Wright and Edwin Rosskam, 12 Million Black Voices: A Folk History of the Negro in the United States (New York: Viking Press, 1941), 44. Library of Congress, Farm Security Administration Collection. Fig 79  International News Photos, Lynching, Georgia. The man has

been identified as Lint Shaw. Photo in Richard Wright and Edwin Rosskam, 12 Million Black Voices: A Folk History of the Negro in the United States (New York: Viking Press, 1941), 45. Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

Two consecutive panels by Lawrence, 14 and 15 (Figs.

white man’s law is stable but inflexible. Lawrence depicts

61 and 62), make a telling contrast with two photographs

no gestures or expressions to reveal how blacks would

in 12 Million that face each other and share a single cap-

resist the white man’s southern law. As viewers, we share

tion, “The law is white”: John Vachon’s Courtroom Scene,

the space and point of view of the blacks, looking up to

Virginia (p. 44; Fig. 78) and the International News Photos’

the judge from below.

Lynching, Georgia (p. 45; Fig. 79). The caption for Law-

The Vachon photograph, cropped by Rosskam to con-

rence’s Panel 14 reads: “Among the social conditions that

centrate the image, captures the realistic details of the

existed which was partly the cause of the migration was

scene, such as the contrasting expressions and body lan-

the injustice done to the Negroes in the courts.”

guage of the two figures standing before and looking up

In Lawrence’s courtroom scene two dark figures ap-

at the judge. The gesticulating hand and animated facial

proach the bench, from which a white judge stares down

expression of the well-dressed black woman as she

at them. The empty background, a pale gray-brown

makes her argument and the composed face and defi-

square behind the judge, and the rectangular panels of

antly crossed arms of her male companion draw our at-

his bench that confront the litigants suggest that the

tention to a potential confrontation. Three framed por-

128  the great migr ation

traits of white men look down from the walls to remind everyone of courtroom traditions and the power of the

the migration series and fortune

state out of the couple’s reach. The sitting judge is a portly white man in a suit, tapping the tips of his fingers together

In November 1941, Fortune magazine published Law-

as if contemplating how to phrase his ruling. Beside him

rence’s Migration series as an eight-page spread (Fig.

another white man (and perhaps a second man) stare

80), with full-color reproductions of twenty-six panels,

down at the litigants. We sympathize with the black couple,

giving an unprecedented boost to the artist’s career. Alain

whose faces we can see and read, but our spatial position

Locke, who had mentored Lawrence, and Edith Halpert,

is with the white men. In this case, we are on the side of

who planned to show the entire series in her Downtown

the Law—looking down upon the litigants, who may suc-

Gallery briefly in November and for her major exhibition in

ceed, or not, with their pleas and petitions.

December, could not have been more pleased with the

On the page facing the Vachon couple is the Interna-

Fortune spread.60 Consulting with the Fortune staff, Locke

tional News Photo of the bullet-riddled bloodied torso of

wrote to his good friend Peter Pollack, director of the

a barefoot lynched man slumped against a young tree, his

South Side Community Center in Chicago, just before

overalls ripped and his head twisted to the side by the

the issue of Fortune was published: “I have seen the Law­

noose. Eight men surround him and the tree, crowding to­

rence Fortune lay-out. It is one of the most imposing things

gether for inclusion in the photograph that has captured

I have seen. The story, stressing social significance of the

the spectacle. They gaze at the photographer, while the

migrations is a masterpiece. Was done by the whole staff

nearest man, on the left, looks at the victim, who has been

at several of our suggestions. The new masses [New

identified as Lint Shaw.55 As in so many photographs of

Masses] couldn’t have done this thing better, and in this

lynched victims, many of them produced as souvenir

pluto­cratic magazine, I just cant believe it.”61 Fortune’s

postcards, the abject body became symbolic—to racists

article was unsigned and was, indeed, a surprising text

such images provided evidence of white men’s vindictive

for Henry Luce’s premier business magazine—or was it?

triumph over their fear of black men’s power.56 The images

A receptive audience was developing within the busi-

in the form of postcards were also instruments of terror

ness world for imagery of the African American migrants

to warn black men and women.57

coming north to work in industry. When Fortune magazine

In contrast, Lawrence’s Panel 15 (Fig. 62) reads: “An-

published the Migration spread, the nation was gearing

other cause was lynching. It was found that where there

up for war production.62 Luce’s often-quoted “American

had been a lynching, the people who were reluctant to

Century” essay, published in the February 17, 1941, issue

leave at first left immediately after this.” A lone figure,

of Life, projected an ideal of the United States as an in-

dressed in red, sits hunched over on a rock. Over the figure

ternational economic leader and humanitarian provider

a solitary tree branch extends from the right, an empty

for the entire world. But, warned Luce, this “will not hap-

noose looped around it. It is a minimalist scene, with al-

pen unless our vision of America as a world power in-

most two-thirds of the picture consisting of a thin wash of

cludes a passionate devotion to great American ideals . . .

light gray-brown. It is similar to the gray-brown Lawrence

a love of freedom, a feeling for the equality of opportunity,

used in his courtroom scene, except that here the shape is

a tradition of self-reliance and independence and also of

fluid, suggesting sky, perhaps water, or the elegiac thoughts

co-operation.”63

58

The media of painting and pho-

To Luce and others, the image of the racially integrated

tography offer different possibilities to artists. The paint­er

factory would be a necessary step toward that vision of

uses color abstractly for symbolic purposes to express

equality of opportunity. The image was needed immedi-

of the mourning figure.

the endurance of the survivor; the news service photo-

ately; the reality could come later. The picture magazines

graph, attentive to detail and facial expressions, gives

of 1941 were filled with articles on defense and positive,

immediate evidence of the horrors of lynching and its de­

almost propagandistic, advertisements for the American

humanizing effects on the participants.59

war industry, running efficiently and conflict-free. But the

the great migr ation  129

Fig 80   Twenty-six panels from Jacob Lawrence’s Migration series as they appeared in Fortune (November 1941).

images did not yet include African Americans. The black

The eight-page spread in Fortune was titled “ ‘. . . And

press had a similar focus, but their images depicted Afri-

the Migrants Kept Coming’: A Negro Artist Paints the Story

can Americans. For example, the Crisis, the journal of the

of the Great American Minority.” The first page of text,

NAACP, ran pictures of African American soldiers in the

which included a photograph of Lawrence, discussed

184th and 349th field artillery regiments in the May 1941

some of the points he was making in his captions, adding

issue; in July 1941 it advertised an NAACP conference, the

an appeal to industry: “The Negro is one-tenth of the U.S.

theme of which was “The Negro in National Defense.” In

population, and as the nation strives to develop the full

August the Crisis ran an article, “A Call to Negro Youth,”

measure of its strength it cannot for long ignore that one-

about the need for Negro youth in industry, particularly

tenth—or the problems it both faces and creates.” The

in the defense industry. The cover of the November 1941

page concludes:

issue pictured a young black man working with sheet metal in a Hampton Institute shop. Thus, to Luce’s editors, Lawrence’s pictures could have seemed a first step—im-

A few months ago the Negro leader A. Philip Randolph, head of the Pullman porters union, announced plans for a “March on Washington” to protest against discrimination facing Ne-

ages heralding the inevitability of African Americans in

groes in the army, in industry, in every phase of the defense

the workforce and cautioning against the repercussions

program. Fifty thousand Negroes pledged themselves ready

if racism continued.

to march July 1. Then on June 25 President Roosevelt issued

130  the great migr ation

an executive order to end discrimination and to implement it

Filled with statistics about labor needs in industry and

the OPM [Office of Production Management] established its

the barriers to Negro employment, the article—like all

Committee on Fair Employment Practice with two Negro

Fortune articles—is unsigned. The essay delivered a

members. Randolph’s 50,000 marchers primarily wanted jobs,

pointed message warning businessmen of the human

of course, but they also wanted more—the chance to belong.

damage of racism. The full-color, full-page frontispiece to the article fea-

It was shrewd of Fortune’s editors to insert a tacit warning

tured a painting by Romare Bearden; the article itself in-

that African Americans might take to the streets and join

cluded six more reproductions, in both color and black-

Randolph’s threatened march on Washington if business-

and-white, of paintings and drawings by Charles Alston.

men did not take a more conciliatory stance toward the

Alston’s representations of the war industry incorporate

black working class.64

workers integrated by race, but his scenes of barracks

The shorter texts on the subsequent pages of the For­

life depict only black soldiers—the reality of the segre-

tune spread pull no punches, although they, too, end on a

gated army. The caption describing camp life points out

positive, feel-good note for their business readership. “But

“the liability of segregation.”68

even in the segregation and discrimination he endures the Negro is finding strength. If he cannot achieve dignity in the eyes of the whites, he can create a racial pride that somewhat compensates—and he does. If he can­not make any individual headway in a white world, he can make collective headway if he learns to make the weight of his

the critical and popular reception of the migration series

numbers felt. . . . He has the ballot.”65 Conveniently, Law-

By June 1942 the Museum of Modern Art and the Phillips

rence had painted Panel 58, showing African Americans at

Collection in Washington, D.C., had purchased Lawrence’s

the polls.

Migration panels; MoMA got the even numbers, and the

In June 1942 Fortune ran a second long article on Af-

Phillips, the odd.69 After a showing at the Phillips, the paint­

rican Americans, “The Negro’s War,” the subtitle of which

ings began to tour the country in October 1942.70 Two

read: “One-tenth of the U.S. population still has not a full

weeks before the exhibition opened at the first venue,

share in America’s greatest undertaking. Nine-tenths may

an assistant at MoMA wrote to Roy Stryker at FSA, re-

have to pay the costs of wasteful discrimination.”66 The

questing five FSA photographs for use in a collage she

text urged integration in industry and rehearsed the toll

planned to send along with the traveling exhibition.71 The

of segregation:

photographs were Delano’s Sharecropper, Georgia; Lange’s Hoeing Cotton, Alabama (see Fig. 74); Lee’s

The Negro has grown with America.  .  .  . He is molded by

Church Service, Illinois and Negro Housing, Chicago, Ill.

American patterns of life. He has shared everything with his

(Fig. 81); and Rosskam’s Boy in Front of Apartment House,

American contemporaries, particularly their disillusionment.

Chicago, Ill. (Fig. 82), all of which had been reproduced

But his is a specific skepticism: the fierce violent skepticism

in 12 Million Black Voices.72 The MoMA staff evidently saw

of a very young race. He lives in America, but then again he

the connection between Lawrence’s panels and Wright’s

does not. Reminded every day of his color, sometimes he can’t help thinking with his skin; worse even, sometimes his skin thinks for him. This is the irrational toll on his, and America’s, rational way of life—an ever present irritation, the steady denial of a normal American existence. . . .

and Rosskam’s photo book. The Migration panels returned for an exhibition in the MoMA auditorium gallery from October 10 to Novem-  ­ber 5, 1944, at a time when World War II was at its most

The American Negro is agitated not because he is asked to

intense.73 The U.S. Army had invaded Normandy the

fight for America but because full participation in the fight is

preceding June and was slowly advancing through Europe;

denied him. He is humiliated as a Negro because he is not fully

Italy had fallen, and some of the most harrowing battles

accepted as an American.67

were occurring in the Pacific.74 The exhibition elicited the

the great migr ation  131

Fig 81   Russell Lee, Negro Housing, Chicago, Ill. Photo in Richard Wright and Edwin Rosskam, 12 Million Black Voices: A Folk History of the Negro in the United States (New York: Viking Press, 1941), 115. Library of Congress, Farm Security Administration Collection. Fig 82   Edwin Rosskam, Boy in Front of Apartment House, Chicago, Ill. Photo in Richard Wright and Edwin Rosskam, 12 Million Black Voices: A Folk History of the Negro in the United States (New York: Viking Press, 1941), 137. Library of Congress, Farm Security Administration Collection.

most extensive press coverage of Lawrence’s work to

ticulate the essentials. Detail is suppressed except where

date, with critics praising both his unique modernist style

it functions both as part of design and basic part of fact.

and his choice of subject. Emily Genauer wrote in the

His steep perspective generates immediacy.”77

New York World-Telegram and Sun that she liked Law-

The artist Elizabeth Catlett spoke for the African Ameri-

rence’s modern style, his “splendid gift for color and de-

can community when she wrote in the People’s Voice: “One

sign, integrating both into compositions distinguished by

cannot look at these seemingly simple portrayals of the

their highly sophisticated treatment of blocky, almost

startling lack of the bare necessities of life, the frustra­

primitive forms.”75

tions and complexities of daily struggle, and the deter-

The reviewer for Art Digest, in contrast, focused on Law­

mined mass movement towards democratic equality, of

rence’s subject matter in the Migration paintings: “They

these Negroes without a decided self examination.”78 To

picture the lot of the Negroes in the agricultural South,

Catlett, however, the artistic achievement rested on his

and the results, both good and bad, of transplanting 

successful alloy of subject and style. To her, the young

them in large quantities into the war plants of the urban,

artist was already “one of America’s truly great painters”

industrial North at a time of national crisis. No profes-

because “his style of painting with almost elemental color

sional sociologist could have stated the case with more

and design is a perfect means for the expression of the

clarity—or dignity.”76 In Art News, Aline Louchheim agreed

fundamental needs of the Negro. There are no fripperies,

that Lawrence’s modernist style went beyond notions of

no superficialities, no unnecessary additions. He strips

pure painting: “The way Lawrence sees is in terms of

his material to the bone.”79 These critics recognized that

pattern in bright primary color, unmodulated . . . and in

Lawrence had forged a modernism—characterized by

simplification of form. Form is simplified in order to ar-

clarity of form, a reductive range of color, the absence of

132  the great migr ation

tonal variations, and simplified spatial relations—that ex­

I painted the Great Migration Series when I was a young man.

pressed deeply felt and immediate social concerns.

Still, when I go back to those paintings, I see once more the

That these voices should blend into a rousing chorus of

symbols of people on the move. I want to say this again: I don’t

admiration for the Migration series is not difficult to under-

think black people in making this movement just contributed

stand. Consciously or not, Lawrence had his hand on the pulse of America in early 1940 when he first proposed the series to the Julius Rosenwald Fund as a pro­ject worthy of a fellowship. For different, often over­lapping, reasons a wide audience was in place to respond—African American integrationists, white liberals, leftist art­ists, and capitalist businessmen.

to their own development. They contributed to American development. And I know now, from decades of further experiences, that these paintings tell an even larger, universal story. This is important because, for me, a painting should have three things: universality, clarity and strength. Clarity and strength so that it may be aesthetically good. Universality so that it may be understood by all men. It is necessary in creating a painting to find out as much as

Given his enormous talent and the encouragement he

possible about one’s subject, thereby freeing oneself of hav-

received from major figures in the cultural and artistic

ing to strive for a superficial depth. I hope you and all of your

worlds, Lawrence was in the right place at the right time

colleagues on this production will seek to know all you can

to undertake such an ambitious project as picturing the

about the migration and its meanings. My wish is also that

Great Migration. He created a didactic public art, capable

you will bring to the production a sense of the vital, strong

of educating and inspiring Americans looking for jobs

and pulsating beat that has always been humanity. In this

(and hiring for jobs) in industry. His visual and textual sources were diverse—ranging from documentary photographs, to film, to New York modernism, and from books and pamphlets in the Schomburg Collection to streetcorner lectures, poetry readings in Harlem art centers, political meetings, and the stories he recalled from his family—but the resulting work of art sprang from his core understanding of history and the nature of modernity and from his belief in the future.

way, you will tell the story I’ve articulated through my paintings and make it yours. 80

In 2000, some sixty years had passed since Lawrence wrote in his application to the Julius Rosenfeld Fund that the migration had “affected the whole of America mentally, economically and socially.”81 His feelings had become deeper, and he stressed again that the migration had influenced the totality of American development. Lawrence’s beliefs, the premises behind his statement, had matured

n

through the years. A people’s willing embrace of risk,

Shortly before he died, in 2000, Lawrence wrote to a tele­

struggle, and change defines their modernity. To Law-

vision production company that had planned to in­corpo­

rence, our understanding of that story, that we are you, is

rate the panels of the Migration series into a production:

also the measure of our humanity.

the great migr ation  133

5

confrontations with the jim crow south in the

1940 s

To be Jim Crowed hurts my soul. To have on my uniform and have to be Jim Crowed. . . . I want to beat Jim Crow first . . . Hitler’s over yonder, and Jim Crow is here.

langston hughes, speaking through his fictional black Everyman, Simple, in the Chicago Defender (1943) Meaning does not adhere in events themselves, but depends for its interpretation on the social, cultural, and political arena in which the narratives of events are circulated, the values of those telling the story, and those listening.

dora apel, Imagery of Lynching (2004)

In 1940–41, when Jacob Lawrence painted his epic Migra­

traditions, and the petty humiliations that African Ameri-

tion series of sixty panels, he had never visited the South.

cans in the South experienced daily. Many of his southern

He relied on the accounts circulating in his community

images are more than on-the-spot views of southern

and on his own research at the 135th Street Harlem

scenes—they express the moral shock that he, a north-

branch of the New York Public Library, where he studied

ern, urban African American artist, must have experi-

books and other materials on African American culture

enced during his southern travels.

that had been amassed by the bibliophile Arthur Schomburg. When he finished the series, he resolved to see the South for himself. As I noted in Chapter 2, the Julius Rosenwald Fund renewed his fellowship, which would give him financial security for 1941–42. The $150 payment he received from Fortune magazine, when it optioned the publication of his Migration series, enabled him and his fellow artist Gwendolyn Knight to get married on July 24, 1941. Shortly thereafter, Lawrence traveled to New Orleans to locate housing for him and his wife, who joined him within a few weeks.

harlem’s views of the south On that first trip to New Orleans Lawrence was just easing into the actual South and its culture. He remarked to an interviewer in 1961: It was my first trip South.  .  .  . I was very involved with the South. I had just completed my first migration series without ever having seen the South. I picked New Orleans to go to. I didn’t realize it wasn’t a typical Southern City. . . . I think . . .

In the course of three more trips to the South during

that any Negro person has a strong relationship to the South,

the 1940s, Lawrence became increasingly disturbed by a

even if he wasn’t born there. Twenty years ago, if you weren’t

way of life founded on racist terror, Jim Crow laws and

born in the South, your parents were. Your life had a whole

Fig 83   Rampart Street, 1941. Tempera on paper, 237⁄8 x 181 ⁄16 in. (60.6 x 45.9 cm). Collection of the Portland Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Jan de Graaff.

Southern flavor; it wasn’t an alien experience to you even if

of Colored People had become involved, and they used to

you had never been there.1

keep a record of how many blacks were killed. I was aware of these things, but not in an intellectual way.”5

Indeed, much of Harlem, especially the food in its restau-

Lynching—as a brutal assault on the body and the psyche,

rants, the blues and jazz music in its bars and clubs, and

as a weapon of terrorism to ensure social control—often

the soft drawls of the newly arrived migrants, continually

trumped the pleasant memories.

reminded the majority of Harlemites of their southern roots. 2

Newspaper reports also shaped Lawrence’s knowledge of the South. During the 1930s, when Lawrence was an

Objective assessments and personal memories often

impressionable youngster newly arrived in Harlem, black

merge in perceptions of the South. In 1943 the writer

newspapers such as the New York Amsterdam News, the

George S. Schuyler asked: “Just what do Negroes, by and

Chicago Defender, the Pittsburgh Courier, and the Balti­

large, think about the South?” He answered his own ques-

more Afro-American carried national and local stories

tion as follows: “Well, their thoughts about Dixie are simi-

that helped form public opinion in the black community.

lar to the opinion of Jews about Germany. They love the

These newspapers served as bulletin boards for civic and

South (especially if they are Southern-born) for its

society events, and they provided outlets for black busi-

beauty, its climate, its fecundity and its better ways of

nesses to advertise their products and services. The ma-

life; but they hate, with a bitter, corroding hatred, the

jor newspapers hired their own news photographers and

color prejudice, the discrimination, the violence, the cru-

editorial cartoonists, but they also used photographs

dities, the insults and humiliations, and the racial segre-

from the news services.6 Along with news about the De-

gation of the South, and they hate all those who keep

pression, unemployment, and instances of Jim Crow seg-

these evils alive.”3 Langston Hughes also compared the

regation in the North, the writers and editors of the Am­

South to Nazi Germany when reporting, in his Chicago

sterdam News, for example, consistently reported on

Defender column of December 19, 1942, on a conversa-

lynchings, on the failures of southern lawmakers to bring

tion he had had with a black soldier on furlough. When he

the murderers to justice, on the NAACP’s efforts to per-

asked the soldier how he liked Texas, the soldier re-

suade Congress to pass antilynching legislation, and on

sponded, “Like a Jew likes Germany.”4 The attitudes ex-

the nationally publicized court trials and appeals of the

pressed by Schuyler and the soldier Hughes interviewed

nine Scottsboro Boys and the labor organizer Angelo

applied to the 1930s as well, except that writers were

Herndon.

more vocal during World War II, when tensions peaked

Lawrence certainly read and looked at the Amsterdam

between local southerners and the thousands of African

News or at least listened to the adults who spent eve-

American soldiers from the North then stationed in the

nings talking and drinking at the 306 studio of Charles

South.

Alston and Henry Bannarn, who were themselves fre-

As a lad Lawrence naturally had heard such mixed re-

quently featured in the Amsterdam News as noteworthy

ports about the South from his family; his mother’s peo-

artists.7 In the opinion of the many reporters, writers, and

ple were from Alexandria, Virginia, and his father’s, from

editors on the staff, the South was a place of unspeak-

the Beaufort area of South Carolina. Lawrence, like all

able humiliations and brutal lynchings. In the Amsterdam

children, absorbed many of his parents’ memories of the

News on January 8, 1930, for example (the year Law-

South selectively, and he merged those partial memories

rence arrived in Harlem), there was a review of Walter

with his growing understanding of his own world—the one

White’s Rope and Faggot: A Biography of Judge Lynch, a

he was creating, which was also creating him. In 1982 he

searing indictment of lynchings in the South. White, a

recalled to a journalist: “When I was about three or four

light-skinned African American and field secretary of the

years [old] . . . there were a lot of racial problems, par-

NAACP, had managed to “pass” while traveling through

ticularly in the South. My folks used to talk about the

the South collecting data and doing research for his

lynchings. The National Association for the Advancement

book. 8 “Lynchings” were acts of mob violence, outside

136  confrontations with the jim crow south

the law and often hastily organized, that resulted in indi-

available information about their families and the circum-

viduals’ mutilation and death. Often the victim was first

stances of the crime.11 In feature stories and photographs,

tortured, then killed by a gun or dragged by a truck; body

the Amsterdam News followed the legal saga of the

parts were often severed or mutilated, and the body

Scottsboro Boys, nine black teenagers accused of raping

burned. The rope, tied to the branch of a tree or the

two white women on a freight train passing through Ala-

structure of a bridge, held up the victim as a spectacle, a

bama on the night of March 25, 1931. Languishing in a

sign of the white community’s power to control its black

Scottsboro, Alabama, jail and threatened by lynch mobs

population.9 The frontispiece of White’s book was George

outside, all but one of the youths were given the death

Bellows’s lithograph of 1923, The Law Is Too Slow. In Bel-

sentence when the local defense attorneys bungled the

lows’s nighttime scene the black figure’s contorted body

first trial. The International Labor Defense, supported by

suggests he is being burned alive. The crowd of white

the Communist Party, came to their defense for the retri-

men, some in overalls and some in suits, band together

als. Ruby Bates, one of the young women who had made

to witness the spectacle. A figure at the right rakes the

the original accusation, recanted and came to Harlem to

fire that glows in the center of the composition.

raise money for the Scottsboro Boys’ legal fund.12

The Amsterdam News did not stint in reporting lynch-

Another figure in the news who faced Jim Crow justice

ings; such stories deserved and received front-page cov-

was Angelo Herndon, a black communist labor organizer

erage. For example, in a four-month period in mid-1930,

convicted of “inciting insurrection” when he led a march

articles and editorials on specific incidents appeared in

of unemployed blacks and whites in Atlanta, Georgia, in

the following issues:

1932.13 Such legal cases and the continuing brutalities of lynch mobs led the NAACP to put its efforts into promot-

April 16, 1930—lynching of a Pullman porter in ­Georgia

ing antilynching bills in Congress. The Amsterdam News

April 30, 1930—lynching in Mississippi

duly reported the painfully slow progress of these bills. To

May 14, 1930—lynching in Sherman, Texas

the consternation of the black press, President Roosevelt declined to speak out on the issue, a transparent admis-

June 4, 1930—lynching attempt in Oklahoma

sion of his reluctance to alienate white southern Demo-

June 11, 1930—editorial on lynching

crats, whose support he needed for his New Deal legisla-

July 23, 1930—editorial on lynching August 13, 1930—double lynching in Indiana August 20, 1930—lynching in North Carolina

tion and his own reelection.14 The NAACP and the Communist Party competed for public approval in their efforts to make progress against lynchings, and both organizations also realized how cultural events, such as art exhibitions, could make the pub-

In September, three more issues of the weekly carried

lic aware of lynchings. In 1935 supporters of each organi-

reports or editorials about lynchings. The NAACP, which

zation mounted two controversial art exhibitions on the

provided statistics to the Amsterdam News, the Chicago

subject of lynchings.15 Lawrence was not then experienced

Defender, and other newspapers, reported that in 1932

enough as an artist to participate, but he knew many of

there had been eight lynchings; in 1933, twenty-eight; in

the artists who submitted work, including Bannarn and

1934, fifteen; and in 1935, twenty.10

Alston, who were his teachers at the time. It is highly likely

By the mid-1930s the Amsterdam News had added im-

that the young artist saw both exhibitions.

ages to its reports of lynchings, both actual photographs,

The NAACP exhibition, An Art Commentary on Lynch­

such as the lynching of Rubin Stacey in Florida in its No-

ing, opened at the Arthur U. Newton Galleries, at 11 West

vember 20, 1937, issue, and editorial cartoons, such as

Fifty-seventh Street, on February 15, 1935, and ran for

“Impatience,” by William C. Chase, shown in its Septem­

two weeks.16 Thirty-nine artists (showing fifty-six art-

ber 21, 1935, issue (Figs. 84 and 85). The Amsterdam

works) were included in the show, among them the black

News made a point of giving the names of victims and all

artists Henry W. Bannarn, Samuel J. Brown, E. Simms

confrontations with the jim crow south  137

Fig 84   “Justice, à la Dixie,” New York Amsterdam News, November 20, 1937. The caption reads in part: “Little children are amused at the

body of Rubin Stacey, hanging from a Florida tree.” Courtesy New York Amsterdam News. Fig 85  William C. Chase, “Impatience,” New York Amsterdam News, September 21, 1935. Image courtesy New York Amsterdam News. Fig 86   “Judge Lynch Presides” by T.  R. Poston, with photo of the Thomas Hart Benton painting A Lynching, New York Amsterdam News, March 2, 1935. Art © T.  H. Benton and R.  P. Benton Testamentary Trusts/UMB Bank Trustee/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. Newspaper image courtesy New York Amsterdam News.

Campbell, William C. Chase, Allan Freelan, Jay Jackson,

painting A Lynching (Fig. 86), a work included in the

Wilmer Jennings, Malvin Gray Johnson, William Mosby,

NAACP show.19

Prentiss Taylor, and Hale Woodruff. The New York Am­

The second exhibition, Struggle for Negro Rights, held

sterdam News reviewer urged readers to visit the exhibi-

at the ACA Gallery, at 52 West Eighth Street, from March

tion, declaring, “There is displayed the disgrace of so-

3 to March 16, contained more radical images. It was

called Western civilization in all its depraved glory and

sponsored by the John Reed Club, the Artists’ Union, the

stark realism.”17 In the February 23 issue of the Amster­

Artists’ Committee for Action, the League of Struggle for

dam News, T. R. Poston’s long article “Judge Lynch Pre­

Negro Rights, the International Labor Defense, and the

sides” elaborated on the recent history of lynchings,

Vanguard, all of which had members associated with the

especially the vicious lynching of Mary Turner, a pregnant

Communist Party. No black artists were in the ACA show,

woman slain after she protested her husband’s lynch-

although Aaron Douglas participated in the organizing

ing.18 A second part of this article, in the March 2 issue,

committee. 20 Several artists participated in both shows,

included a reproduction of Thomas Hart Benton’s oil

including José Clemente Orozco, Samuel Becker, Aaron J.

138  confrontations with the jim crow south

Goodelman, Harry Sternberg, and Isamu Noguchi. The

and the Suppression of Lynching.”22 Within two years

New York Amsterdam News did not review the ACA show,

Lawrence would be studying at the American Artists

but the New Masses did, praising it over the NAACP ex-

School, whose faculty included Harry Sternberg, Philip

hibition because of the “absence of religious ‘praying

Reisman, Walter Quirt, and Louis Lozowick, all of whom

pictures,’ and more important the presence of ‘fighting

contributed to the ACA show.

pictures.’ ”21 For the slim ACA catalogue Angelo Herndon

Lynchings were not the only reason for blacks to avoid

wrote the brief essay “Pictures Can Fight!” which criti-

traveling to the South. Segregation afflicted housing,

cized the NAACP for relying only on Congress and the

schools, public facilities, and transportation. Jobs for

justice system to defeat lynchings. Herndon called for

blacks were menial and poorly paid, except for the few

direct action: “But the real truth is that we can only stop

WPA jobs available to them. Health care was inadequate,

lynching by stru gg le —by mass organization of white and

often fatally so; “whites only” hospitals would not admit

Negro workers, by mass defense, by mass pressure for a

blacks, and many Harlemites could recount famous in-

real fighting antilynching bill like the Bill for Negro Rights

stances when the victim of a car accident, such as the

confrontations with the jim crow south  139

singer Bessie Smith, died because he or she had to travel a distance to a black hospital after being turned away from one for “whites only.”23 The northern black press shaped public opinion through detailed stories of the travails of blacks in the South. The Amsterdam News reported on the many occasions when blacks fled the South after escaping from a chain gang or a lynch mob. One article of December 1937, “Escaped Twice from Prison Farms in South,” reported on Lewis Doe, who came to New York after his second escape from a South Carolina chain gang and was living respectably with his family. When he applied for a driver’s license, his past was discovered. The governor of South Carolina demanded his extradition, but Doe appealed to New York’s Governor Lehman. 24 Under the headline “Fears Dixie Mob, Says Southern Mob Waiting,” another reporter, in January 1938, wrote of interviewing a man named John Jones, whose family the New York Emergency Relief Board refused to aid because he was an official resident, not of New York, but of Oak City, North Carolina. The reporter summarized Jones’s story. He had sought asylum in New York because a North Carolina lynch mob was after him; it had all begun when he refused to purchase whiskey for a white man, and the angry white man retaliated. “Jones said he was in bed late that

Fig 87   William C. Chase, “Deporting Him, Eh?” New York Amster­ dam News, July 5, 1933. Image courtesy New York Amsterdam News.

night when the knocking sounded at the door of his little cabin. Mrs. Jones got up to answer the door, but Jones, hearing the mutterings of the mob escaped through a

headline of May 17, 1933, described a family walking to

window. . . . Many nights, Jones said, were spent by him

Harlem from South Carolina: “New Yorkers, Stranded in

in the bushes and the woods, trying to escape the fury of

Dixie, Walk 778 Miles Fleeing Peonage.” Mr. and Mrs.

the mob, inflamed by the passion of a white man who

Harry Thomas, New Yorkers, had gone south for a fu-

wanted a ‘nigger to buy him some whiskey.’ ” He finally

neral, but sickness in the family had delayed their return

borrowed money to escape to New York, and his family

and depleted their funds. When Harry Thomas found

followed. The article ends with Jones’s words: “All I want

work, at forty cents a day, he was paid in food supplies

is a chance to earn a living for my family. People in the

only, so that he was reduced to peonage. The family re-

North don’t know what it is to live in the South.”25 In an-

solved to escape but had to leave on foot. As Thomas

other instance, James Veeney, a jobless southerner,

explained to the reporter: “The whites down there won’t

sought legal help when a New Jersey judge ordered him

even give colored people lifts on that road any more. . . .

to return to Virginia or go to jail; the Amsterdam News ran

And you don’t dare tell them that you are going to New

an editorial cartoon by William  C. Chase in its July 5, 1933,

York. When they stop you and ask you, ‘nigger, where

issue, captioned “Deporting Him, Eh?” (Fig. 87).

you going?’ you have got to say that you are going to the

The North, of course, was not free of racism and preju-

next town. If you say New York they’ll take you and give

dice, but Harlemites visiting the South were appalled at

your head a good whipping. I know many poor souls who

the viciousness of the southern version. A front-page

got whipped like that.”26 Photographs of nicely dressed

140  confrontations with the jim crow south

people like the Thomases and their heartrending stories provided more evidence of daily ordeals in the South.

many of its time-worn customs and quaint traditions, it is a typical American city.” But Clark qualified the warm and

Nonetheless, the South still retained a romantic aura

evocative image he had just evoked: “However, despite its

for black migrants in the North; in spite of the horror sto-

remarkable advances in culture and industry—New Or-

ries, it represented “home.” Lawrence as a youth had been

leans has as yet to rid itself of many of the practices which

aware of his friends’ nostalgia for the South. His older

have helped keep the races apart. Today over 150,000

friend Romare Bearden had spent some of his grade

citizens of the city of New Orleans, approximately one-

school years in North Carolina and Maryland. 27 Charles

third of her entire population, are still the victims of sys-

Alston, Lawrence’s mentor, had gone to the South in

tematic segregation.”31 Clark’s book, packed with illustra-

1938, traveling throughout the region with a Farm Secu-

tions, statistics, a brief history of the city, and a proud

rity Administration supervisor and taking photographs,

account of the jazz musicians who played there, intended

which he may have shown to Lawrence upon his return to

to offer a profile of a “new type of Negro”—businessman,

the 306

studio. 28

artist, athlete—who was emerging even amid continuing

Lawrence was well aware of the literature of the South,

discrimination, segregation, and wage inequalities. One

much of which idealized its folkways. The folklorist Zora

learns from Clark that the local black newspapers, the

Neale Hurston presented in her realistic and compassion-

New Orleans Sentinel and the Louisiana Weekly, were good

ate novels, such as Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937),

resources for understanding the gains being made in the

sagas of southern rural black folk that explored their

city in spite of Jim Crow. 32

struggles to work, love, and survive. At his death Law-

The Lawrences went to New Orleans, however, not to

rence owned a copy of Jean Toomer’s Cane, the most

reform the bigots, to be schooled, or to frequent the jazz

poetic of the books published in the 1920s about black

clubs, but to paint. Once settled into their home at 2430

southern folk; Lawrence borrowed it from the public li-

Bienville Avenue, a black neighborhood two blocks north-

brary in 1939 and never returned it. 29

east of Canal Street, Lawrence worked on his John Brown series of twenty-two paintings. Few paintings by Knight

new orleans sojourn,

1941– 42

survive from the trip, but the evidence of her Untitled (New Orleans Series), 1941 (Fig. 88), suggests how much the

New Orleans “wasn’t a typical Southern City,” as Lawrence

color and the lushness of the private spaces of New Or-

came to realize. One booster, Peter Wellington Clark, who

leans appealed to her.33

published Delta Shadows: A Pageant of Negro Progress in

Lawrence kept up a correspondence with Edith Halp-

New Orleans at the time the Lawrences resided there,

ert, who wrote of her eagerness to have single pictures

described an idealized Louisiana and New Orleans:

from him that she could show in her exhibition American Negro Art: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, scheduled

Deep down in the bosom of the Southland slumbers Louisiana,

to have its preview opening on December 8, 1941.34 Law-

gem of a colonial empire, gate-way to the Gulf, land of moon-lit

rence obliged by shipping four pictures to her, all dealing

splendor, of moss-covered magnolias and cypress-shaded

with “the life of Negroes here in New Orleans,” Rampart

bayous, storehouse of sulphur, oil, of rice and sugar cane.

Street, Catholic New Orleans, The Green Table, and Bar

Deeper still, in Louisiana’s delta region, lies New Orleans, favorite daughter of “Ol’ Man River,” whose muddy waters empty into the warm, green depths of the Gulf of Mexico. . . . No other metropolis of the South can surpass New Orleans for its romantic past; few can rival it for its inter-mixture of races, creeds and nationalities. 30

and Grill,35 but Halpert showed only The Green Table and Catholic New Orleans in that exhibition. Rampart Street (see Fig. 83) appeared in a group exhibition of watercolors at the Downtown Gallery in January 1942. One of the main thoroughfares in black New Orleans—at the edge of the French Quarter, a block above

In his book Clark disagreed with Lawrence’s sense of New

Burgundy Street—Rampart Street had stores, pawn­

Orleans as different, claiming that although “it retains

shops, nightclubs, and the Patterson Hotel, as well as the

confrontations with the jim crow south  141

Fig 88   Gwendolyn Knight, Untitled (New Orleans Series), 1941. Gouache on paper, 131 ⁄2 x 123⁄4 in. (34.3 x 32.4 cm). The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, Gift of the Phillips Contemporaries, 2001. Art © 2009 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation, Seattle/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Rhythm Club and the Tick Tock Tavern, where some of the jazz bands played.36 Whereas a typical tourist view, like the one depicted in Delta Shadows (Fig. 89), displayed a wide-angle view of a scene, Lawrence presented a visual montage of the quarter’s bustling activity—with crowded sidewalks, signage, and the clusters of three round yellow globes that represent pawnshops and signify a tenuous economic stability. Halpert did not include Bar and Grill (Fig. 90), with its scene of racial segregation, in any of her exhibitions; she must have reasoned that the picture would not sell. Whether or not Lawrence ever saw such a long bar with a ceiling-to-floor divider separating spaces for white and black customers, the spare furnishings are telling. White

142  confrontations with the jim crow south

Fig 89   Patterson Hotel on New Orleans’ Famous Rampart Street, photo in Peter Wellington Clark, Delta Shadows: A Pageant of Negro Progress in New Orleans ([New Orleans]: Graphic Arts Studios, 1942).

Fig 90   Bar and Grill, 1941.

Gouache on paper, 16 3⁄4 x 223⁄4 in. (42.5 x 57.8 cm). Delaware Art Museum, Gift of the National Academy of Design, Henry Ward Ranger Fund.

customers have a ceiling fan; black customers have none.

wall of segregation Lawrence encountered in New Orleans;

The white bartender reads his newspaper comfortably on

a city ordinance of 1924 mandated residential segregation

the cool side of the room. The six whites and three blacks

there.39 The blue sky and white clouds in the picture sug-

represent the actual demographic ratio of New Orleans in

gest a freedom beyond the wall, but the wall itself presents

1941.

a formidable barrier to the family on the street. Lawrence’s

Soon after the first shipment to Halpert, Lawrence sent

pictures, never mere depictions, are re-presentations—

her four more New Orleans scenes, only one of which,

inventions that convey his emotional responses by way of

Interior, she included in the aforementioned watercolor

a combination of realism and symbolism.

exhibition of 1942.37 Halpert did not include Bus (Fig. 91),

For Lawrence in New Orleans, riding in the back of the

a typical New Orleans scene of racial segregation, with

bus when he needed transportation, Jim Crow segrega-

African Americans crowded into the rear of the bus while

tion was becoming part of the daily routine. But he must

the white passengers sit in the front. The laws of Louisiana

have realized that the pictures Halpert could sell were

required that African Americans sit in the back of public

scenes of the African American community without refer-

buses, and custom demanded that they step aside so that

ences to segregation. Charles Sheeler, one of the other

white Americans could board first. If the bus filled up, then

artists whose work Halpert handled, purchased Catholic

black Americans waiting in line could not board, and those

New Orleans.40 And Halpert delivered Alley to Duncan

already on board had to relinquish their seats to whites.38

Phillips, who had requested it for an exhibition at his gal-

Another New Orleans scene, one that Lawrence apparently

lery in Washington.41 Neither work makes a reference to

did not send to Halpert, is The Wall (Fig. 92), which shows

segregation.42

a black family out walking, with a large red brick wall

Lawrence finished the John Brown series in December

towering behind them. The picture’s title alludes to the

1941, and with the final payment from Fortune for the

confrontations with the jim crow south  143

Fig 91   Bus, 1941. Gouache on paper, 17 x 22 in. (43.2

x 55.9 cm). George and Joyce Wein Collection. Image courtesy Michael Rosenwald Gallery, LLC, New York, NY. Fig 92   The Wall, 1941. Gouache on paper, 221 ⁄2 x 18

in. (57.2 x 45.7 cm). Private collection, courtesy of Guggenheim, Asher Associates Inc., New York.

Fig 93   Spring Plowing, 1942. Gouache and tempera on composition board, 191 ⁄2 x 23 3⁄4 in. (49.5 x 60.3 cm). Greenville County Museum of Art. Museum purchase with funds donated by the Arthur and Holly Magill Foundation.

publication rights to the Migration series he made plans

be geometric. It’s clean.”47 Moreover, works such as

to live in rural Virginia for six months in order to study

Spring Plowing (Fig. 93) and Firewood lack the energy of

the life of rural African Americans.43 Originally Knight and

his urban scenes, where African Americans, whether seg-

Lawrence had planned to stay in New Orleans through

regated from whites or not, are connected to a modern

Mardi Gras, but when the pre-Lenten celebration was

working-class movement. In the end, Harlem called the

canceled because of wartime exigencies they left in Febru-

Lawrences back. The Julius Rosenwald Fund renewed his

ary for Lenexa, Virginia.44 In Lenexa, a small rural com-

fellowship, and they left Lenexa less than three months

munity about thirty miles east of Richmond, they stayed

after arriving there.48

with Lawrence’s relatives, the Tuppences. In the next two

Lawrence’s mentor Alain Locke understood the import

months Lawrence sent Halpert paintings of rural Virginia

of Lawrence’s contrasting views of the South and the

scenes, including Drawing Water and Firewood. But the

North. When Locke edited the November 1942 issue of

couple did not adjust to country living, or to Lawrence’s

Survey Graphic, he included black-and-white reproduc-

provincially minded relatives. As Gwendolyn Knight re-

tions of the artist’s work for a two-page spread. Titled

called in 2001: “It was not our sort of environment. We

“How We Live in South and North” (Fig. 94), it paired the

had very little in common—except we were all black. Typi­

southern scenes Firewood and Bus with Harlem and

cal rural people. Not concerned with their animals. They

Tombstones.49 The dreary scene of the rural South, where

thought Paul Robeson was ugly.”45 Knight’s attitudes re-

a woman chops firewood, contrasts with the vibrant

sembled those of other urban northerners, especially aca­

bird’s-eye view of Harlemites bustling along the city

demic sociologists, who typically saw rural southern black

streets. The segregated bus of the urban South contrasts

life as similar to that of preindustrial peasants.46 Lawrence’s drab and generally colorless rural southern

with the supportive community of a brownstone stoop with its men, women, children, and babies. Locke’s text

scenes—often of one or two people engaged in chores—

reads: “These four paintings were not planned as a unit;

suggest the antipathy he must have felt for that environ-

yet they flow together like the stanzas of a poem. One

ment. Formless clumps of soil and bushy trees were not

does not look to this gifted young Negro for realism so

his métier. He later told art writer Avis Berman, “I have

much as for the essence of realism. His records are full

always liked a certain kind of structure that happens to

of emotion.”50 Indeed, the Survey Graphic spread conconfrontations with the jim crow south  145

Fig 94   “How We Live in South and North,” Survey Graphic (November 1942).

veyed to readers the backwardness and segregation of

looks down on two girls, with chalk in hand, who have

the South and the better situation, no matter how prob-

covered the blue-gray sidewalk with large scrawls of pink

lematic, for African Americans in the North.

and white. Many of the girls’ stick figures suggest the war: at the upper right, an airplane drops bombs; to the left of it is a large American flag. A naval ship charges

back in harlem in

1942– 43

into the scene from the lower right with guns blasting, two stick figures on the upper deck, and an American flag

Because Lawrence had the Rosenwald Fellowship to sup-

aft. At the upper left one of the two boxers may represent

port him for a third year, he managed to receive two de-

Joe Louis, the “Brown Bomber,” who had joined the army.

ferments from his draft board that enabled him to plan,

The triangular figure holding a cane—a walking toy popu-

research, and paint his panels of the Harlem series

lar at the time—suggests that business-as-usual has been

through the summer of 1942.51 The Harlem paintings did

set askew, almost turned upside down. At lower left one

not refer to the war, but another painting, Sidewalk Draw­

of the girls, in a bright orange dress, completes a picture

ings (Fig. 95), presages his involvement in it. The viewer

of an armory, so identified by its crenellated roofline and

146  confrontations with the jim crow south

Fig 95   Sidewalk Drawings, 1943. Gouache on paper, 223⁄8 x 291 ⁄2 in. (56.8 x 74.9 cm). Private collection.

American flag. The other girl, right of center and wearing

ist himself, creating images larger than himself that com-

a striped shirt, draws a picture that may be a self-por-

ment on the times.

trait. A sun near the lower edge smiles, reassuring the girls and the neighborhood that all is right. James Porter might have been studying this picture when he wrote of Lawrence in his book Modern Negro Art (1943): “Freshness of vision is the most charming quality

the “double v” war effort The war was on everyone’s mind. Although it was gener-

in this artist’s work. He sees the world anew for us. He

ally acknowledged that Jim Crow had taken over the mili-

has retained, from his age of innocence, that wholesome-

tary services, many prominent African Americans rallied

ness of comment that marks the effort of an unspoiled

to support the war effort after the Japanese attacked

artist.”

52

Lawrence may have been “unspoiled,” but the

Pearl Harbor, in Honolulu, on December 7, 1941. To them

sophisticated composition with its bird’s-eye perspective

Hitler’s racist fascism was unthinkable. In April 1942 the

and flattened space marks him as a skilled and conscious

popular minister Adam Clayton Powell Jr., writing for Com­

artist. The two girls can be seen as representing the art-

mon Sense, pointed out that “the thinking Negro knows

confrontations with the jim crow south  147

that if America loses the war, his plight as a Negro will be

teen African American notables spoke their minds, in-

much worse than it is now. Under democracy, however

cluding W. E. B. Du Bois, Roy Wilkins, A. Philip Randolph,

poorly realized, the Negro does have a fighting chance.”

Mary McLeod Bethune, George S. Schuyler, Langston

Several months later the literary historian J. Saunders

Hughes, and Sterling A. Brown. Although they all sup-

Redding, writing in H. L. Mencken’s American Mercury,

ported the war effort, almost all touched on the scandal

announced that he believed in “this war we Amer­icans

of a segregated army and navy. They believed the Jim

are fighting.” He agreed that “the ethnic theories of the

Crow South was imposing its way of life on the entire na-

Hitler ‘master folk’ admit of no chance of freedom” for

tion through military traditions and policies. They de-

people of color. “This is a war to keep men free. The

manded full citizenship and full equality for all blacks. A.

struggle to broaden and lengthen the road of freedom—

Philip Randolph, the head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping

our own private and important war to enlarge freedom

Car Porters and an influential civic leader, wrote part of

here in America—will come later.” To Redding that later

his essay as a manifesto:

war for racial equality was reason enough to fight for America now. In the November 1943 issue of the Crisis, the more

Be not deceived. This is not a war for freedom. It is not a war for democracy. . . .

conservative-minded George S. Schuyler pointed to the

It is a war to maintain the old imperialistic systems. It is a

positive pragmatic consequences of the war: “A pro-

war to continue “white supremacy,” the theory of Herrenvolk,

longed global conflict will bring [Negroes] greater oppor­

and the subjugation, domination, and exploitation of the

tunities, more social privileges, a larger share in the affairs

peoples of color. It is a war between the imperialism of Fas-

of state and a speedier integration into American life.” He

cism and Nazism and the imperialism of monopoly capitalist

pointed out the gains in employment because of the man-

democracy.

power shortage and predicted that “there will be a gradual

Under neither are the colored peoples free.57

breaking down of jim crowism in the armed services as the need for replacements grows.”53 The integration of

Randolph aimed to muster support for a march on Wash-

the military was indeed gradual; even though Executive

ington to demand that the government end segregation

Order 9981, integrating the military services, was signed

in all the areas of American life. Though President

by President Truman in 1948, there were still all-black

Roosevelt, under pressure from men such as Randolph,

units in the Korean War.54

Bayard Rustin, and A. J. Muste, had already signed, on

During World War II Jim Crowism in the armed ser-

June 25, 1941, the Fair Employment Act (Executive Order

vices continued to be a volatile reality. At the end of his

8802), prohibiting racial discrimination in government and

study of race relations in the country, To Stem This Tide:

the defense industry, it was clear to everybody that the

A Survey of Racial Tension Areas in the United States

laws against racial discrimination were not being

(1943), the black sociologist Charles S. Johnson con-

enforced.58

cluded: “To be commanded to die in time of war for the

The visual culture of the early war years reflects the

preservation of American institutions that denied the

tension between the government’s need to recruit black

means of earning a living in time of peace has been an

men to fight and its failure to end the ongoing segregation

Negroes.”55

Harlemites spoke of

and racism in the military. Joe Louis was recruited to be

the goals of the “Double V”—winning the war in Europe

poster boy, quite literally, for the army (Fig. 96). But the

unforgivable irony to the

and the Pacific and winning the war against discrimina-

editorial cartoonist William Chase continued to equate

tion in the United States.56 There is no doubt that the war

racism in the United States with that of Nazi Germany, as

effort exacerbated the frustrations of African Americans

in the drawing “Hitler Is Here!” that the New York Amster­

over racist Jim Crow laws, customs, and codes embed-

dam News reproduced in its June 26, 1943, issue (Fig. 97).

ded in the traditions of the military. In a timely book,

Many of Lawrence’s friends were already involved in the

What the Negro Wants, edited by Rayford W. Logan, four-

“Double V” war effort. I noted in Chapter 4 that both

148  confrontations with the jim crow south

Fig 96   Unidentified artist, Pvt. Joe Louis Says, 1942. Color photolithograph, 3915⁄16 x 267⁄16 in. (101.4 x 67.1 cm). National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution (NPG 88.24). Fig 97  William Chase, “Hitler Is Here!” New York Amsterdam News, June 26, 1943. Image courtesy New York Amsterdam News. Fig 98  Charles Alston, The Negro Press, 1944. Drawing for Office of War Information, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.

Charles Alston and Romare Bearden produced illustrations for Fortune magazine’s June 1942 spread “The Negro’s War.” Aimed at the nation’s businessmen and industrialists, the article advocated an end to segregation in the defense industries and the military services so that the country could fight an effective war. Alston also worked for the Office of War Information (OWI) in Washington, D.C., producing illustrations that were distributed to black newspapers to boost morale and support the war effort (Fig. 98). As Romare Bearden and Harry Henderson later observed, “Although he [Alston] had keenly felt the paradox of trying to rally support for a war against racism in segregated Washington, he had felt it was necessary, and he was proud that his work had helped arouse millions of black Americans to the Nazi danger.”59 Bearden himself enlisted as a private in the army in April 1942 and was assigned to the all-black 372nd Infantry, then stationed in New York City.60

confrontations with the jim crow south  149

lawrence’s experiences in the jim crow military Like many other Harlemites, Lawrence had little enthusiasm for entering the segregated armed services. In May 1943, when the radio host Randy Goodman asked Lawrence what his plans were, he joked, “My uncle is making my plans. I had my physical last Thursday.”61 Unable to secure another deferment, Lawrence was drafted and assigned to the Coast Guard on October 20, 1943, and his active duty began on November

3.62

After basic train-

ing at Curtis Bay, Maryland, he arrived in St. Augustine, ­Florida—probably in late November or early December— where he worked as a steward at an officers’ training school occupying the Hotel Ponce de Leon.63 Like the other armed services, the Coast Guard segregated its personnel by specialties: Lawrence, as an African American, was given the rating of Steward’s Mate, 3rd Class, which meant his main duties would be waiting on tables and janitorial work.

ment in St. Augustine still came as a shock to the two New York artists.66 One incident stood out in their mem­ories. When Gwen attended the Christmas dinner for the troops, a white woman—the wife of one of the recruits—refused to sit next to her.67 Lawrence later told Aline Louch­heim, “St. Augustine is a tight little town. You see and feel the prejudice everywhere.”68 Twenty years later he revealed to a Chicago Defender reporter that the black men quartered in the hotel had their possessions searched for knives because they were considered troublemakers when they went into town: “It was the tension of the situation within this segregation, that brought the bald fact of discrimination into focus for me.”69 In a letter to Halpert, written sometime between January 20 and probably mid-February 1944, Lawrence revealed some of his thoughts about the South: St. Augustine is a very dead city and really southern when it comes to Negroes. There is nothing beautiful here[;] everything is ugly and the people are without feeling. As a Negro I

Thus began Lawrence’s second encounter with south-

feel a tenseness on the streets and in the Hotel where I am

ern white culture. Unlike other African Americans in the

working—in fact, every where. In the North one hears much

Coast Guard, however, Lawrence would have a relatively

talk of Democracy and the four Freedoms, down here you

easy tour of duty. Edith Halpert, his New York dealer, was

realize that there [is] a very small percentage of people who

pulling strings to get him reassigned. He realized this

try to practice democracy. Negroes need not be told what

when he wrote to her after about a month spent in St.

Facism [sic] is like, because in the south they know nothing

Augustine: “This station is considered a choice spot for

else. All of this I am trying to get into my work. It is quite a job,

men in the Coast Guard. I think that your contact had a

as it cannot be done in a realistic manner. I have to use symbols

lot to do with them placing me here, as the officer knew of my work in Baltimore.” Lawrence also reported to Halpert that he had followed her advice by making himself known to his commanding officer, Captain Joe S. Rosenthal, who had provided him with “a studio to work

and symbols are very difficult to create, that is good strong ones. It takes me much longer to do a drawing than it took me to do a painting. And my drawings are very simple. So this is what I am doing[,] a series of drawing[s] on “How a Negro sees the South.” If they are good I would like to have them published. I will not send them to you, one and two at a

in, a very spacious and light room over his garage,” and

time, but when you do see them there will be many, as I am

told her that the captain had officially requested that

working steadily.70

Lawrence “be transferred to New York on permanent detail” to paint “pictures of the Coast Guard and their

Lawrence’s remarks about fascism echo those of Aaron

work.”64 Nevertheless, he felt frustrated by his current

Douglas at the American Artists’ Congress in February

assignment to work as a steward at an officers’ training

1936, when Douglas urged all artists to fight against fas-

school: “I feel further removed from the war now than I

cism: “If there is anyone here who does not understand

did when I was a civilian.”65 Meanwhile, his housing situ-

Fascism let him ask the first Negro he sees in the street.

ation allowed Gwen to visit him, which she did for several

The lash and iron hoof of Fascism have been a constant

weeks over the Christmas holidays.

menace and threat to the Negro ever since his so-called

Although Lawrence’s situation and his captain’s sup-

emancipation.”71 Lawrence would have agreed with Doug-

port exceeded his expectations, the Jim Crow environ-

las about the pervasiveness of racism in the North, but

150  confrontations with the jim crow south

Fig 99   Starvation, 1943. Brush and ink on paper, 13 x 11 in. (33 x 27.9 cm). Private collection. Photo: The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation/Art Resource, NY. Fig 100   Killing the Incurable and Aged, 1943. Brush and ink on

paper, 103⁄4 x 13 in. (27.3 x 33 cm). Private collection. Image courtesy Francine Seders Gallery, Seattle. Photo: Richard Nicol.

he wanted to emphasize in his letter to Halpert the social alienation he felt specifically about the South. Only two drawings from the group he described to Hal­

ment suggests either that the writer saw many more drawings, probably from Lawrence’s own collection, or that the two made an overwhelming impression on him.75

pert are known to exist: Starvation (Fig. 99) and Killing

Charles Johnson, the lead author of To Stem This Tide,

the Incurable and Aged (Fig. 100).72 The emaciated, child-

worried about the low morale of northern African Ameri-

like figure in Starvation has difficulty reaching up to for-

can servicemen who faced southern racism and the Jim

age for food in a garbage can in an alley where the door

Crow military: “Morale is the intangible spirit of collective

to a building has been nailed to prevent his entering. In

conscious enthusiasm for an enterprise. It is represented

Killing the Incurable and Aged, figures confined to their

at its best in the war in the quality of inspired courage

beds in a small, prisonlike ward have only numbered tags

and unconquerable devotion to a cause and country. . . .

to identify them. Their large heads symbolize their sen-

It is a quality that is felt and cannot be bought, or forced

tient qualities; their withered bodies, their neglect. These

or created merely for the sake of itself. But it makes a

powerful images suggest Lawrence’s distress at having to

vital difference when it is high and, though not necessar-

endure his Coast Guard assignment in the South.73

ily criminal, it can be dangerous to a cause when it is

It is not known whether Lawrence sent any of the draw-

low.”76 Johnson’s readers (he aimed his study at policy

ings to Halpert for sale, and no evidence indicates that

makers) would have been caught off guard by the word

she exhibited any at the Downtown Gallery.74 Later, the

criminal. That racism could drive good soldiers to crimi-

author of Lawrence’s profile in Current Biography noted

nal acts was alarming, although Johnson shrewdly quali-

the “humiliating discrimination” the Lawrences experi-

fies “criminal” with “not necessarily.”

enced in St. Augustine and said of these drawings: “He

Lawrence dealt with this racism by diverting his anger

exorcised his bitterness in drawings that departed radi-

to devising drawings as stinging as Starvation and Killing

cally in attitude from his usual compassion.” This com-

the Incurable and Aged. It is possible that so few of them

confrontations with the jim crow south  151

exist because Lawrence was transferred sometime in late

of which could be sold, but most had to be turned over to

February 1944 to Boston. He may simply not have had

the Coast Guard. Halpert arranged for eight of the Coast

the time to do the number he had projected. Wrangling good military situations for her gallery’s

Guard pictures to be shown, along with his Migration series, at the Museum of Modern Art in October 1944.81

artists was a concern for Halpert. When she wrote to

The remainder of his time in the Coast Guard could not

Lawrence on March 1, enthusiastic about his news of his

have gone better. When the Sea Cloud was decommis-

transfer, she noted: “We have had so many disappoint-

sioned, in November 1944, Lawrence commemorated the

ments in connection with the other artists associated with

event in a painting (Fig. 101). Lawrence was reassigned

the gallery who had been promised transfers and interest-

to the troop ship USS General Wilds P. Richardson, com-

ing assignments. Very few of them came through and I

manded by none other than Captain Joe Rosenthal, who

am therefore particularly pleased that the efforts of our

had attended the opening of Lawrence’s exhibition at the

friends were fruitful in your case.”77

Museum of Modern Art in October 1944 (Fig. 102). Law-

In Boston, Lawrence finally had a chance to do what he

rence continued to paint Coast Guard scenes that empha-

wanted. Captain Rosenthal had arranged for his reassign-

sized the daily routine of an integrated navy at work, such

ment to the USS Sea Cloud, a private yacht converted into

as Painting the Bilges (Fig. 103). In the lower reaches of

a weather boat, patrolling in the Atlantic, which became

the ship (Lawrence looks down on the scene), a black man

the navy’s first racially integrated

ship.78

His new com-

mander, Captain Carlton Skinner, knew of Lawrence’s

and white man bend over to paint the pipes and valves used to pump out the bilgewater.

talent and was fully supportive. The artist could now

He could have requested a discharge after the war of-

spend his time observing and painting Coast Guard men

ficially ended, in September 1945, but he opted to stay

at work. In May 1944 Lawrence wrote to Halpert of his

on because his ship was sailing for India, an opportunity

good fortune:

he did not want to miss.82 His Coast Guard tour of duty took him to Argentina in Newfoundland; Southampton,

My work is coming along very nicely. Although I am not work-

En­gland; Naples; Marseilles; Le Havre; Port of Spain, Trini-

ing under the most ideal conditions, I am able to do quiet [sic]

dad; Port Said, Egypt; and Karachi, India.83 Seven pen-and-

a bit. I feel very fortunate to be able to paint at all, for after all;

ink notebook drawings survive from these trips.84

this is War! I am very lucky to [sic], for the Captain is very

He received his discharge papers December 6, 1945,

sympathetic and understanding about painting. He has an

secure in the knowledge that he had also received a

interest in Art. He gives me all of Robert Coates Reviews [in

Guggenheim Fellowship with a stipend of $2,000.85 In his

the New Yorker] to read after he has read them, asking my appinion [sic] of them; or any other art reviews he has read. So you see as an artist that has been drafted I am not half as bad off as some of my fellows. . . . It is amazing how in spite of war, art continues on. I guess this only proves how vital and

“plan of work,” he proposed three subject areas: “Negro contemporary life in America,” “Negro historical and folk themes,” and “life in European countries under war conditions.” The resulting works were more pictures of Har-

alive it really is. Being out here at sea has really made me ap-

lem life; the fourteen panels of his War series, painted

preciate having a studio and being able to paint when and as

from 1947 to 1948; and three other pictures reflecting his

long as I wish to. That is just what we are fighting for, and if we

military memories; but none, at this time, of historical and

win (which I am sure we will) it will be well worth the time and

folk themes.

effort that all artists have put in fighting and not ­painting.79

The War series features an integrated military, with black and white men fighting side by side, as in Panel 8,

In early September he could report to Halpert that seven-

Beachhead (Fig. 104), and the effects of the war on the

teen completed paintings had been sent to the Coast

people at home, as in Panel 11, Casualty—The Secretary

Guard headquarters.80 He was also promoted to Specialist

of War Regrets (Fig. 105). Victory (Fig. 106) is a study for

3rd Class and assigned to public relations as an official

Panel 14, the last of the series, and shows a weary soldier,

combat artist. He continued to paint more scenes, some

his head bent down as if in prayer or mourning.

152  confrontations with the jim crow south

Fig 101   Decommissioning the Sea Cloud, 1944. (Also known as United States Coast Guard Boat.) Gouache on paper, 223⁄4 x 31 in. (57.8 x 78.7 cm). Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Burton Tremaine, Jr. Fig 102   Lawrence with Capt. Joe Rosenthal and Carl Van

Vechten at Museum of Modern Art opening, 1944. Por­ trait Collection: Jacob Lawrence. Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Cul­ ture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

Fig 103   Painting the Bilges, 1944. Gouache on paper, 307⁄8 x 225⁄8 in. (78.4 x 57.5 cm). Hirshhorn Museum

and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, The Joseph H. Hirshhorn Bequest, 1981. Photo: Lee Stals­ worth.

Fig 104   War, Panel 8: Beachhead, 1947.

Egg tempera on hardboard, 16 x 20 in. (40.6 x 5 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Roy R. Neuberger 51.13. Fig 105   War, Panel 11: Casualty—The

Secretary of War Regrets, 1947. Egg tempera on hardboard, 20 x 16 in. (50.8 x 40.6 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Roy R. Neuberger 51.16. Fig 106   Victory, 1947. Gouache and ink

on paper, 21 3⁄4 x 17 in. (55.2 x 43.2 cm). Private collection. Image courtesy DC Moore Gallery, New York.

Fig 107   Untitled [Sailors at a Bar], 1947. Tempera on paper, 151 ⁄2 x 193⁄4 in. (39.4 x 50.2 cm). Private collection. Image courtesy DC Moore

Gallery, New York.

In a statement written for the Downtown Gallery in Oc-

Lawrence considered the fourteen panels to be a series

tober 1947, Lawrence expresses his empathy for the men

that were not to be sold separately. As such they display

and women affected by the war:

a unity of mood that blends patriotism and determination with stoicism and acceptance of loss; there was no place

In approaching this subject, I tried to capture the essence of war. To do this I attempted to portray the feelings and emotions that are felt by the individual—both fighter and civilian. A wife or a mother receiving a letter from overseas; the next of kin receiving a notice of a casualty; the futility men feel when at sea or down in a foxhole just waiting, not knowing what part

for irony or quirkiness. In contrast, Untitled [Sailors at a Bar], done in 1947 (Fig. 107), and not part of the series, shows an integrated scene of soldiers and sailors enjoying themselves. Small figures at the edges, however, suggest that the revelry may be short-lived. An amputee

they are playing in a much broader and gigantic plan. Finally

in the distance at the upper right edge hobbles along

the shooting is over, the end of the war has come.

with his crutch. At far left a minister performs what ap-

I hope I have succeeded in this work to convey and portray a part of the feeling war creates. 86

156  confrontations with the jim crow south

pears to be a prayer service. These details hint at the tensions in Lawrence’s psyche—the sense that oppor­

tunities for such moments of relaxation and recreation

ples, Roger and Dorothy Malcolm and George and Mae

would not last.

Murray Dorsey, were brutally ­murdered—their bodies rid-

Before Lawrence was discharged, he acknowledged to

dled with bullets—by a lynch mob at the Moore’s Ford

Edith Halpert that he had had a positive experience serv-

Bridge over the Appalachee River near Monroe, Georgia,

ing in the military. A segregated military would have been

only 180 miles from Asheville. One of the men killed was a

a nightmare for him, but the integration he had observed

World War II veteran. Law officials claimed to have never

in the Coast Guard gave him hope for change in the post-

found the murderers.95

war period. Grateful to Halpert for helping him win the

During the immediate postwar period, racial incidents

Guggenheim Fellowship, he wrote her that fall: “An artist

were on the rise. African Americans and concerned whites

may be very talented and the public may like his work—

continued to speak out, write books, and hold forums on

but without a good agent to build him up and push him

the damage of racism. Gunnar Myrdal’s study An American

forward, the artist is nowhere.”87 Lawrence had beaten

Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy,

Jim Crow—with a little help from Edith Halpert and from

published in 1944, set off a renewed debate about the

his superiors in the Coast Guard, Joe Rosenthal and Carl­

psychology and the sociology of racism. To Myrdal, the

ton Skinner.88

“Negro problem” was a white problem, and the “American Dilemma” was the contradiction between the country’s professed ideals and people’s actual attitudes and behav-

the postwar jim crow south In 1946 Josef Albers invited Lawrence to teach at Black

ior: “the ever-raging conflict between, on the one hand, the valuations preserved on the general plane which we shall call the ‘American Creed,’ where the American thinks,

Mountain College, outside Asheville, North Carolina, for

talks, and acts under the influence of high national and

the summer term from July 2 to August 28.89 Because

Christian precepts, and, on the other hand, the valuations

Albers understood that moving to a segregated state

on specific planes of individual and group living, where

would present problems for the Lawrences, he arranged

personal and local interests; economic, social, and sexual

for them to travel by private train car. They would not

jealousies; considerations of community prestige and

have to suffer the humiliation of moving from public cars

conformity; group prejudice against particular persons or

to Jim Crow “colored” cars once they crossed the Mason-

types of people; and all sorts of miscellaneous wants,

Dixon line.90 Albers also arranged for housing.91 At Black

impulses, and habits dominate his outlook.”96 The post–

Mountain Lawrence had his first opportunity not only to

World War II rise in racist incidents led to an outpouring

teach painting to older students but also to test his phi-

of studies similar to Myrdal’s.

losophy of art. As he explained to Albers, the artist “de­

Alain Locke, reviewing noteworthy books published

velop[s] an approach and philosophy about life. . . . He

from 1946 to 1948 for the journal Phylon, singled out

does not put paint on canvas, he puts himself on

those that discussed contemporary racism and segrega-

canvas.”92 Knight taught dance. Lawrence was grateful

tion, including Stetson Kennedy’s Southern Exposure (1946),

for what he learned from Albers and enjoyed the friendly

Earl Conrad’s Jim Crow America (1947), John Hope Frank-

supportive environment that Albers and other profes-

lin’s From Slavery to Freedom (1947), Charles S. Johnson’s

sional artists created

there.93

He and Gwen, however, never left the small Black Moun-

Into the Main Stream (1947), Bucklin Moon’s High Cost of Prejudice (1947), Arnold Rose’s Negro in America (1948),

tain campus to venture into the closest town, Asheville.

Robert Weaver’s Negro Ghetto (1948), and Oliver C. Cox’s

The recollection of their experience in St. Augustine, their

Caste, Class and Race (1948).97 Reviewing books of 1949,

awareness of racism in North Carolina, and the terror of

Locke noted,

lynchings not surprisingly discouraged their venturing forth from the safety of the Black Mountain community.94

If one wants the best facts about the Negro, as objective and

Less than three weeks after they arrived, two black cou-

well-interwoven as modern scholarship permits, Davie and

confrontations with the jim crow south  157

Frazier [Maurice R. Davie, Negroes in American Society, and Franklin Frazier, The Negro in the United States] are basic and essential, as was, in a more explicit frame of history, John Hope

lawrence’s fourth trip to the south

Franklin’s From Slavery to Freedom. . . . If, however, one wants

In 1947 Lawrence made his fourth trip to the South—to

the human essence and the psychological implications of the

the Dixiecrat states—to fulfill a commission from Fortune

“American dilemma,” one must go to Lillian Smith’s Killers of the Dream . . . a sound parable of race prejudice and its killing effects upon both black and white as well as of its present-day ominous threat to world peace and world understanding.98

Ray Sprigle wrote In the Land of Jim Crow (1948) after masquerading as an African American and traveling through the South. Locke considered the book “shock enlightenment for the average reader.”99 Sprigle suffered only four weeks of humiliations and loss of citizenship as a “black” man in the South. Of course, Locke, Lawrence, and 10 percent of the country endured such experiences all their lives. Books and theories were one thing; initiating public policies to combat racism was quite another. Following the brutal lynchings that took place in 1946, a coalition of organizations formed the National Emergency Committee against Mob Violence and met with President Harry S. Truman in September 1946. After this meeting Truman issued Executive Order 9808, which set up the President’s Commission on Civil Rights. On October 29, 1947, the committee, which included African Americans and northern white liberals, delivered a report that called on the federal government to “safeguard the rights of every one of its citizens.”100 Meanwhile, white racists in the South were seething about the progressive turn of events. They especially resented the liberal turn of the president and his administration, and in 1948 they bolted from the Democratic Party to form the States’ Rights Democratic Party, with the slogan “Segregation Forever!” In the 1948 election the “Dixiecrats,” as they were called, carried Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina and received one electoral vote from Tennessee, with the popular vote tally well over a million votes. These Dixiecrats determined to keep white supremacy and segregation alive in the South, and they were digging in their heels.

to paint works illustrating conditions of African Americans in the post–World War II South. He went armed with a letter from Will Burtin, art director of Fortune, which read: “The bearer of this letter, Jacob Lawrence, is at work upon a series of paintings for possible reproduction in fortune magazine.” He traveled to Memphis, Vicksburg, New Orleans, Tuskegee Institute, and Gee’s Bend, in Alabama. The editors of Fortune, in the issue in which Lawrence’s paintings appeared, noted: “Painter Lawrence set out in the pounding heat of summer, traveled alone and light— by bus, train, and lucky lift—sketching, talking to people, sleeping in the mean rooms that are almost the only shelter open to transient Negroes in that region.” In any event, the trip turned out to be a short two or three weeks.101 As a result of the trip Lawrence produced ten paintings, each with a short title and an extended caption, and delivered them to Halpert. He also wrote a brief account of the trip that reflects his own dismay at what he witnessed. In it he notes that although “Negroes outnumber whites everywhere . . . the Negro pays dearly. He is denied first class citizenship, and civil liberties are the properties of white men. A few Negroes have attained affluence by sub­ mitting to and using the feudal tradition of the South. A small minority are even upholding this tradition for the un­ certainties it affords them.” But he indicates his hope for the future when he adds, “But there are other Negroes— teachers, lawyers, social scientists, farmers, and social workers—who are working hard to obtain equality of economic, educational, and social status, which has been denied several millions of Negroes for over three hundred years.” His observations end on an upbeat note: “These are the men and women who are optimistic, and rightfully so, concerning the Negroes[’] future not only in the South but in the United States.”102 In August 1948 Fortune published three of the ten pictures in a two-page spread titled “In the Heart of the Black Belt.” Walker Evans wrote a short introduction, reminding his readers that Lawrence’s earlier Migration

158  confrontations with the jim crow south

series, published in 1941, “helped make the artist’s repu-

white chickens cooped in screened compartments occupy

tation a national one.” Evans found the new pictures

the lower register; at the top right are two pigs, and at the

“milder, a little more objective than before,” but still

left, under the roof of a shed, hang large slabs of bacon

“daring.”103 Lawrence’s original extended captions were

and meat on huge hooks. Evans’s caption emphasizes the

shortened and rewritten, probably by Evans, to accom-

seeming prosperity depicted in Lawrence’s painting of

modate Fortune’s pro-business agenda.

Gee’s Bend but does not identify the FSA as the agent of

For the first picture, In the Heart of the Black Belt (Fig.

the successful rehabilitation. One might be led to assume

108), Lawrence had written: “Within a one hundred mile

that the current prosperity is the result of private-sector

radius of Memphis, Tennessee, there are approximately

enterprise.107

four million Negroes—or one third the entire Negro popu-

For the third picture, The Businessmen, Lawrence

lation of the United States.”104 Fortune substituted a de-

quotes Dr. Benjamin Quarles, dean of Dillard University,

scriptive caption: “The cotton choppers pile into trucks

in New Orleans: “Whereas church leadership in the Negro

after their day in the fields. Transporting of men by trucks

Community was once dominant, such leadership now has

to and from work is increasingly common.”105 Whereas

to share its influence with publicly financed institutions

Lawrence saw beyond the image to the symbolism of

whose emphases are secular.”108 Fortune’s caption was

masses of people corralled into the “heart” of the Black

“Negro professionals and businessmen are now sharing

Belt, Walker Evans and Fortune’s editors envisioned the

with church leaders in the guidance of their people. Law-

economic and technological ramifications of Lawrence’s

rence depicts them as hard pressed.” Lawrence’s caption

picture. They saw African Americans organized as work-

points to the loss of power in the Negro community,

ers by plantation owners and transported efficiently to

which has to give way to “publicly financed institutions”—

the farms that employed them as part of a modernized

that is, white-controlled state and local governments. The

agriculture.

Fortune caption glosses over Lawrence’s stress on the

Lawrence’s caption for the second picture, Gee’s Bend

disempowering of African American leaders by white in-

(Fig. 109), quoted from a report by S. B. Coles assessing

stitutions. Fortune remarks that the five ministers, seated

the Farm Security Administration program:

in a circle and hunched over their papers, are simply “hard pressed,” presumably by economic circumstances, not

On May 3rd, 1943, William E. Street, Field Representative for Region Five of the FSA, took me to Gee’s Bend, one of the projects of the Farm Security Administration in Wilcox County, Alabama, in order that I might see the wonders that have been wrought since the bureau took over Gee’s Bend in 1936. As we neared the place I could see that it really was not the Gee’s Bend of forty years ago. I saw beautifully built homes, fine pigs running around in the lots, hundreds of chickens on each

racial divisions. The paintings, like Beer Hall (Fig. 110), that Fortune did not show also deserve our attention. Lawrence took its extended caption from the last page of W. E. B. Du Bois’s book Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880: “There is no villain, no idiot, no saint. There are just men; men who crave ease and power, men who know want and hun-

yard, and above all, the gardens full of different types of

ger, men who have crawled. They all dream and strive with

v­egetables.106

ecstasy of fear and strain of effort, balked of hope and hate.”109 To Du Bois and Lawrence such leisure occupa-

Fortune’s published caption reads: “Gee’s Bend is an all-

tions as frequenting bars and beer halls are mere pallia-

Negro community on the Alabama River. Almost bankrupt

tives to ease the burden of racism; both men envisioned a

during the depression, Gee’s Bend Farms is today a suc-

world freed from racism and oppression. The philosophy

cessful rehabilitation project, originally government fi-

expressed in Du Bois’s statement is in the spirit of Antonio

nanced.” Lawrence’s painting suggests the farm’s pros-

Gramsci’s “Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the

perity through the forms and colors. Three figures inhabit

will.”110 In 1947, when Lawrence was quoting Du Bois, Du

a flattened cubist space: one plants seeds, one carries

Bois had become a relentless critic of U.S. foreign policy

bricklike objects, another lifts water from a well. Red and

and a supporter of the Soviet Union, not someone

confrontations with the jim crow south  159

Fig 108   In the Heart of the Black Belt,

1947. Egg tempera on hardboard, 20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 61 cm). Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, California. Bequest of Betty Jane Cook. Photo: The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation/Art Resource, NY. Fig 109   Gee’s Bend, 1947. Egg tempera

on hardboard, 20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 61 cm). Evansville Museum of Arts, History and Science, Evansville, Indiana.

Fig 110   Beer Hall, 1947. Egg tempera on hardboard, 191 ⁄2 x 233⁄8 in. (49.5 x 59.4 cm). Private collection. Image courtesy DC Moore Gallery, New York.

For­tune would have wanted to cite. Walker Evans may

mass of people are poor.” The red earth in the fore­ground

have been sympathetic to Lawrence’s worldview, but he

looks not like earth but rather like a sea of dark red blood,

was working for the premier business magazine of the

with people clustered on a far shore. The Build­ers, which

decade.

shows an integrated scene of workers building in New

Among the other six works not reproduced by Fortune,

Orleans, is captioned, “In New Orleans, Louisiana, the

Cat Fish Row represents a Vicksburg eatery with cooks

Negro has made his greatest step toward economic se-

stirring pots and a waitress serving tables where people

curity. He has large membership in trade unions (A.F.L.

help themselves to the fare laid out on trays before them:

and C.I.O.) and representation on the executive board of

fish, crabs, oysters. Lawrence returned to an earlier theme

the Louisiana State Federation of Labor.” This painting

in Migration, the caption of which states that improved

was the first of many that Lawrence did of builders. Dom­

farm machinery and “racial disturbances” are “the causes

inating his oeuvre of the 1970s and 1980s, Lawrence’s

of a perennial migration of the southern Negro.” Another

builders represent an integrated workforce and symbol-

reject by Fortune, titled A Class in Shoemaking, must

ize the cooperation needed to build a better, stronger

have been inspired by Lawrence’s trip to Tuskegee Insti-

com­munity.

tute. According to the caption, “Knowing the value of

For the July 4th picture, Lawrence took his caption

an industrial skill as well as an academic education

from the writings of Henri Taine, a French historian and

the Negro, for many years, has worked hard to obtain

critic: “Suffering is not to be measured so much by out-

both.”111

ward circumstances as by inward emotions.” In the

The other three paintings are Red Earth—Georgia (Fig.

forefront of Lawrence’s picture an African American

111), The Builders, and July 4th, Independence Day,

woman holds a white child as she approaches a souvenir

Vicksburg, Mississippi (Fig. 112). Lawrence’s caption for

stand on which are displayed unfolded packets of post-

Red Earth—Georgia notes, “Within the black belt can be

cards with stereotypical scenes of African Americans as

found most of the Negro wealth in the United States.

cotton pickers, boys eating watermelons, rural blacks,

There are palatial homes, palatial funeral par­lors, rich

and minstrel types. 112 Confederate flags with inexpli­ca­

insurance companies and a few banks—but the great

ble six-pointed stars are displayed above her, and in the

confrontations with the jim crow south  161

Fig 111   Red Earth—Georgia, 1947. Egg tempera on hardboard, 20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 61 cm). Private collection. Image courtesy DC Moore Gallery, New York. Fig 11 2   July 4th, Independence Day, Vicksburg, Mississippi, 1947. Egg tempera on hardboard, 20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 61 cm). Current location unknown.

distant right workers carry bales of cotton. By quoting

his life and his work. In his public appearances and in

Taine, Lawrence conveys the meaning of the seemingly

private interviews, he would often say he was not af-

impassive figures, such as the domestic worker and the

fected. The letter, quoted earlier in this chapter, that

laborers. They too, he suggests, experience inner turmoil

Lawrence wrote to Halpert from St. Augustine in early

because of the racist conditions under which they live. It

1944 includes one of his few mentions of his emotional

comes as no surprise that Fortune chose not to print this

reactions. He said, and I quote again: “As a Negro I feel

image and caption.

a tenseness on the streets and in the Hotel where I am

One wonders why Evans and Fortune did not publish more than just the three paintings by

Lawrence.113

Per-

haps there were space constraints, not uncharacteristic

working—in fact, every where. . . . Negroes need not be told what Facism [sic] is like, because in the south they know nothing else.”115

of magazines and newspapers that juggle features with

What were the feelings of other northern urban African

advertisements. As it was, Fortune delayed running the

Americans when confronting racist southern traditions

spread until August 1948. The magazine’s staff no doubt

and realities of the 1940s? And what were the lingering

realized that Lawrence considered his paintings far more

memories of those feelings? Lawrence knew that disturb-

than postcards from his trip to the South; they were imagi-

ing experiences for African Americans were not confined

native syntheses of what he saw, heard, and felt, and the

to the South; but the institutional racism they faced in

texts—many from African Americans—were integral to

the South could be daunting and the bigotry deadly.

that expression. Often the captions, working in contradic-

It may be helpful to look at the writings of those whose

tion to a seemingly benign scene, give a clue to Lawrence’s

experiences, similar to Lawrence’s, might give us insight

interior musings. We are reminded of Ralph Ellison’s com-

into the feelings Lawrence shared with other northern

ment of 1946 on the very different experiences of whites

urban blacks confronting the southern situation. We must

and blacks, experiences not fathomed by those not

remember, however, that there are an unlimited number

touched by racism: “Obviously the experiences of Ne-

of responses, each depending on the individual’s own

groes—slavery, the grueling and continuing fight for full

experiences along with collectively shared memories.

citizenship since Emancipation, the stigma of color, the

One useful source might be No Day of Triumph (1942),

enforced alienation which constantly knifes into our natu-

by J. Saunders Redding. Redding, a young northern ur-

ral identification with our country—have not been that of

ban black man, was an academic funded by the Rocke-

white Americans. And though as passionate believers in

feller Foundation and assigned by the University of North

democracy Negroes identify themselves with the broader

Carolina to travel through the South and observe and

American ideals, their sense of reality springs, in part, from

write about race relations.116 At one point he attempted

an American experience which most white men not only

to interview the police commissioner of Memphis about

have not had, but one with which they are reluctant to

the harassment of a local minister. After arriving at the

identify themselves even when presented in forms of the

commissioner’s office, he realized he could be shot for

imagination.”114 The need to overcome the barriers and

just asking questions. The police searched him, intro­

communicate his experiences drove Lawrence to persist

ducing him to a humiliation he had not known. Red- 

in telling the truth as he saw it.

­­ding’s remarks speak of feelings like those that might have stirred Lawrence when he quoted Taine. Redding’s words:

psychological effects of ­r acism

I had felt nothing but amazement before, but now I felt a sense of shame, of sickening humiliation, of terrible impotence. As I

What were Lawrence’s feelings about racism? When in-

thought the thing through, I knew where wisdom lay: it lay in

terviewed near the end of his life, Lawrence typically

the recognition of my impotence. A move from me, a gesture of

sidestepped questions probing the effects of racism on

stubbornness, a hint of refusal, and I might have had a bullet

confrontations with the jim crow south  163

through the heart, or at least a battered head and a spell in jail.

be subjected to the irritations and humiliations of South-

I did as I was told. Who was it who said that this sort of thing

ern Jim Crowisms, Dixie scorn, and the back seats if any

cannot hurt the inner man? Whoever, he was a fool. And years

in buses, is enough—I should think—to easily drive a sen-

and years of it, ages and ages, back to the beginnings of an-

sitive patriotic colored American soldier

cestral memory!117

recently out of the service, in 1947 Lawrence would have

n u ts .”119

Only

appreciated Hughes’s characterizations of “segregationLater in Redding’s book a local pool hall owner recounts

fatigue.”

the story of the “mobbing” of a black townsman, abducted one night, beaten, murdered, and thrown into the local river. His offense? He was a leader of a group of black citizens petitioning the town to allow them to vote in the upcoming national elections. Redding’s account is graphically powerful but restrained in its language. A decade

lawrence’s drawings of the late 1940 s By late 1947 Lawrence was ready to try his hand at black-

later Redding would write, “One’s heart is sickened at the

and-white drawings more strident than his paintings.

realization of the primal energy that goes undeflected and

Commissions at that time offered him occasion to ex-

unrefined into the sheer business of living as a Negro in

press his emotions about racism symbolically, as in the

the United States—in any one of the United States. Ne-

drawings that accompany Langston Hughes’s book of po-

groness is a kind of superconsciousness that directs

etry One-Way Ticket and articles on the South in the left-

thinking, that dictates action, and that perverts the ex-

liberal magazine the New Republic and the leftist Masses

pression of instinctual drives that are salutary and hu-

and Mainstream.

manitarian.”118 Redding’s ability to define emotional nu-

Lawrence drew One-Way Ticket (Fig. 113) to accompany

ances makes his book a valuable document for the

Hughes’s poem with the same title. Lawrence often re-

historian.

marked that he identified with the situation of the young

What experiences would Lawrence have had riding the

boy in the drawing—sitting on the suitcase and waiting

Jim Crow train or the bus to Memphis? Lawrence did not

with other migrants.120 In another section of the book,

know how to drive. It seems unlikely that Walker Evans

Lawrence’s drawing Silhouette (The Lynching) (Fig. 114)

drove him from city to city. When Lawrence was in Mem-

faces Hughes’s poem “Silhouette”:

phis in 1947, would he have encountered the same men Redding had encountered in 1940? What about his July

Southern gentle lady,

4th visit to Vicksburg? And the rest of the South during

Do not swoon.

that summer of 1947? Were Lawrence’s experiences any-

They’ve just hung a black man

thing like those recounted in Redding’s book?

In the dark of the moon.

Redding’s experiences were not unique. The war had compounded the frustrations of African American veter-

They’ve hung a black man To a roadside tree

ans who returned to the South. The Jim Crow situation

In the dark of the moon

in 1947 may have been worse than that in February

For the world to see

1944, when Langston Hughes wrote in his Chicago De­

How Dixie protects

fender column about an African American soldier, just

Its white womanhood.

returned from overseas fighting. Hughes described the soldier as suffering from “Jim Crow shock, too much dis­crimination—segregation-fatigue which, to a sensitive

Southern gentle lady,     Be good!     Be good!

Negro, can be just as damaging as days of heavy air bombardment. . . . To fight for one’s country for months

In his drawing for Hughes, Lawrence met the challenge

on some dangerous and vital front, then come home and

of depicting a black man hung from a “roadside tree in

164  confrontations with the jim crow south

Fig 113   One-Way Ticket, 1948. Brush and ink on paper, 241 ⁄2 x 16 in. (62.2 x 40.6 cm). Private collection, New York. Image courtesy DC Moore Gallery, New York. Fig 114   Silhouette (The Lynch­ ing), 1948. Brush and ink on pa­per, 241 ⁄2 x 161 ⁄2 in. (62.2 x 41.9 cm). Private collection, New York. Image courtesy DC Moore Gallery.

the dark of a moon.” Whereas Lawrence’s allusions to

The white folks die?

lynchings in the Migration series, Panels 15 and 16, rep-

What do you mean—

resent not a lynched body but living figures mourning a

The white folks die?

lynching, this drawing depicts a symbolic figure hanging

That black boy’s

from a thick braided rope looped over a tree branch that

Still body

points leftward like the barrel of a gun. Shafts of light

Says:

penetrate the blackness of the night, and the twisted body sinks to the ground. Lawrence shuns allusions to

NOT I.

Christ-like martyrs; instead, with a few quick strokes, he conveys both psychological and physical agony. Hughes’s “Lynching Song” immediately follows the image:

Hughes’s point is that the white lyncher cannot triumph over the black lynched figure any more than the slave master can live truly free as long as he has slaves, whom he must control and repress as long as he lives, himself

Pull at the rope!

enslaved through the regime’s control over him. No one

O, pull it high!

is free.

Let the white folks live

At the same time Lawrence was beginning his assign-

And the black boy die.

ment for Hughes, the New Republic and Masses and

Pull it, boys,

Mainstream were publishing other drawings by him. Un­

With a bloody cry.

titled [Lynchings] (Fig. 115) accompanied a Henry Wallace

Let the black boy spin

article, “Violence and Hope in the South,” in the New Re­

While the white folks die.

public’s December 8, 1947, issue. In the line drawing a

confrontations with the jim crow south  165

male figure runs through a long corridor lined with the

ery for Masses and Mainstream. Published as a four-page

“strange fruit” of heads hanging by ropes from dead tree

spread, titled “They Broke Chains,” in the February 1949

branches. He traverses a path marked by zigs and zags

issue, the drawings were Harriet Tubman, Slave Rebellion

and spinning circles, while overhead stars punctuate the

(Fig. 117), Slave Trade, and Underground Railroad. Law-

open ceiling. At the end of the corridor he will confront

rence’s emphasis on pattern in his compositions accentu-

another lynched figure, perhaps a mirror image of him-

ates the sense of horror at the treatment of people as

self. This nightmarish scene echoes Wallace’s comment

anonymous objects. Other brush-and-ink drawings were

that “fear of lynching is still very much alive in the

commissioned and completed but never published, such

South. . . . They say the technique now is quietly to mur-

as Terror of the Klan, originally intended for the book

der a Negro, one man doing the killing instead of a mob.

Negro Artist U.S.A.124

Negro murders are rarely mentioned in the press or fol-

These more symbolic black-and-white drawings done

lowed up by the police.”121 Although Lawrence had not

within two years of his 1947 trip to the South give evi-

necessarily read Wallace’s essay before he submitted the

dence of Lawrence’s “inward emotions” in the face of the

drawing to the New Republic, he would have known about

suffocating racism he read about and may have experi-

this new “technique” of lynching through his reading of

enced in the South. They were not images that would ap-

African American newspapers.122

peal to Fortune, the voice of the postwar northern busi-

The New Republic reproduced Lawrence’s Untitled

ness elite who hoped to restore the South as a market

[Man with Hat and Cigarette] (Fig. 116) to accompany a

and a source of labor to rally the economy after World

review, in the January 19, 1948, issue, of Francis Butler

War II. Nor were they images that his dealer could easily

Simkins’s book The South: Old and New, a History, 1820–

sell in the late 1940s. He perceived the problems clearly,

1947. Although the book review is called “A Liberal View

even if his white patrons suppressed the resulting work.

of the South,” the reviewer, Richard Watts Jr., explains

The drawings did, however, speak to the political issues

that Simkins’s book mostly describes white supremacy as

raised by the radical Left in the magazines and the Afri-

“the essence of Southernism,” without advancing a pro-

can American community that read Hughes’s poems.

gressive line. Watts concludes that “although Simkins is

Such drawings remind us today of how racism and dis-

a liberal who looks with disapproval on the treatment of

crimination of all kinds continue to shape our own psy-

the Negro, he has no more escaped the marks of the tra-

chological terrors and nightmares.

ditions of white supremacy than did the group of Southern intellectuals who recently denounced the idea of do-

n

ing away with racial segregation in education.” As a

In August 2005 the U.S. Postal Service issued a sheet of

result, Simkins “has trouble being fair to the Negro. . . .

ten commemorative stamps, called “To Form a More Per-

He makes no attempt to deny the ignorance, degradation

fect Union: Seeking Equal Rights for African Americans.”

and contempt imposed by servitude, and he seems al-

Lawrence’s Dixie Café (Fig. 118), first published in the New

most surprised and pained that after generations of such

Republic in October 18, 1948, was used as one of the

mass humiliation, the Negro did not emerge from it with-

stamps. It gave the Postal Service an image for the 1964

out any of its evil marks upon him.”123

Civil Rights Act, described on the reverse of the stamp

Lawrence’s line drawing, which occupies more than half

sheet: “This bill designed to outlaw discrimination in

the page, shows a hatted, grimacing face, eyes squinting

­public accommodations—initiated by President John F.

to the left, with one hand holding up a lighted cigarette.

Kennedy in 1963—was signed into law by President Lyn-

Lawrence conveys the racist’s thoughts in the symbols

don B. Johnson on July 2, 1964.” We can be grateful that

incised on his forehead: a lynched figure hanging from a

such a law was enacted, if belatedly, in 1964; but the law

tree branch, a Christian cross, a rifle, and an American

does not speak to those “inward emotions” that result

flag. A year later Lawrence did four brush-and-ink draw-

from the legacy of Jim Crow or to the reality of lingering

ings of imagined historical scenes on the theme of slav-

racism today.

166  confrontations with the jim crow south

Fig 115   Untitled [Lynchings], 1947. Pen and ink on paper, dimensions unknown. Current location unknown. Reproduced in Henry Wallace, “Violence and Hope in the South,” New Republic 117, no. 23 (December 8, 1947), p. 15, ill. Fig 116   Untitled [Man with Hat and Cigarette], 1948. Pen and ink on paper,

dimensions unknown. Current location unknown. Reproduced in Richard Watts Jr., “Books in Review: A Liberal View of the South,” New Republic 118, no. 3 (Janu­ary 19, 1948), p. 27, ill. Fig 117   Slave Rebellion, 1948. Brush and ink on paper, dimensions unknown. Current location unknown. Fig 118   Dixie Café, 1948. Brush and ink on paper, 17 x 221⁄4 in. (43.2 x 56.5

cm). Collection Margaret and Michael Asch.

6

home in harlem Tenements and Streets Why should we artists born in tenements go beyond them for our expression? Can we go beyond them? . . . Art is the tenement pouring out its soul through us, its most sensitive and articulate sons and daughters.

mike gold, “Towards Proletarian Art” (1921) Life in Harlem is bizarre, but always pointed, intense, and vivid. The inhabitants eat, sleep, work and play, bear children, and die. But these characteristics, human and prosaic as they may be, are scorched beyond normal recognition in the crucible of a segregated life.

roi ottley, “New World A-Coming”: Inside Black America (1943) For Jacob Lawrence, a peerless delineator of the Harlem scenes and types.

claude mckay, inscription in a copy of A Long Way from Home, presented to Jacob Lawrence

Langston Hughes, the poet of Harlem’s people and street

mid-December and asking whether the artist would cre-

life, became well acquainted with Jacob Lawrence in the

ate six black-and-white drawings for Hughes’s book of

fall and winter of 1947–48. It was Hughes, acknowledging

poetry.3 During December Hughes visited the Downtown

the younger artist as his creative peer, who took the ini-

Gallery to see Lawrence’s War series, and on January 22,

tiative. He suggested to his editor at Alfred Knopf in Sep-

1948, Hughes followed up with his own letter to Lawrence

tember 1947 that his book, eventually titled One-Way

in which he personally offered to pay $600 for the rights

Ticket, include reproductions of drawings by Jacob Law-

to reproduce six drawings. As a postscript Hughes added: o ne - way tick e t,

rence, “one of the most talented younger American art-

“I have chosen as a title for the book,

ists, and probably the most interesting Negro artist.”

from the poem of that name. Perhaps that poem, or that

Recognizing that Lawrence’s vivid images of Harlem par-

particularly [sic] sequence of poems might suggest an

alleled his own word portraits, Hughes wrote, “His style

idea for one of your drawings, but do not feel bound by

would make an interesting complement to my poetry.”1

this. I want you to feel free to interpret the book as you

Hughes then sent Lawrence a carbon copy of his new

feel it emotionally.”4 By the end of January 1948, Law-

manuscript, and Lawrence replied in late September, “If

rence wrote Hughes that in a week he planned to show

all works out with our agents, I know I will enjoy working

the first drawing to Hughes and Weinstock; Hughes re-

on your book as our subject matter is similar.”2 At

sponded by saying that Charles Alan, Edith Halpert’s as-

Hughes’s urging, Herbert Weinstock, on the Knopf staff,

sistant at the Downtown Gallery, had suggested that they

formalized the arrangement by writing to Lawrence in

get together and discuss the drawings and the poems.5

Fig 119   Play Street, 1942. Gouache on paper, 307⁄8 x 223⁄8 in. (78.4 x 56.8 cm). Collection of halley k harrisburg and Michael Rosenfeld, New York, NY.

It is not known when they met for this discussion, but

What happens to a dream deferred?

in May Lawrence wrote again to Hughes that he was “glad

Does it dry up

to hear that your publishers like the drawings.”6 In their

Like a raisin in the sun?

style and subject matter, the drawings, two of which have

Or fester like a sore—

been discussed in Chapter 5, were a felicitous accompa-

And then run?

niment to One-Way

Ticket.7

In 1948 Hughes planned to include drawings by Lawrence in his next collection of poems, Montage of a

Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over— Like a syrupy sweet?

Dream Deferred. In October Lawrence delivered the first

Maybe it just sags

drawing, and in December Hughes wrote enthusiastically

Like a heavy load.

to his friend Arna Bontemps about five more “wonderful

Or does it explode?

drawings for the be-bop poems” that Lawrence had just brought to him.8 The reasons are unclear, but when Mon­

At midcentury Harlem could still claim to be “the greatest

tage was published in 1951 no drawings were included.9

Negro city in the world,” but institutionalized segregation

Like his pen-and-ink drawings for One-Way Ticket,

filled it with contradictions—there was so much promise,

most of Lawrence’s six drawings for Montage do not refer

but also disappointment, and then the dialectical, and

to specific poems. However, Lawrence’s Parade (Fig. 120)

inevitable, explosion. This Hughes and Lawrence knew

suggests both the imagery and the shifting meters of

well. Both keenly observed the nuances of Harlem life,

Hughes’s poem “Parade.” The tangled pattern and for-

both drew on vernacular culture, both celebrated the city

ward-moving rhythm of the high-stepping baton twirler

that nurtured them, and both folded into their works un-

and the portly Elks in their hats marching past two

expected elements that alert the reader and viewer that

women in the background contrast with the more static

“ordinary” life could explode.10

mother and young girl watching the parade at the right and the two boys on the left playing with a scooter. Like Hughes’s bebop poems, Lawrence syncopated the rhythms by putting stresses in unexpected places. Hughes’s poems in Montage of a Dream Deferred are just that: a montage, with images and scraps of local color—a night funeral in Harlem, the Savoy nightclub, the subway rush hour, Lenox Avenue by daylight. And snatches of conversation or argument, as in these lines from “Ballad of the Landlord”:

harlem scenes in the late

1930 s

It was when Lawrence was painting in a corner of Charles Alston and Henry Bannarn’s studio at 306 West 141st Street that he became aware of the renowned Langston Hughes, fifteen years his senior, and heard him speak at the community centers. If Lawrence had not read Hughes’s famous 1926 essay, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” he had at least absorbed its lessons. Hughes

What? You gonna get eviction orders?

advocated an art based on the experiences of ordinary

You gonna cut off my heat?

African Americans:

You gonna take my furniture and Throw it in the street?

Interspersed throughout the poems is the refrain “a dream deferred”—because of struggles with landlords, the fight to earn a decent living, and Jim Crow barriers to opportunities and advancement. In the poem “Harlem” Hughes writes:

170  home in harlem

the people who have their nip of gin on Saturday nights and are not too important to themselves or the community, or too well fed, or too learned to watch the lazy world go round. . . . They do not particularly care whether they are like white folks or anybody else. Their joy runs, bang! Into ecstasy. Their religion soars to a shout. Work maybe a little today, rest a little tomorrow. Play awhile. Sing awhile. O, Let’s dance! These

Fig 120   Parade, 1948. Pen and ink, dimensions unknown. Current location unknown. Image courtesy Langston Hughes Papers, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

common people are not afraid of spirituals . . . and jazz is their

seemingly artless terms: a limited palette of matte tem-

child. They furnish a wealth of colorful, distinctive material for

pera color, simple shapes distributed rhythmically across

any artist because they still hold their own individuality in the

the composition, and a minimum of lines to indicate fa-

face of American standardizations.11

cial expression and other telling details. In an era of populist realism, fueled by both the arts

These very subjects would be Lawrence’s focus for his entire career.

policies of government agencies and the Popular Front strategies of the radical Left, the new art patronage de-

Through his style and compositional inventiveness, he

manded paintings of ordinary people in “American

made the tenements and streets of Harlem modern. Like

scenes.” In 1936 Holger Cahill, national director of the

Hughes in his poetry, Lawrence early on depicted the

Federal Art Project, urged “greater vigor, unity, and clar-

Harlem of ordinary working-class African Americans in

ity of statement, a search for an adequate symbolism in

home in harlem  171

the expression of contemporary American experience,

Halpert. When applied to Pippin’s art, primitive meant the

less dependence on the easily obvious in subject matter,

lack of formal academic art school training.

and a definite relation to local and regional environ-

To many in the art world in the late 1930s and early

ments.” Alain Locke, quoting these words in Negro Art:

1940s, the appeal of Lawrence’s work rested on its seem-

Past and Present (1936), added that what Cahill “so

ing similarity to admired folk art styles. In his chapter

aptly calls ‘imaginative realism,’ might profitably be ad-

“Naïve and Popular Painting and Sculpture” in Modern

opted as today’s creed and gospel for the younger, pro-

Negro Art (1943), James Porter featured Jacob Lawrence

gressive Negro artist.”12 Locke admired Thomas Hart

along with the stonecutter William Edmundson, Horace

Ben­ton’s paintings of regional “local color” and felt that

Pippin, and a half-dozen other self-taught artists. Porter

black artists should paint their own American “regional-

maintained that these artists’ “untutored works of paint-

ism.” By 1940 Locke could write that he was pleased with

ing and sculpture interpret nature with a childlike inno-

the progress of African American artists. Their scenes of

cence of vision.”19 Like other critics, Porter described

black life had not created a “back water inlet of racialist

Lawrence as an “original” with a “pronounced talent for

art, but, on the contrary, led out to the mainstream of

abstract design, coupled with a rare sense of humor.”20

art.”13

The sculptor and teacher

He praised Lawrence’s Toussaint L’Ouverture series for

Augusta Savage also urged a Harlem regionalism. When

its “power of color and movement” and acknowledged

contemporary American

she had written Arthur Schomburg in 1935 to tell him of

that the Migration series had brought the artist “growing

her plans to exhibit her students’ work, she had assured

national recognition.”21 Yet by 1943 Porter should have

him: “We will attempt to present Harlem to Harlem as

surmised that Lawrence’s art lay outside the category of

seen through the eyes of the artist.”14 In 1936 the New

“naïve” art.

York Amster­d am News praised the young artist Bernie

Gwendolyn Bennett insisted that Lawrence’s work was

Robynson for painting “impressions of the colorful life

far from primitive. Writing for Mainstream in 1947, she

of the community.”15

observed: “When critics first began to notice Lawrence’s

Several established artists picked up this challenge to

work, many referred to it as ‘primitive.’ This characteriza-

paint Harlem’s “American scene,” but they often adopted

tion is inadequate and misleading. For here is an artist

simplified styles. For his Marching Elks (1933, location

who has studied hard, worked ceaselessly, learned from

unknown), for example, Malvin Gray Johnson used a re-

many people, but who has always molded what he saw

ductive style to represent one of the frequent parades in

and learned into a form that was distinctly his own.”22

Harlem.16

Lawrence knew exactly what he was doing, and he was

Palmer Hayden, known for his naturalistic sea-

scapes, switched to a folklike style for his genre scenes

using sophisticated means to accomplish it.

of the black community in the 1930s, as in Midsummer

In the mid- to late 1930s, however, Lawrence’s paint-

Night in Harlem (1936, Museum of African American Art,

ings of neighborhood scenes did seem to fit in with those

Los Angeles). The artist and curator David Driskell has

of Hayden and Johnson. Like Hayden, he included anec-

described this style of Hayden’s as “semi-naïve,” stressing

dotal elements, even humor, in his paintings. In Street

“narrative, anecdotal detail in a rather self-conscious

Scene—Restaurant (ca. 1936, Fig. 121), a furtive white man

way.”17 Another academically trained painter, William H.

sidles up to three black prostitutes loitering on a side-

Johnson, adopted an expressionist style akin to Chaim

walk, who acknowledge his presence with either amuse-

Soutine’s when he lived in Europe. But when he returned

ment or indifference. Interior Scene (1937, Columbus

to New York in the late 1930s, he switched to a folklike

Museum of Art) brings out the humor of three white

style, as seen in Chain Gang (see Fig. 51) and his jitterbug

“johns” in various stages of undress negotiating with

paintings.18

Even though Horace Pippin had studied under

three black prostitutes. The tawdry brothel in which the

Albert Barnes at the Barnes Foundation, he was admired

action occurs is littered with rat traps, rats, and flies

chiefly for his “primitive” and “authentic” style by such

buzzing about a bare lightbulb dangling from a ceiling

art world notables as Holger Cahill and the dealer Edith

cord. One john has a condom tucked into his jacket

172  home in harlem

Fig 121   Street Scene—

Restaurant, ca. 1936. Tem­ pera on paper, 26 1⁄4 x 35 in. (66.7 x 88.9 cm). Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; Museum Purchase, Derby Fund, from the Philip J. and Suzanne Schiller Collection of American Social Commentary Art 1930–1970 (2005.012.036).

pocket, another has his condom lying ready on the bed,

all fell naturally into gridlike patterns; there was no need

while a third smokes a postcoital cigarette. On the back

to worry over intricate tree leaves, atmospheric distant

wall hangs an oval painting, ironically of the Madonna and

hills, or puffy cumulus clouds.

Child, and three kids’ faces peer into the room from un23

Style and subject came together in Lawrence’s work.

To Lawrence, Harlem’s types in-

Against a background of horizontal and vertical lines,

cluded the white johns who patronized the segregated

the vendor with his cart in Ice Peddlers (1936, Walter O.

der a window shade. brothels there.

During these years Lawrence became an artist of the

Evans Collection of African American Art) was a frequently seen neighborhood figure, bringing relief on 

urban environment. He explored new subjects—trades­

hot summer days. Equally familiar was the street ora­tor.

men, street characters, kids, prostitutes, shoppers, people

In their street-corner orator, 125th Street (Fig. 122), the

going to work—while consolidating his unique style. As the

Harlem photographers Morgan and Marvin Smith, who

art historian Leslie King-Hammond has observed, “The

often worked for the New York Amsterdam News, cap-

most ordinary daily tasks, events, and routines, such as

tured such an urban performer captivating his audi­

decorating one’s home, would consume Lawrence’s entire

ence from his perch on a ladder. Lawrence, in contrast,

imagination. He would use what he saw around him every

gives us a close-up view, not of the orator, but of his ef-

day to document the visual culture, beauty, and artistic spirit

fect on his audience. Identified only by his two legs on a

of Harlem.”24 Lawrence’s flat collage-like style served him

lad­der in Lawrence’s Street Orator’s Audience (1936, Fig.

well in rendering the brownstone facades, broad side­

123), the man could be a religious preacher warning of

walks, and limited vistas of Harlem. Its storefronts, fire

hell and damnation, a Garveyite advocating “back to Af-

escapes, wrought-iron fences, and street orators’ ladders

rica,” a communist speaking out against the failures of

home in harlem  173

Fig 122   Street-corner orator, 125th Street, ca. 1938. Photo © Mor­

gan and Marvin Smith. Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. Fig 123  Street Orator’s Audience, 1936. Tempera on paper, 241⁄8 x

191⁄8 in. (61.3 x 48.6 cm). Tacoma Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Roger W. Peck by exchange, 1995.10. Photo: Richard Nicol.

capitalism, or even a teacher sent out to encourage visits

Harlem scene in greater depth: “If I receive a renewal of

to the public library. 25 The rapt attention of the passersby

the Rosenwald Fellowship I plan to return north and do a

is the real subject. Six pairs of eyes gaze up toward the

set of paintings on Harlem, known as the largest Negro

speaker. A seventh passerby can only listen, for a sign

community in the world. Although I have lived in Harlem

on his cap announces his blindness. We, too, cannot see

nearly all of my life and have done quite a number of

the speaker; we only know that his oratory powerfully

paintings about Harlem and its people, I feel that what I

captures the attention of the community.

have done is far from complete. After having lived in the

Lawrence’s composition impresses us with his aes-

South I find some things in Harlem clearer[.] The added

thetic control of form. The rungs of the ladder frame the

experience in the South has made me better qualified to

audience, the trousers’ stripes direct our eyes to the

do a deeper study of Harlem.” He assured the foundation

faces, and the background brickwork compacts the fig-

that the series, planned as “a sequel to the Migration Se-

ures into a unit. Lawrence deploys his colors with con-

ries,” would contain from thirty to fifty paintings. 27 It

summate skill. The cadmium reds curve around from the

would be an ambitious artistic and sociological project,

shirt of the man on the left to the woman’s hat to the

and he was eager to begin. The Julius Rosenwald Fund

blind man’s necktie. The cadmium yellows cascade up-

renewed the fellowship. 28 Edwin Embree, director of the

ward from the buttons to the eyeglass frames to the blind

fund, knew that Lawrence would tell the truth of everyday

man’s sign to the touch of yellow at the inside hem of the

Harlem life and provide a positive, even “uplifting,” mes-

orator’s coat. This was no naive folk painter.

sage. Lawrence could be counted on not only to portray

These vivid pictures by Lawrence remind us once again

the pathos of Harlemites’ circumstances but also to rep-

of the images that Langston Hughes conjured up in

resent their courage, endurance, and energy in attempt-

words. Both responded not to the topography of specific

ing to bring about change.

streets and landmarks but to the experience of a peopled

Two years earlier, in his novel Native Son (1940), Rich-

place—the cultural geography of home turf. As Lawrence

ard Wright had described in powerful detail the squalid

explained in 1973 to Willie Suggs of ABC News: “All of my

conditions blacks faced on Chicago’s South Side (the

community

novel opens with a rat chase in Bigger Thomas’s tene-

where we lived. Since my work is expressionistic . . . there

ment) and the despair that environment generated. Call-

early pictorial content was of the

harlem

were no specific buildings or sites that I painted. Mine

ing Wright’s book “the publishing sensation of the year,”

was an over-all expression of Harlem.”26 The street

Look magazine commissioned Michael Carter (“a young

scenes always came from Lawrence’s imagination but

Negro scholar who for the last two years has made a

were based on recollections and memories of street life

study of Harlem with members of the Photo League”) to

and the recognizable types of Harlem.

provide texts for a six-page photo essay on Harlem, en-

Except when painting his series panels, Lawrence com-

titled “244,000 Native Sons.” As Look’s editors explained:

posed these genre scenes of Harlem throughout the late

“Mr. Carter’s facts, plus the pictures which illustrate them

1930s for exhibitions or for submission to government of-

so vividly, disclose the essentials of Negro existence in

fices when he was employed by the Federal Arts Project

any American city—whether it be New York City or ‘Na-

during 1938–39. He then returned to Harlem scenes in

tive Son’s’ South Chicago. It is not pleasant—this story of

1942, following his southern sojourn.

how thousands of our fellow citizens live, under conditions which often produce vice and crime—but it is a story which every socially minded American must

painting harlem in

1942 – 43

contemplate.”29 The “facts” included the statistics that in Harlem “a quarter of a million people live in 8,902 dwell-

In 1942, when Lawrence reported to the Julius Rosenwald

ings”; “51 per cent of Negro families have incomes of less

Fund on his progress with the John Brown paintings, he

than $837 a year”; “40 per cent of the Negro families

requested continued funding so he could paint the local

take in lodgers”; the infant mortality rate is “one of every

home in harlem  175

20”; and “the “death rate from disease is about twice that of other parts of the city.” The diseases endemic to poverty are tuberculosis, rickets, and syphilis. The article pointed out that although most Harlemites were poorly paid and assigned to menial jobs as janitors, porters, window washers, and housemaids, they did find enjoyment in such activities as attending church, going to movie houses or dance palaces, playing pool, and strolling along Seventh Avenue. In the fall of 1942 Lawrence set out to find such moments of relaxation and joy in his community, much like the man he depicts shooting scenes of Harlem life in The Photographer (1942, Metropolitan Museum of Art). Pool Parlor (1942, Fig. 124) highlights one of the pleasurable activities that offset Harlemites’ struggles to survive. To Lawrence, children provided a sense of fun and life, shown by the youngsters running through water sprinklers in Play Street (1942, see Fig. 119). From a billboard a sun displays a large grin of approval for the children frolicking below on the street. Lawrence was just completing thirty Harlem paintings for an exhibition at the Downtown Gallery when Roi Ottley’s book “New World A-Coming”: Inside Black America was published in 1943. Ottley, a veteran reporter for the

Fig 124   Pool Parlor, 1942. Watercolor and gouache on paper,

Amsterdam News, explains that he sees Harlem “as a

31 1⁄8 x 227⁄8 in. (79.1 x 58.1 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Arthur Hoppock Hearn Fund, 1942 (42.147). Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

sort of test tube in which the germs of Negro thought and action are isolated, examined, and held up to full glare to reflect Black America.”30 To Ottley, Harlem is “the nerve center of advancing Black America. It is the fountainhead

ings, as well as a series of colorful parades, jazzy picnics, and

of mass movements. From it flows the progressive vitality

easy stomping at the Savoy Ballroom. But comes Sunday,

of Negro life. Harlem is, as well, a cross-section of life in

everybody praises God—faithfully, noisily.

Black America—a little from here, there, and everywhere.

. . . Yet the panorama of Negro life passes before a backdrop

It is at once the capital of clowns, cults, and cabarets,

of tenements. This life is often crude and sinister, with muggers

and the cultural and intellectual hub of the Negro world.”31

flashing switchblades in the darkened corners. The streets are

Another passage describes Harlem visually, evoking many of the same subjects that Lawrence depicts in his Harlem series: Harlem! The word itself signifies a vast, crowded area teeming with black men. . . . Though their skins may be black, brown, yellow, or white, they all are seeking a way out of the impasse

crowded with shabby loiterers, ragged urchins, and overdressed strollers. Long flashy-looking automobiles park at the curbs, monuments of showy splendor. Bosomy women drape the tenement windows, as the rising smell of cooking mingles with the mustiness of dark dank hallways. Juke boxes grind incessantly. Heard, too, are the distinctive calls of the street vendors. 32

of Negro life. To this end, the Negro community is a big forum of soapbox oratory. Day-to-day living seems to be an endless

Ottley is aware that Harlem’s day-to-day characteristics

vigil of picket lines, strikes, boycotts, mammoth mass meet-

“are scorched beyond normal recognition in the crucible

176  home in harlem

of a segregated life.”33 The calculatingly shocking words

City College is like a beacon over Harlem.

conjure up the lynched figures, seen so frequently in news­

Mothers and fathers work hard to educate their children.

papers, that were the specters haunting the deep com-

The libraries are appreciated.

munal consciousness of African Americans. But, like

Because of high rents and unfit conditions rent strikes are

Law­rence, Ottley offers more than protest, telling his readers about Harlem’s history, its immigrant population, its religious organizations, its political and social leaders, its celebrities such as Joe Louis and Adam Clayton Powell Jr., its press, and the wartime job situation for African Americans. The titles of Lawrence’s Harlem paintings, perhaps composed with the help of Gwendolyn Knight, could have been captions to the few line illustrations in Ottley’s book: This is Harlem.

becoming more frequent. The people are beginning to organize. They want a good Harlem.

Read consecutively these titles become lines of a poem that is lyrical, sociologically astute, and politically ­radical—​ especially with the last message about people organizing to bring about change.34 Viewers of Lawrence’s pictorial narrative at the Downtown Gallery in May 1943 were introduced to a Harlem where the inhabitants were poor and living in substandard conditions but at the same time resilient, finding

Most of the people are very poor. Rent is high. Food is high.

comfort in family and friends. This Is Harlem (Fig. 125)

They live in old and dirty tenement houses.

serves as an introductory map of Harlem, with its streets,

They live in fire traps.

churches, dance halls, bars, beauty parlors, and funeral

Often three families share one toilet.

homes—places that served its citizens from birth to the

This is a family living in Harlem.

grave. Broad sidewalks accommodate pedestrians, and

The mother and father go to work.

streets provide easy access for automobiles. The art his-

The children go to school.

torian Richard Powell has succinctly described this paint-

If the family can afford it, their baby is sent to one of the few day nurseries available. In the evening the mother and father come home from work. When Christmas comes they buy a tree and presents for the children. And then they go to sleep. There are many churches in Harlem. The people are very religious.

ing as a “perspective-defying townscape [that] literally ‘jitterbugs’ before us. Our eyes leap with animated velocity from fire escape to fire escape and from window to window; the contrasting colors and patterns play havoc with our initial sense of order. . . . Though not immediately apparent, this rendering of a community is deeper than mere documentary reportage and illustration: it

There is an average of four bars to every block.

delves into the very psyche of the urban experience.”35

You can buy bootleg whiskey for twenty-five cents a quart.

Indeed, This Is Harlem is a fitting introduction to a group

The rooftops seem to spread for miles.

of paintings that in their totality touch the pulse of Har-

At times it is hard to get a table in a pool room.

lem’s reality.

Many whites come to Harlem to watch the Negroes dance. And Harlem society looks on. In the evening Evangelists preach and sing on street corners. Comedians dance, sing and make jokes in the show houses and cabarets. Peddlers reduce their prices in the evening to get rid of their perishables. Harlem Hospital’s free clinic is crowded with patients every morning and evening. The undertakers do a good business. When it is warm the parks are filled with people.

The next five paintings depict the interiors of tenements. In They Live in Fire Traps (Fig. 126) we join the small children sitting on the edge of the brass bed with its bright red blanket to confront the most terrifying of realities—the burning down of a home (often the result of a defective heating system). The children stand out like jewels against the rubble of charred buildings and the smoke lingering along the upper edge. Lawrence might have been looking at Richard Wright’s book 12 Million Black Voices when he painted Often Three

home in harlem  177

Fig 125   This Is Harlem, 1943. Gouache on paper, 15 3⁄8

x 2211 ⁄16 in. (39 x 57.6 cm). Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 1966. Photo: Lee Stalsworth. Fig 126  They Live in Fire Traps, 1943. Gouache on pa-

per, 221 ⁄2 x 15 3⁄8 in. (57.6 x 39 cm). Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts, Museum purchase.

Fig 127   Often Three Families Share One Toilet, 1943. Gouache on paper, 211⁄4 x 141⁄4 in. (54 x 36.2 cm). Current location unknown. Photo © Christie’s Images Limited. Fig 128   Russell Lee, Toilet in “Kitchenette” Apartment House, Chicago, Ill. Photo in Richard Wright and Edwin Rosskam, 12 Million Black Voices: A Folk History of the Negro in the United States (New York: Viking Press, 1941), 106. Library of Congress, Farm Security Administration Collection.

Families Share One Toilet (Fig. 127), for it bears an uncanny

service from the street, while a woman trudges along the

resemblance to one of the photographs in that volume:

sidewalk, oblivious to the proceedings.

Russell Lee’s Toilet in “Kitchenette” Apartment House (Fig.

Harlem’s bars, poolrooms, and nightclubs stayed open

128). In contrast, This Is a Family Living in Harlem (Museum

late, providing exciting subjects for Lawrence’s art. Some

of Modern Art) strikes a more upbeat mood, showing a

might dispute the statistic in the title There Is an Average

father, a mother, two children, and a baby together at a

of Four Bars to Every Block (Fig. 130), but not the image of

kitchen table in a narrow and tidy room warmed by an

well-dressed black and white, male and female patrons

old stove.

sitting at the bar. People could also celebrate at home. You

The pictures then move outside the narrow confines of

Can Buy Bootleg Whiskey for Twenty-Five Cents a Quart

kitchenette apartments. During the day children go to

(Portland Art Museum, Oregon) depicts two couples in

school and to day care (if their parents can afford it), while

different stages of inebriation, having their whiskey or “their

the parents go to work and return home at the end of the

nip of gin” on a Saturday night, as Hughes would say. A

day. Weekends are reserved for going to church, as shown

radio with its short cord plugged into a wall outlet provides

in There Are Many Churches in Harlem. The People Are

added diversion should the conversation lag.

Very Religious (Fig. 129). Through the storefront window

Nightlife tourism fueled the economy of Harlem, as

of the “Church of God” we get a glimpse of the fervor with

Law­rence reveals in Many Whites Come to Harlem to

which some express their faith. One passerby views the

Watch the Negroes Dance (Fig. 131). 36 The white patrons, home in harlem  179

Fig 129   There Are Many Churches in Harlem. The People Are Very Religious, 1943. Watercolor and gouache on paper, 151 ⁄2 x 221 ⁄2 in. (39.4 x 57.2 cm). Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, 1987.94. Photo © 2009 Amon Carter Museum. Fig 130   There Is an Average of Four Bars to Every Block, 1943. Gouache on paper, 159⁄16 x 221 ⁄2 in. (39.4 x 57.2 cm). Museum of Art, Rhode

Island School of Design, Providence, Mary B. Jackson Fund, 43.565. Photography by Erik Gould. Fig 131   Many Whites Come to Harlem to Watch the Negroes Dance, 1943. Gouache on paper, 14 x 21 in. (35.6 x 53.3 cm). Private collec-

tion. Photo: The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation/Art Resource, NY.

wedged into a table at the upper left corner, observe four

corners, and going to cabarets. He also depicts Har-

dancing couples swinging their arms in widening arcs

lemites buying from pushcart vendors and going to free

across the dance floor. Each figure has his or her own

medical clinics. The Undertakers Do a Good Business

discrete space in which to dance. The angular red and

(Portland Art Museum, Oregon) points to an all-too-­

yellow shapes Lawrence uses in the dancers’ outfits punc-

common outcome of neglected medical treatment in Har-

tuate the easy rhythms. From a different perspective, And

lem. However, it is countered by an upbeat image, When

Harlem Society Looks On (Portland Art Museum, Oregon)

It Is Warm the Parks Are Filled with People (Hirshhorn

shows animatedly conversing, middle-class Harlemites in

Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution),

tuxedoes and fancy gowns sipping their cocktails at a

in which mothers sit on park benches, push baby car-

high-style lounge.

riages, tend to infants, and buy ice cream for their chil-

Lawrence then returns to working-class diversions,

dren. The green colors emphasize the park ambience.

such as listening to street preachers, singing on street

The round carriage and ice cream cart wheels echo the

home in harlem  181

figures’ heads, setting up a syncopated rhythm that animates the scene. The next three panels focus on education—on higher education in City College Is Like a Beacon over Harlem (unlocated), on home education in Mothers and Fathers Work Hard to Educate Their Children (Fig. 132), and on self-education in The Libraries Are Appreciated (Philadelphia Museum of Art). To Lawrence’s mentors, such as Alain Locke, education meant advancing the race: good

presents impartially the life and death, work and play and aspiration, evil housing conditions and snatches of beauty in Harlem, and with their extraordinarily factual titles constitute an amazing social document. Lawrence’s color is fittingly vivid for his interpretations. A strong semi-abstract approach aids him in arriving at his basic or archetypal statements. Confronting this work one feels as if vouchsafed an extraordinary elemental experience. Lawrence has grown in his use of rhythm as well as in sheer design and fluency. For a variety of reasons, three stars on the visiting list. 39

for its own sake, it was also a step toward the integration of blacks into white society. Lawrence returns to social issues in the last two paint-

Art Digest described the paintings as relating “the conditions of life in Harlem”:

ings: Because of High Rents and Unfit Conditions Rent Strikes Are Becoming More Frequent (Fig. 133) and The

Lawrence uses simple means to tell his story of what he

People Are Beginning to Organize. They Want a Good

clearly considers distressing conditions in the city within a

Harlem (unlocated).37 Here he acknowledges that strikes

city, which is Harlem. He writes a sort of free verse that be-

and political organizing are a part of living in Harlem and

comes titles to his 30 narrative gouaches; and he paints post-

make fitting subjects for art. Lawrence’s exhibition was an instant hit in its sales and

er-like, bright colored scenes of night and day life, of struggles to get along, of demon drink and hard times, inadequate

critical reception. The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the

housing and nutriment; of over-crowded medical clinics and

Worcester Art Museum each bought a painting, and the

frequent funerals; of rent strikes and the desire to make things

Portland Art Museum in Oregon purchased five. Private collectors, including Roy Neuberger and the poet Countee Cullen, bought several, and Halpert reserved at least two for her own private collection. 38 Lawrence had already garnered praise for Pool Parlor (Fig. 124), which received sixth prize for watercolor (and $500 prize money) in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s national Artists for Victory exhibition, and now the press enthusiastically embraced his 1943 Downtown Gallery exhi­

better for the children. . . . He uses the disarming device, in his drive for reform, of a singing and hopeful approach.40

Like many other reviewers, these critics responded to both the sociological message and the art: subjects to provoke thought and feeling, color and design to enhance the emotional response and to keep the viewer looking. Lawrence did not, however, specifically refer to World War II or to the new mood of wariness in Harlem toward the war.41

bition. The New York Times critic Howard Devree declared that even more than in the Migration of the Negro exhi­ bition at the Museum of Modern Art the previous year, Lawrence had

harlem riot of

1943

Harlem in 1943 was a tinderbox of grievances and resentments. Some of Lawrence’s paintings hinted at them, and

successfully concentrated his attention on the many-sided life

with increasing frequency Hughes’s poems expressed

of his people in Harlem. The current group of thirty gouaches

them outright. In 1953 the literary historian Arthur P. Davis

Fig 132  The Music Lesson, originally titled Mothers and Fathers Work Hard to Educate Their Children, 1943. Gouache on paper, 15 3⁄8 x 221 ⁄2

in. (39.1 x 57.2 cm). New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, Gift of the Association for the Arts of New Jersey State Museum, fa1973-19. Fig 133   Because of High Rents and Unfit Conditions Rent Strikes Are Becoming More Frequent (also known as Rent Strike), 1942. Gouache

on paper, 14 x 21 in. (35.6 x 53.3 cm). Private collection. Courtesy Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York, NY.

home in harlem  183

observed that Hughes developed from a poet of the

Neighborhoods”: “The damage to your stores is primarily

tourist-defined, exotic Harlem of the 1920s to a poet of

a protest against the whole rotten system of Jim Crow

the impatiently frustrated wartime Harlem.42 Hughes

ghettos, Jim Crow cars, and Jim Crow treatment of Negro

sensed, and indeed became the poet of, a changed con-

soldiers. But, you say, you are not responsible for those

sciousness among Harlemites, who were ironically aware

Jim Crow conditions. Why should your windows be bro-

of the overt and much discussed contradiction in their

ken? They shouldn’t. I am sorry they are. But I can tell you

collective American experience: the expectation that they

WHY they are broken.” Hughes lists the grievances: shop-

fight a war “for democracy” in a Jim Crow army.

keepers in black neighborhoods hire black employees only

No wonder Harlem exploded on August 1–3, 1943, when

reluctantly, and, when they do, hire only one; the bank

for three days and nights, in response to a rumor that a

branches in Harlem never hire blacks; store prices in black

black soldier had been shot to death by a white policeman,

neighborhoods are higher than elsewhere; and white

hundreds of residents took to the streets in protest. The

shopkeepers can live in beautiful whites-only suburbs or

series of events unfolded as follows. Margie Polite “cussed”

downtown apartments closed to African Americans.

a white policeman, James Collins, in the lobby of the

Hughes ends: “I do not believe in mob violence as a solu-

Braddock Hotel at 272 West 126th Street and was arrested

tion for social problems. But I do understand what it is

for disorderly conduct. A black soldier, Robert Bandy,

that makes many young people in Negro neighborhoods

intervened and assaulted Collins, who arrested him. When

an easy prey to that desperate desire born of frustration—

Bandy ran, the policeman shot and wounded him. Bandy

to which you contribute—to hurl a brick through a

was taken to the hospital, but the rumor spread that he

window.”45

had been killed. The protest soon metamorphosed into a

The writer for the November 1943 bulletin of the Port-

riot, with the breaking of shop windows and looting. Even-

land Art Museum in Oregon may have had the Harlem

tually some six thousand National Guardsmen were called

riot in mind when commenting on the five paintings from

in, and more than six hundred people were arrested; as-

the Downtown show that the museum had purchased:

sessments of property damage ranged up to five million

“The series Harlem, as a whole, depicts the realities of

dollars.43

the life of the Negro within a white civilization. The per-

As to the causes of the riot, pundits, politicians, and

vading emotion is horror and tragic despair. The dramatic

civic leaders stepped forward to render their opinions.

impact of the paintings is tremendous; by the simplest

Adam Clayton Powell Sr., by then the retired minister of

means the artist is able to speak to every observer. . . .

the Abyssinian Baptist Church, observed:

They are a powerful indictment of man’s inhumanity to man.”46 The last, clichéd sentence seems overly strong,

When Bandy hit Collins over the head with that club, he was not

given Lawrence’s bright colors and the upbeat mood of

mad with him only for arresting a colored woman, but he was

joy in humanity reflected in many of his panels, but the

mad with every white policeman throughout the United States

somber content was certainly also evident.

who had consistently beaten, wounded, and often killed colored men and women without provocation. Those window smashers were not mad with the windows, they were mad with all the white men living or dead who had heaped every insult and indignity upon them for centuries. When they were smashing windows

While the staff at the Portland Art Museum saw the recent works as social protest, Lawrence denied any conscious political aims. In a 1988 interview with the artist and writer Michael Harris, Lawrence stood firm: “I didn’t

they thought they were breaking the skulls of . . . race haters

select what I was going to do as much as doing what was

and race baiters. They were wrong, terribly wrong, but they were

around me. If that turned out to be political or cultural it

mad and mad men are

always ­abnormal.44

wasn’t because I thought of it in those terms. Street corner orators. The riots. Things like that. This is all taking

Langston Hughes comments on the smashed windows in

place around me, and I didn’t go out and say, ‘well, I’m

his August 14, 1943, column in the Chicago Defender, ad-

going to do a political painting.’ Or ‘I’m going to do a

dressed to “White Shopkeepers Who Own Stores in Negro

painting of people with problems.’ Or that type of thing.

184  home in harlem

But that was my life.”47 Lawrence was painting the life he knew. To him, Harlemites were not pathetic victims but people of unstoppable desire and courage who had to struggle with often intolerable circumstances. And although he shied away from being an activist himself—he wanted to be an artist—he knew, like Hughes, that rioting, like picketing, might at times be psychologically necessary and strategically effective. Although his series reflects the contradictions of Harlem’s environment, he knew Harlem was still not the South—a South that, in Hughes’s words, “begins at Newark.”48 Harlem was a home, a community, a nurturing refuge, a place where leaders such as Adam C. Powell Jr. took an activist role and poets such as Langston Hughes gave voice to the black Everyman. Hughes and Lawrence specifically turned to the subject of the Harlem riot within five years of the event. In OneWay Ticket (1948), Hughes published “The Ballad of Margie Polite,” a poem praised by Arnold Rampersad as a “brilliant fusion of protest and the vernacular.”49 In it, Harlemites declare August 1 to be “Margie’s Day,” com­ mem­orating her role for setting the riot in motion. Perhaps tongue-in-cheek, the poem nevertheless delivers a message. Arthur Davis, writing in 1953, commented: “In these thirteen short stanzas, Langston Hughes has distilled, as it were, all of the trigger-sensitiveness to ­injustice—real or imagined; all of the pent-up anti-white bitterness; and

Fig 134   The Ballad of Margie Polite, 1948. Brush and ink on paper,

all of the sick-and-tired-of-being-kicked-around feelings

24 3⁄4 x 161 ⁄2 in. (62.9 x 41.9 cm). Private collection, New York. Image courtesy DC Moore Gallery, New York.

which characterize the masses of present-day Harlem. It is indeed a provocative analysis of the frictions and the tensions in the black ghetto.” For Davis, the conditions of 1943 had not much changed in a decade. Lawrence, in his black-and-white drawing The Ballad of Margie Polite (Fig. 134), which he contributed to Hughes’s

chaos of an exploding Harlem, not skin color. One senses that Lawrence, if not a participant, shared Hughes’s outlook and the frustrations of his Harlem neighbors.50

One-Way Ticket, presents a parallel comment on the riot. Legs and arms, some holding billy clubs or bricks, others holding loot grabbed from stores, intersect at sharp an-

harlem as a state of mind

gles with a cacophony of faces—some belonging to po-

World War II dictated Lawrence’s absence from New York

licemen, others bloodied—while children scatter off the

for more than two years—from October 1943 to Decem­

bottom edges. One child holds a loaf of bread, slices of

ber 1945. When he mustered out of the service that De-

which fall to the sidewalk as he runs. Only that child is

cember, he returned not to Harlem but to Brooklyn—to 385

actually colored black; as in other drawings by Lawrence,

Decatur Street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood,

black ink is used to define facial features of a face and

where Knight had been living near her foster family during

only occasionally to indicate race. What stands out is the

his absence.51

home in harlem  185

Yet Lawrence continued to choose those subjects that

shop, in both form and content. . . . is one of the many

implied the sense of place and the state of mind that was

scenes that I still see and remember.”55 The barbershop

“Harlem.” During an interview with Carroll Greene in

was not just a place for grooming but a major site of

1968, Lawrence mused that Langston Hughes had in-

black male urban culture—where men learned from their

sisted he would “never live outside the Negro commu-

elders, heard the news, exchanged gossip, politicized

nity,” but then continued: “I don’t think that I have to live

themselves and others, made life decisions, and consoli-

physically in the Negro community. . . . But the very work

dated their identities as black men. It was a crucial part

I do is so much a part of me that I feel that I could never

of their public sphere. Black barbers specialized in bar-

leave it really.”

52

Perhaps living at a physical distance

bering techniques for black men. They never had white

from Harlem allowed the psychic distance he needed to

clients to cope with, and few women intruded into the male

conceptualize his observations.53 Indeed, by 1972, after

socializing.

he and Gwendolyn Knight had moved permanently to a

In addition to returning to his “Harlem” street scenes

white suburb of Seattle, Lawrence was speaking about

in 1946, Lawrence made paintings of the trades—not only

“many Harlems”: “Most of my work depicts events from

Barber Shop but also The Shoemaker, Watchmaker, Cabi­

the many Harlems which exist throughout the United

net Maker, Steelworkers, Radio Repairs, Stenographers,

States. This is my genre. My surroundings. The people I

The Seamstress, and, in 1947, Tailors—fitting subjects, as

know . . . at work . . . at play . . . at worship. A free hospi-

the art historian Lowery Stokes Sims has noted, for ser-

tal clinic  .  .  . vaudeville comedians  .  .  . children in a li-

vicemen returning from World War II and looking for jobs.56

brary. The happiness, tragedies, and the sorrows of man-

As he said in his application for the Guggenheim Fellow-

kind as realized in the teeming black ghetto.”54 Although

ship, he intended “to continue the record of Negro con-

the people and the brownstones of the Bed-Sty neighbor-

temporary life in America” on the basis of his “exhaustive

hood where he lived in the late 1940s looked similar to

study of this material both in literature and in life.”57

those in Harlem, the community was in fact more racially

He also painted images that suggest his reactions to

mixed. Moreover, it lacked the excitement of Harlem’s

his own homecoming from war. Although Gwendolyn

nightlife and the sense of being the “mecca” for African

Knight had visited him when he was stationed in St. Au-

Americans.

gustine and Boston, and he had managed to obtain leaves

As Lawrence stepped back into the life of the streets,

to visit New York, there was nothing like the joy of being

it is not surprising that he painted Barber Shop (Fig. 135),

home permanently. A snapshot taken in February 1946 of

a place where men congregated, whether or not they

Lawrence and Knight standing on a suburban street, with

needed a haircut or shave. He later described the barber-

her clutching her fur coat to her neck, conveys the plea-

shop as vital to the culture and visual kaleidoscope of

sure they found in each other’s company (Fig. 136). And

Harlem: “It was inevitable that the barber shop with its

the subjects of his art refer to that satisfaction in being

daily gathering of Harlemites, its clippers, mirror, razors,

home. In Going Home (1946, Fig. 137), Lawrence empha-

the over-all pattern and the many conversations that took

sizes the overcrowded train, with overhead bins jammed

place there . . . was to become the subject of many of my

with suitcases, people sleeping in the aisles, and a lone

paintings. Even now, in my imagination, whenever I relive

serviceman in khakis wedged into a middle compartment.

my early years in the Harlem community, the barber

The passengers are all black, which suggests a Jim Crow

Fig 135   Barber Shop, 1946. Gouache on paper, 21 1 ⁄8 x 293⁄8 in. (53.7 x 74.6 cm). Toledo Museum of Art, Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey. Photo: The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation/Art Resource, NY. Fig 136   Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight, February 17, 1946. Courtesy Seattle Art Museum. Fig 137   Going Home, 1946. Gouache on paper, 22 x 301⁄4 in. (55.9 x 76.8 cm). Private collection. Image courtesy DC Moore Gallery, New

York.

home in harlem  187

car, but the image suggests the relief of a return from wartime service.

It was Simple’s Harlem that Lawrence painted in the 1940s—the Harlem of expectations, distortions, contra-

The Lovers (1946, Fig. 138) depicts a man—who could

dictions. In one of Hughes’s sketches, written for the Oc-

be a returning serviceman like Lawrence—cuddling his

tober 5, 1946, issue of the Chicago Defender, Simple

sweetheart. They sit on the davenport listening to the

praises Harlem. The narrator, Hughes himself in the guise

phonograph player beside them. A bottle of whiskey, two

of Simple’s bar stool friend, asks Simple, “What is it that

shot glasses, cigarettes, and an ashtray rest on the low

you like so much about Harlem?” Simple replies: “It is full

table in front of them. The man’s hat rests on the top of

of Negroes. . . . I feel like I got protection,” adding, “I like

the couch cushion, suggesting that he is a visitor. A snake

Harlem because it belongs to me.” When the narrator

plant occupies the table at one side, a flower pot with a

points out that Simple does not own the houses, Simple

pathos plant hangs down, and a pair of photographs in

replies: “I may not own ’em, but I live in ’em, and it would

oval frames rests on the red table. It is a touching mo-

take an atom bomb to get me out. . . . I am in Harlem to

ment of courtship, love, and the promise of family life. In

stay. You say the houses ain’t mine. Well, the sidewalk

End of the Day (1945, Fig. 139), a couple lies in bed, lei-

is—and don’t nobody push me off. The cops don’t even

surely reading the newspapers. The artist seems to be

much say, ‘move on,’ hardly no more.”60

saying that connubial bliss depends on such shared moments of quiet companionship.

Hughes’s Simple owned the sidewalks. He owned the place, Harlem, even if he did not own the particular ­tenement—​the physical space—in which he lived. It didn’t matter if he didn’t own the buildings. Community was about people and their homes, not about the rights of

the street as cultural site in postwar america

property. Even if Harlem produced few jobs, it was still

During the 1940s Hughes had developed the fictional

years of being away.61

character Jesse B. Semple to represent the attitudes of

the ’hood where people could hang out and return after In other writings Hughes also expressed the hopes and

working-class Harlemites. Hughes first introduced the

concerns of New Yorkers who played out the drama of

person he called “My Simple-Minded Friend” in his Chi­

their lives on stoops and sidewalks.62 Kurt Weill invited

cago Defender opinion column “Here to Yonder” in Febru-

Hughes to write the lyrics to his opera adaptation of Elmer

ary 1943. Usually Hughes’s column discussed topics of

Rice’s popular play Street Scene.63 When it was first

particular interest to the newspaper’s black readers—

performed at the Adelphi Theater on January 9, 1947,

black soldiers, the Harlem riot of 1943, Hughes’s own

New York Times theater critic Brooks Atkinson gave it a

travels on the lecture circuit, and being black in racist

rave review, especially for its “sidewalk dances.”64 Life

America.58 The creation of Semple (often called “Simple”)

magazine, which ran a spread on the opera in its February

gave Hughes license to voice directly, without censorship,

24 issue, declared, “With excellent singing in an eloquent

commonly held attitudes about family, girlfriends, land-

score, Street Scene brings new stature to the U.S.

lords, male buddies, racial advancement, education, the

stage.”65 The opera’s drama unfolds on a hot summer

courts, the police, and Jim Crow segregation in a street-

night in the public space in front of a New York tenement

smart vernacular that black readers instantly recognized

where kids play, young people dance, lovers exchange

as truthful and authentic.59

words, and immigrant grown-ups gossip and argue.66

Fig 138   The Lovers, 1946. Gouache on paper, 21 1 ⁄2 x 30 in. (54.6 x 76.2 cm). Private collection. Image courtesy DC Moore Gallery, New

York. Fig 139   End of the Day, 1945. Gouache on paper, 20 x 291 ⁄2 in. (50.8 x 74.9 cm). Collection Kook Gibbs Family. Image courtesy DC Moore

Gallery, New York.

home in harlem  189

Significantly, the cast of characters included all ethnic groups except African Americans. The cultural import of street life can also be seen in The Street (1946), the first novel of the People’s Voice reporter Ann Petry. This story takes on not just the problems of being black in America but also the ordeals of urban poverty and the vulnerabilities of being both a single mother and an object of men’s predatory sexual desires. Alain Locke called the novel “the artistic success of the year.” To Locke it told the truth “vividly, honestly, objectively” and was “deftly embroidered with the particularisms of Negro life.” Moreover, he admired the book’s realism—not defeatist but Zola-esque.67 The heroine of The Street, Lutie Johnson, struggles to make a living and keep her young son, Bub, out of ­trouble—​ to keep him “off the street.” The novel describes in detail

Fig 140   Children at Play, 1947. Tempera on hardboard, 20 x 24 in.

the dreary tenement Lutie rents on 116th Street, with its

(50.8 x 61 cm). Georgia Museum of Art, The University of Georgia, Eva Underhill Holbrook Collection of American Art, Gift of Alfred H. Holbrook.

small living space, dank and dark hallways, and broken furniture. A major character is the first-floor tenant, Mrs. Hedges (a Hogarthian character, to Locke), who observes the street from her front window. Mrs. Hedges provides

tling in the streets. Street photographers also focused on

the many characters with information and gossip that

such scenes, as in a photograph of girls playing dodge-

fuel the narrative.68

ball on 142nd Street (Fig. 142). It is not that one artist is

Many of Petry’s passages describe the street in terms

influencing another here, but that they are drawing on

familiar to viewers of Lawrence’s paintings—as “swarm-

shared observations and an understanding that children’s

ing with children,” girls “skipping double dutch rope,”

“play” reflects the community. Activities of children have

boys “shining shoes.”69 But also “here on this street the

meaning and give a community its sense of generational

women trudged along overburdened, overworked, their

continuity.

own homes neglected while they looked after someone

Just how vital street life is for urban communities lies

else’s while the men on the street swung along empty-

at the heart of writings by the activist and urban critic

handed, well dressed, and carefree. Or they lounged

Jane Jacobs. In The Death and Life of Great American

against the sides of the buildings, their hands in their

Cities (1961), she attacked what she viewed as the anti-

pockets while they stared at the women who walked past,

social projects of city planners and devoted three chap-

probably deciding which woman they should select to re-

ters to the social benefits of sidewalks. To Jacobs, side-

place the wife who was out working all day.”70 Lutie con-

walks could help solve the alienation of modern cities:

stantly spins out of her imagination little stories to match

“Streets and their sidewalks, the main public places of a

the daily comings and goings of people she sees.

city, are its most vital organs.”72 Because residents, pass-

It is hardly a coincidence that Lawrence’s Harlem

ersby, and shopkeepers and other small businesspeople

(1942, private collection) was reproduced in the New York

all kept an eye on these public spaces, they kept crime at

Times review of Petry’s book, since he had become well

bay and made everyone feel secure. Jacobs would have

known as the painter of Harlem.71 The girls in Lawrence’s

liked Ann Petry’s fictional Mrs. Hedges at her window,

Children at Play (1947, Fig. 140) could be playing the

always watching the comings and goings of the street,

games Petry mentions. The boys in his Shoe-Shine Boys

and keeping the neighborhood under constant and be-

(1948, Fig. 141) could be the boys she describes as hus-

nign surveillance.

190  home in harlem

Fig 141   Shoe-Shine Boys, 1948. Egg tempera on hardboard, 20 x

24 in. (50.8 x 61 cm). Private collection. Image courtesy DC Moore Gallery, New York. Fig 142   Nichols, Girls Playing Dodge Ball on 142nd Street, 1949.

Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

Fig 143   The Checker Players, 1947. Egg tempera on hardboard, 20 x 24 in (50.8 x 61 cm). Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts, Gift of Saundra B. Lane in memory of her husband, William H. Lane, and purchased through the Stoddard Acquisition Fund.

For Jacobs, the social responsibility of such eyes is what made cities vital. Children especially benefited. Hav-

their charm is the accompanying sense of freedom to roam up and down the sidewalks.”73

ing adults watch over them gave them a sense of com-

We see this kind of “free” play in Lawrence’s Children

munity and trust. The sidewalks became places where

at Play, where nine skinny girls dance about on a side-

kids could indulge in “unspecialized play,” where they had

walk hopscotch grid. The open spaces with which Law-

the freedom to “slop in puddles, write with chalk, jump

rence surrounds his girls emphasize their freedom. In

rope, roller skate, shoot marbles, trot out their posses-

contrast, Shoe-Shine Boys seems densely packed, as

sions, converse, trade cards, play stoop ball, walk stilts,

three large boys, almost men, march up the streets, de-

decorate soap-box scooters, dismember old baby car-

termined to make a dime and to “shine.”

riages, climb on railings, run up and down.  .  .  . Part of

192  home in harlem

Lawrence also painted men playing games, as in The

Fig 144   Kibitzers, 1948. Egg tempera on hardboard, 20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 61 cm). Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, An-

dover, Massachusetts, Gift from the Childe Hassam Fund of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Checker Players (1947, Fig. 143), Kibitzers (1948, Fig. 144),

leaning out of windows, or sitting on stoops observing the

and the many scenes of men playing pool, cards, domi-

goings-on and interceding when necessary.

noes, and

chess.74

The Checker Players shows five figures

in a betting parlor—two players, two onlookers, and one

These postwar works reflect changes in the way Lawrence handled paint and articulated the volume of ­figures—​

man recording the scores of a baseball game in the back-

techniques he may have learned in 1946 from Josef Albers

ground. Written across the top of the board are the names

when teaching at Black Mountain College. One new tech-

of the Negro Leagues.75 In Kibitzers seven hulking figures

nique is his outlining of the facial features. Instead of show-

hover over and offer advice to two barely visible checker

ing round white eyeballs punctuated by black irises and

players. To Jane Jacobs, it was kibitzers like these who

pupils, characteristic of his work before 1946, Lawrence

gave street culture its vitality—people standing around,

has devised a way to outline the eyelids, the pupils, and the

home in harlem  193

edges of the nose and to articulate the fingers. He now

changes, sudden nuances, sharp and impudent inter­

uses a reverse method, which he described as “painting

jections, broken rhythms  .  . . punctuated by riffs, runs,

on either side of the line.” As conservator Elizabeth Steele

breaks, and disc-tortions of the music of a community in

explains, focusing on The Checker Players: “He painstak-

transition,” he could have been describing Lawrence’s

ingly brushed the brown paint up to and just over the

paintings as well.78

edges of the underdrawing, leaving a thin line in reserve

Broken rhythms and riffs abound in the compositional

to depict the eyes and other fine details.  .  .  . He then

structure of Dancing Doll (1947, Fig. 145). Large shapes

painted a transparent yellow over the reserved space.”76

representing the figures’ clothing spread across the mid-

The result is a richer sense of patterning and a more so-

dle band; twelve heads punctuate the top, narrower band;

phisticated handling of the features of dark faces. But with

and the four red, yellow, and green puppets seen at street

this technique figures do not seem to look at each other,

level inject sharp accents.79 Each compositional band has

as they did in the earlier pictures such as Street Orator’s

its own independent rhythm. When asked about the

Audience and Street Scene—Restaurant.

painting, however, Lawrence focused on its subject mat-

Lawrence employs yet another technique to give dyna-

ter: “This is a street scene of peddlers selling dolls which

mism to the figures. Flat, evenly painted forms (see Street

dance. The doll dances as it is manipulated by an invisi-

Orator’s Audience) have given way to a mix of light and

ble string.”80 The dance of the dolls provides an illusion

dark tones that describe figures and their clothing (see

of human animation.

The Checker Players). These tonal variations do not neces-

Lawrence’s scene anticipates a pivotal scene from

sarily conform to a naturalistic pattern of light and dark

Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952), just after the pro-

created by a directed light source. In these later works

tagonist’s falling-out with a radical organization to which

Lawrence is using the precepts advocated by Alfred Wes-

he belonged. Hurrying along the streets of Manhattan, he

ley Dow: employing light and dark for pattern rather than

sees a crowd gathered around a man who is moving

for modeling a volumetric form. Now Lawrence creates a

something:

syncopation of rhythms through light and dark rather than through hue shifts (as he did in the 1930s). For

It was some kind of toy and I glanced at the crowd’s fascinated

­example, the lower half of Kibitzers consists of long verti-

eyes and down again, seeing it clearly this time. . . . A grinning

cal columns of alternating light and dark forms of the

doll of orange-and-black tissue paper with thick flat cardboard

same hue (the trousers of the kibitzers), but in the top half the light areas are fuller (expressing the bulky backs of the men), thus creating a different rhythm. Accenting the spaces between the foreground men are the red stripes on the shirts of the background figures. This com-

discs forming its head and feet and which some mysterious mechanism was causing to move up and down in a loosejointed, shoulder-shaking, infuriatingly sensuous motion, a dance that was completely detached from the black, mask-like face. It’s no jumping-jack, but what, I thought, seeing the doll throwing itself about with the fierce defiance of someone

positional device recalls the art historian Robert Farris

performing a degrading act in public, dancing as though it

Thompson’s observation, in an essay on African Ameri-

received a perverse pleasure from its motions.81

can quilts, that in traditional African music the listener can hear two different kinds of beat simultaneously—“the

Ellison’s protagonist feels caught up in the humanlike, but

rhythmic clash.” Similarly, with “stepping,” jazz dancers

degrading, antics of the doll—manipulated by an outside

emphasize the off-beats—“shading the count.”77 Many of

agent as he feels is happening to himself. Similarly, in

Lawrence’s compositions from this period—not only Ki­

many paintings by Lawrence the viewer senses a sinister

bitzers but also Going Home, Gee’s Bend, Shoe-Shine

undercurrent and a vague premonition that an irrational

Boys, and the drawing Parade—employ these formal aes-

sudden movement might upset the social balance.

thetic effects. When Hughes referred to his Montage of a

In contrast to Dancing Doll, a poignant undercurrent is

Dream Deferred poems as a bebop style of “conflicting

offered by The Fur Coat (1948, Fig. 146). In this sad inte-

194  home in harlem

Fig 145   Dancing Doll, 1947. Egg tempera on hardboard, 201⁄4 x 241⁄8 in. (51.4 x 61.3 cm). Collection of the Frederick R. Weisman Art Mu-

seum at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Bequest of Hudson D. Walker from the Ione and Hudson D. Walker Collection.

rior scene visitors come to console a mother whose life-

in the 1946 snapshot, as she leaves the scene. One sus-

less baby lies on the bed. A frightened boy clings to the

pects that the image originated in Lawrence’s personal

chair behind the white visitor. A figure in white, perhaps

memories.82

the mother, sits at the edge of the bed facing away from

Lawrence often depicts women at home; when outside

us, as does another small child. The plastered ceiling in

they are often onlookers or passersby in scenes where

disrepair suggests the family’s poverty. Even the wealthy

men and boys initiate action. In Rummage Sale (1948,

woman in her fur coat, a member of this community of

Fig. 147), however, Lawrence represents five women ac-

mourning, cannot help ease the tragedy. She clutches her

tively rummaging through bins of clothes, bolts of cloth,

coat, in much the same gesture as Gwendolyn Knight did

and shoes, while a small child looks on to learn her elders’

home in harlem  195

Fig 146   The Fur Coat, 1948. Egg tempera on hardboard, 20 x 16 in. (50.8 x 40.6 cm). Private collection. Image courtesy DC Moore

Gallery, New York.

Fig 147   Rummage Sale, 1948. Egg tempera on hardboard, 24 x 20 in. (61 x 50.8 cm). Private collection. Image courtesy DC Moore Gallery, New York.

ways. To Lawrence, the market, more than the street,

the city in the

1950 s

provides an important public sphere for women—where they can meet and exchange news and gossip.83

The year 1950 was one of transition for Lawrence. After

With his paintings of the late 1940s, Lawrence cap-

a year in the psychiatric ward of Hillside Hospital, he re-

tured the spectacle that makes living in the city what it is.

turned home to Gwen and reentered his social and profes-

He also confirmed to the people of Harlem that they ex-

sional life.84 A haunting painting from this time is Slums

isted and were not invisible. Too often the mainstream

(Fig. 148). In this view from a window overlooking the city,

press ignored African Americans. When Life magazine

he represents no part of the living quarters other than the

ran a photo essay on ethnic groups, titled “Peoples of

window frame. Marking the scene as a “slum” is the in-

New York,” on February 17, 1947, it failed to include pho-

festation of vermin—dozens of cockroaches scamper

tographs of any people of African or Caribbean heritage.

along the frame, mullion, and sill as well as on the tightly

Ebony, which began publishing in 1946, offered black

rolled green shade askew near the top. On the sill sits a

readers an alternative to Life by correcting the pictorial

rusted can along with a bloodied mouse caught in a trap

neglect of African Americans and running stories that

and attracting flies. Through the bottom panes, we see

showed their progress in overcoming segregation, their

the fire escape, its railing draped with drying clothes. An

business acumen, and their successes.

outdoor planter contains a few plants struggling to survive.

home in harlem  197

Across the street, similar fire escapes are peopled with

scenes with figures walking on sidewalks, leaning against

the inhabitants of the neighboring buildings. One feels

brownstone facades, and pausing to look at shop win-

confined, trapped like the mouse, with no exit, as Bigger

dows. Perhaps he was inspired by the photographs of

Thomas felt when trapped in his mother’s rat-infested

Roy DeCarava, who had collaborated with Langston

Chicago

tenement.85

Hughes on The Sweet Flypaper of Life (1955).88 Hughes

City scenes continued to be viable subjects for Law-

proudly gave Lawrence and Knight an inscribed copy of

rence during the 1950s, even when he was painting his

the book that Christmas. Hughes has his protagonist say,

Performance series, exhibited in 1953 (see Chapter 7),

as the text for one page of pictures, “In Harlem some-

and the Struggle series, exhibited in 1955 (see Chapter 8).

thing is happening all the time, people are going every

The U.S. exhibition at the Venice Biennale during the sum-

which-a-way.” That spectacle of street life was the excite-

mer of 1956, organized by the Art Institute of Chicago

ment that propelled Lawrence to return repeatedly to

curator Katharine Kuh, was called American Artists Paint

Harlem scenes.

the City, a theme that highlighted the differences between

Two years earlier Hughes had begun to adapt his 

American and European artists. To Kuh, “When the Ameri-

Jesse B. Semple stories to a musical play. Production

can paints his own cities he is confronted, at least visually,

problems inevitably ensued; it was, after all, a musical

by a new phenomenon, a great mass of structures sprawl-

play about working-class blacks set in a bar. Simply

ing upward and outward with little or no preliminary

Heavenly finally opened in May 1957 at the 85th Street

plan. . . . In American life as in American cities there is a

Playhouse, later moving to the 48th Street Playhouse,

disturbing multiplicity, an overlay of sound, color, light and

and finally, in October, to the Renata Theater on Bleecker

movement which unquestionably influences our artists.

Street. Lawrence wrote to Hughes on a Christmas card

One feels the cumulative effect of too much—too fast—too

that he and Knight had seen it and “enjoyed it greatly.”89

soon.” She then singled out Lawrence’s entry, Chess on

In his art, Lawrence continued to paint street scenes in-

Broadway (1951, private collection), as one of three works

habited by characters like Jesse B. Semple.

that “reflect this seeming chaos.”86

Just how comfortable Lawrence felt painting street

Not surprisingly, at a time when abstract expressionism

scenes of working-class life can be seen in his answer in

was emerging as the exciting new style, only five artists

1962 to a high school student’s question: “How do you go

other than Lawrence did figural art in the Biennale’s Amer­

about painting a picture?”

ican section. The twenty-nine other artists Kuh selected depicted city structures in varying degrees of abstraction,

First I have the idea; which may be a street scene. Second, I

with Jackson Pollock emerging as her clear favorite. Chess

compose a drawing. If the street scene is to be a busy one,

on Broadway, however, blended in with these nonobjective

I try to show this by having many things going on in the picture;

works, for it approaches abstraction through its dense patterning, with its piling up of the small grids of the chessboards, and the bands of windows, through which shine a panoply of sparkling Broadway lights. This penchant for enhancing pattern emerges in many of the theater and performance paintings Lawrence did in the

such as—people shopping—children at play—and various types of stores and their wares. After the composition has been worked out, I then begin painting. I try further to create the feeling of a crowded and busy street by the way I use color, shapes and textures. By the juxtaposition of all these elements; I attempt to create the feeling of the excitement which we all feel about the busy city streets.90

early 1950s; it may be Lawrence’s way of modifying his style to accommodate the new aesthetic sensibility of the dominant New York art world. 87 In the late 1950s, however, Lawrence returned to street

In Brownstones (1958, Fig. 149), Lawrence offers us a sidewalk with three tenements in the background. A couple walks at the left, another couple pushes a baby carriage

Fig 148   Slums, 1950. Casein tempera on paper, 25 x 21 1 ⁄2 in. (63.5 x 54.6 cm). Collection of Elizabeth Marsteller Gordon. Photo: The

Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation/Art Resource, NY.

home in harlem  199

Fig 149   Brownstones, 1958. Egg tempera on hardboard, 31 1 ⁄2 x 371⁄4 in. (80 x 94.6 cm). Clark Atlanta University Art Collections, Gift of Chauncey and Catherine Waddell.

in the middle, and at the right a woman carries a bag of

(1959, Fig. 150), Lawrence choreographs thirty-eight

groceries. Interspersed with the adults, two girls jump

figures on a sidewalk and the stoops, doorways, and

rope, a child bounces a ball, and two others attend to a

windows of three adjacent brownstones. In the foreground

dog. Several figures stand in the doorways, while others

a woman carrying a bundle and a man on crutches set

pause on the stoops. The background windows of the

off to cross the street; behind them, two women dressed

brownstones give the spectator a glimpse of life within the

in red and one man walk along the sidewalk. Thirteen

tenements. In a composition much more elaborate than

men, some sitting on chairs or boxes and others standing,

the street scenes done twenty years earlier, Lawrence

also occupy the sidewalk. Many of them have short

presents a broad sweep of children and family.

sleeves, suggesting summer and fair weather. Lining the

In one of his most notable scenes, Street Shadows

200  home in harlem

wrought-iron fences or standing on the stoops are ten

Fig 150   Street Shadows, 1959. Egg tempera on hardboard, 24 x 30 in. (61 x 76.2 cm). Private collection, New York. Photo: The Jacob and

Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation/Art Resource, NY.

men and a child. Two more men stand in doorways. Be-

railing, who looks up at her. The immediacy of this scene

hind the open window on the left two barbers attend to

is heightened by the paper boats floating in the gutter

their customers. The middle open window reveals a

and the two figures moving toward us in the foreground,

woman arranging flowers while another figure holds a

suggesting a continuity of space between our world and

bundled baby, suggesting a home that is both beautiful

theirs.

and nurturing. The next window is shuttered. The figure

Lawrence’s color choices enhance his rhythmic design.

in the window on the far right looks down on the street

As usual, he deploys light and dark blues and browns in

scene. Her reclining white cat and potted plant code her

the clothing not to reflect light and shadow but to create

as a long-term ­resident—watching the scene and perhaps

patterns and enhance the overall liveliness of the compo-

exchanging comments with the man seated on her fence

sition. The sidewalk is painted black or purple, depending

home in harlem  201

Fig 1 51   Romare Bearden, The Dove, 1964. Cut-andpasted photo reproductions and papers, gouache, pencil, and colored pencil on cardboard, 13 3⁄8 x 18 3⁄4 in. (34 x 47.6 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Blanchette Rockefeller Fund. Art © Romare Bearden Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. Digital image © The Museum of Modern Art/ Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY.

on the way he wants the figures to contrast with the

friendships, spend the leisure time that their days off af-

background.

ford, and improve their skills at gaming and talking.92

In pictures like this it is the sidewalk that organizes

Lawrence’s work is modern in its comprehension that

public life—allowing people to congregate in the open air,

public life resides in the rhythms, the calls and responses,

to play games, debate politics, or simply hang out, while

of people interacting on the sidewalks and streets and as-

others go about their business. The one boarded-up win-

serting their subjectivity.93

dow suggests that the figures are, in any event, transient—renters who may be forced to leave for renovations and new tenants who will pay higher rents. The streets of Harlem become the public sphere where

n

That street life was a fitting subject for modern art was later emphasized by Romare Bearden, with the collages

civic life takes place. As the social scientist and geogra-

he began to make in the early 1960s. The subject matter

pher Doreen Massey has pointed out, we can think of

of African American urban life as much as his montage

places, not “as areas with boundaries around,” but “as

style made for a compelling art. Bearden made these

articulated movements in networks of social relations

works as the result of a decision to deal more directly in

and understandings.”91 Indeed, the men in Lawrence’s

his art with the issues of the day—specifically segre­gation.

picture are not merely playing games, kibitzing, loitering,

He and several other artists, including Charles ­Alston,

or walking from here to there like the disinterested

Hale Woodruff, Norman Lewis, and Emma Amos, formed

flâneurs of Baudelaire. Instead, they are participating in

a group called Spiral.94 Bearden suggested that a worth-

a democratic ritual of community—where whatever they

while group project might be to make collages that re-

do will command respect, whatever they say will be con-

vealed their social concerns; when the others demurred,

sidered. On the streets and sidewalks they consolidate

he made them on his own. He alternated between scenes

202  home in harlem

of Harlem and scenes of Pittsburgh and the countryside

in Lawrence’s painting, their eyes stare at us, seeking

around Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, all places

validation or silently accusing us. In Lawrence’s paintings

where he had spent much of his youth. Lawrence’s street

the figures ignore the viewer as they go about their own

scenes with their collage cubist style were no doubt a rich

business or interact with each other. Both artists, however,

pictorial source for such Bearden works as The Dove

understood that to be modern was to be urban and in

(1964, Fig. 151), The Street (1964, Milwaukee Art Mu-

motion, and nothing expressed that modernity more than

seum), and Childhood Memories (1965–66, private col-

the representation of the streets where people lived to-

lection). Like Lawrence’s Street Shadows these Bearden

gether, in close proximity, respecting the space of their

collages show sidewalks teeming with people. Although

neighbors while trying to improve their circumstances and

the people seem less purposeful in their movements than

opportunities.

home in harlem  203

7

the double consciousness of masks and masking America is a land of masking jokers. We wear the mask for purposes of aggression as well as for defense; when we are projecting the future and preserving the past. In short, the motives hidden behind the mask are as numerous as the ambiguities the mask conceals.

ralph ellison, “Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke” (1958) An iconographic influence . . . cannot be of consequence unless it corresponds to metaphysical ideas already at work in the culture in question.

a. david napier, Masks, Transformation, and Paradox (1986)

At the end of January 1953 Jacob Lawrence’s solo exhibi-

believe of Broadway.” Some of the reviewers, however,

tion Performance opened at the Downtown Gallery. Al-

qualified their remarks about the “lighthearted” qualities.

though numbered like his earlier series, the twelve paintings

For example, Sidney Geist, writing for Art Digest, first

do not demand a serial narrative reading; however, No. 1,

praised the formal qualities: “The glitter and sham of the

Billboards (see Fig. 153), with its bright and sparkling im-

stage are echoed here in studied, prismatic notations.

agery of “coming attractions,” and No. 12, After the Show

There is a profusion of detail as Lawrence paints cos-

(on art market, 2008), a midnight scene of a long recep­

tumes, densely patterned floors and backgrounds, and the

tion table behind which hover spectral skulls and ghosts,

sparkle of jewels.” Then he added a note about its content:

serve as appropriate brackets for the ten other paintings.1

“There is a medieval richness of texture sometimes, and

The works were intended to be sold separately, and indeed

in other cases . . . a boldness, even a violence, of construc-

his dealer Edith Halpert immediately sold several of them,

tion and color.” Geist saw Curtain and Marionettes as

as the exhibition proved to be both a critical and a commer­

“solid paintings, heavy with portent.” But he did not elabo-

cial success. Reviews were uniformly positive, if not equally incisive.

rate on either the violence or what the painting might have portended. 2

Time magazine called the paintings “a lighthearted view of

At the end of a favorable review, Stuart Preston, critic

the entertainment world” and reproduced Vaudeville (1951,

for the New York Times, also noted disturbing aspects in

Fig. 152) as a full-page color illustration. Carlyle Burrows

Lawrence’s art:

of the New York Herald Tribune praised “their free fantasy content and non narrative quality.” Jet magazine noted that

What strange and savage presences are introduced into these

the paintings depicted “various aspects of theatrical life . . .

performances! Superficially they are sketches of life before

from a children’s Christmas pageant to the gaudy make-

and behind the footlights and with them Lawrence at once es-

Fig 152   Vaudeville, 1951. Egg tempera on hardboard, 297⁄8 x 1915⁄16 in. (75.9 x 50.6 cm). Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 1966. Photo: Lee Stalsworth.

Fig 153   Billboards, 1952. Egg tempera on hardboard, 36

x 24 in. (91.4 x 61 cm). Private collection. Image courtesy DC Moore Gallery, New York.

tablishes himself as one of the extraordinary illustrators of our

sociological and cultural environment of African Ameri-

time. Feelings of cruelty, pity, or a sort of wild humor conveyed

cans living in Jim Crow America during this time period.

through almost unbearably shrill color and line that cuts like a

Finally, we need to probe the personal and private realm,

hot sharp blade, expose the whole nerve of the theatre and

examining the deeper insights Lawrence developed dur-

entertainment. Anyone who considers that the camera, as a

ing and after the year he spent in the psychiatric ward of

recording agent, has ousted the artist had better look hard at these even if their point of view is not ­sympathetic. 3

Preston had detected something sinister, but he, too, chose not to develop his observations. A central theme in these Performance paintings is the

Hillside Hospital in Queens, New York.

the historical and political context

idea of masking, which is best understood from three dif-

The decade following the dropping of the atomic bombs

ferent perspectives. First, we need to look at the histori-

on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 was marked

cal and political context of America during the cold war

by prosperity, a population explosion in the cities and

of the late 1940s and 1950s. Then we must consider the

suburbs, and an intensification of the military and eco-

206  masks and masking

nomic competition between the United States and the

Not an activist himself, Lawrence nevertheless en-

Soviet Union. By 1947 the USSR had blockaded Berlin;

dorsed progressive causes and organizations and was

by 1949 Mao Zedong and his communist forces had

therefore vulnerable to accusations of subversive radical-

­triumphed over Chiang Kai-shek in China. In 1950 the

ism. For example, the State Department had planned to

United States was drawn into the Korean War, which con-

send Lawrence in 1953 to West Africa on one of the

tinued until 1953. Political tensions mounted on the 

“goodwill” trips it arranged for artists during the cold war,

home front in reaction to the international events. In Oc-

but then abruptly cancelled the trip. A secret memoran-

tober 1947 the House Committee on Un-American Activi-

dum, dated June 26, 1953, in Lawrence’s FBI file reveals

ties (HUAC) opened public hearings on communism in

that the cancellation occurred because Lawrence was

the film industry. In 1949 eleven members of the Com-

considered “a potential security risk.”8

munist Party leadership were brought to trial under the

The Red Scare and the surge of anticommunism were

Smith Act, which made it a crime even to speak out in

not the only sources of political anxieties in the late

favor of revolutionary change. The Alger Hiss trials of 1949

1940s and 1950s; there was also the threat of the atom

and 1950 and the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg trial and

bomb, which a handful of artists made an overt subject

appeals lasting from 1950 to 1953 served to justify HUAC’s

for art. On commission from Fortune magazine, the ab-

and Joseph McCarthy’s Senate committee campaigns

stract artist Ralston Crawford witnessed the two test

against the “internal Red menace.”4

bombs detonated by the U.S. Navy at Bikini Atoll in 1946

Those who ideologically or idealistically had been

and then painted Test Able (see Fig. 193), at least seven

drawn to the Left in the 1930s or who were actively pro-

other paintings, and a group of gouaches, which were

testing the buildup of nuclear armaments and the Korean

shown at the Downtown Gallery in December 1946. The

War came under suspicion and often surveillance. Many

curator Barbara Haskell interprets the “fractured, spiked

socially concerned artists caught up in leftist politics

forms” in Crawford’s two paintings as indicating “an art

were targeted. The international touring exhibition Ad­

that bespoke a world coming apart, a world whose stabil-

vancing American Art, organized in 1946 by the State

ity and prewar assurance had been irrevocably lost.”9

Department, was cancelled when conservatives objected

More overt in his pessimism, the figurative artist Philip

to the inclusion of left-wing artists. Irate members of

Evergood used symbols to comment on the madness of

Congress made it clear that American art should be, if

a nuclear holocaust in his Renunciation (1946, private

not patriotic, at least upbeat.5 Throughout the late 1940s

collection), an image that envisions apes taking control

anticommunist politicians and journalists intensified their

when the bomb explodes and civilization collapses.

attacks on artists considered subversive. In August 1949,

In their book The Fifties: The Way We Really Were

on the floor of the House, Representative George Don-

(1977), the historians Douglas T. Miller and Marion Nowak

dero (R-MI), the chair of HUAC, denounced artists and

assessed the effects of the bomb on the daily lives of

museum directors he considered subversive, including

Americans: “The psychic consequences were great. Amer-

Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, Philip Evergood, and

icans in general felt powerless, helpless, nervous. Many

Ben Shahn. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover put these and

other factors had contributed to these emotions: the Red

other art world figures under surveillance and paid le-

Scare, the spread of corporate bureaucracy into daily life,

gions of informers to ferret out subversives and “security

mass conformity. But the nuclear threat motivating the

risks.” One informer, for example, reported to the FBI in

cold war was the medium helping these factors succeed.

March 1951 that Shahn associated with a group that had

Americans were manipulated by and through the bomb.

circulated leaflets to “stop the war in Korea.”6 In 1956 the

They backed away from the threats of war and McCarthy-

exhibition Sport in Art, organized in part by the magazine

ism, and rushed instead into dreams of domesticity, reli-

Sports Illustrated, was dropped because of the claim that

gion, material conformity.”10 Among the intellectuals and

four of the artists in the show were included on the at-

writers who focused on the psychological effects of living

torney general’s list of subversives.7

with the bomb was the architectural critic Lewis Mumford.

masks and masking  207

In a 1947 article he warns: “Every precaution taken to avert

modern period of Western Europe. What carnival then

atomic disaster, shuts the door to some cherished aspect

connoted was a world turned upside down, where kings

of living and concentrates even the most remote parts of

bray like animals and fools wear crowns. For the ruling

the personality on one theme alone: Fear. The steady in-

elites and ruled masses alike, carnival explicitly provided

crease in atomic destructiveness reaches a point at which

a place where the peasants, and later the working

everyone realizes that enough potential energy has been

classes, could let off steam, be themselves, and thumb

stored to destroy all the living spaces of the planet: so as

their noses at their masters.18 In post–World War II art

time goes on, the fear becomes more absolute, and . . .

and film, the theme of the carnival and its performers

the prospect of finding a way out becomes more blank.”

reappeared.19 Now, when world annihilation by atomic

Among the consequences, Mumford predicts, would be

bombs was a distinct possibility, the stakes were higher.

“grave psychological disruptions,” such as “escape [into]

During the late 1940s and early 1950s much of the

fantasy,” “purposeless sexual promiscuity,” “narcotic in-

contemporary art seen in galleries, garnering museum

dulgence,” and “outbreaks of catatonic trance.”11 Miller

prizes, and reproduced in mass-market magazines

and Nowak note that “the fiction of holocaust and defor-

tapped into the darkly anxious vein of the carnival theme.

mity was one expression of such fears”—an observation

Philip Guston painted masked children in a rubble-strewn

that applies to the visual arts as well.12

cityscape in If This Be Not I (1945, Washington University

In this climate of fear of nuclear annihilation and dis-

Gallery of Art, St. Louis), which won first prize at the Car-

tress about the repression of intellectual freedoms, many

negie International in 1946. When it was reproduced in

figurative artists turned to abstraction.13 In 1947 Mark

Life magazine, the caption pointed to Guston’s depiction

Rothko did not see much difference between the figura-

of “children at play, wearing masks to emphasize the

tive and the abstract artists. Writing for the magazine

child’s wish to get away from reality.”20 Another example

possibilities, he said: “I do not believe that there was ever

is Alton Pickens’s Carnival (1949, Museum of Modern Art,

a question of being abstract or representational. It is

New York), also reproduced in Life. The editors called

really a matter of ending this silence and solitude, of

Pickens’s picture “a ghoulish parody on loud-mouthed

again.”14

Attitudes

frauds who pose as defenders of liberty. Liberty, an ape,

shifted, however, and by the time of a 1951 symposium at

is about to be crowned. A woman shouts hypocrisies—

breathing and stretching one’s arms

the Museum of Modern Art, many artists believed that

scrawny birds pouring from her mouth. Another, with the

abstract art could better express the complexities of so-

book of justice on her head, blows a horn ironically

cial alienation. On that occasion Robert Motherwell

shaped like [the] torch of liberty.”21 Yasuo Kuniyoshi, a

claimed: “The emergence of abstract art is one sign that

Japa­nese artist living in the United States who had faced

there are still men able to assert feeling in the world. Men

government challenges to his loyalty during World War II,

who know how to respect and follow their inner feelings,

included the mask motif in many of his paintings and

no matter how irrational or absurd they may first appear.

lithographs of the period. He also portrayed circus people

From their perspective, it is the social world that tends to

juggling and performing in impossible acts. In Juggler

appear irrational and absurd.”15 However, the artists who

(1952, Fig. 154), a pen-and-ink study for a large painting

remained both figurative in their art and leftist in their

of the same subject, the masklike face grimaces at the

politics continued to feel that they could better capture

round ball impossibly balanced on his long, pencil-thin

that irrational and absurd world with the themes and

nose. The two men in Ben Shahn’s Conversations (1958,

symbolic forms of representational art.16

Fig. 155) wear multiple masks, symbolic of dissembling

One set of themes and motifs that figurative artists

one’s real self and thoughts to the point where face and

turned to came from the world of carnival—a world in-

mask become interchangeable, an effective tactic in an

habited by clowns, masked harlequins, magicians, human

ambience of repression, duplicity, and suspicion that your

skeletons, hustlers, tarted-up show girls, menacing chil-

friends may be secretly informing on you.22 Like Law-

dren, and grotesque dolls.17 These had been frequent

rence, Shahn and Kuniyoshi showed their work at Edith

subjects for the visual and performing arts in the early

Halpert’s Downtown Gallery, where they gathered to par-

208  masks and masking

Fig 154   Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Juggler, 1952. Ink on cardboard, 22 x 28 in. (55.9 x 71.1 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase 53.37. Art © Estate of Yasuo Kuniyoshi/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. Fig 155   Ben Shahn, Conversations, 1958. Watercolor on paper, 391⁄4 x 27

in. (99.7 x 68.6 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Friends of the Whitney Museum of American Art 58.21. Art © Estate of Ben Shahn/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.

ticipate in a formal group picture for the March 17, 1952,

the imagery of performers and masks, we cannot ignore

issue of Life magazine. All three shared a political outlook

the climate of the cold war period as a possible effect on

that was liberal, antiwar, and close to the politics of the

his art. Another factor, however, was the vernacular culture

communist Left.23

of Harlem’s community.

Lawrence for his part consistently minimized the cold war and McCarthyism as a factor in his art. Although the FBI had tagged him as potentially subversive in 1953, Lawrence later denied that the McCarthy witch-hunts had affected his art. As he explained: “What’s new for one

the cultural and sociological context

ethnic group might not be new in the black community.

Lawrence’s works are “double-voiced” in the sense used

We didn’t go into a frenzy because of McCarthy.”24 He

by Henry Louis Gates Jr. in The Signifying Monkey: A

pointed out that black artists had always experienced re-

Theory of African-American Literary Criticism. Gates

pression, specifically from racism and the segregation

points out that the African American literary greats of the

imposed by Jim Crow laws and customs. On another oc-

twentieth century, such as Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright,

casion, he again acknowledged the oppressiveness of

Zora Neale Hurston, Ishmael Reed, and Alice Walker, drew

McCarthyism during the 1950s but specifically denied its

on both the literary tradition of Western Europe (which

effect on his art: “I felt . . . anything that was repressive

includes African American authors writing in that tradition)

to people in the arts, [but] I didn’t do anything pertain-

and black vernacular culture, but that the elements of the

ing to that in my work.”25 Nevertheless, when exploring

black vernacular give their novels a particular inflection. 26 masks and masking  209

What Gates defines as “double-voiced” relates back to

experience of the ethnic, communal working-class African

W. E. B. Du Bois’s “double-consciousness.” In The Souls of

American culture that his personal past had transmitted

Black Folk (1903), Du Bois observed: “One ever feels his

to him. Lawrence was the agent of his own dialectic, and

twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts,

we see in the development of his art a perpetually renew-

two unreconciled strivings.”

27

The historian Nathan Hug-

gins has elaborated on Du Bois’s meditation by turning specifically to the African American artist:

ing synthesis. Thus, although Lawrence’s Performance paintings resonate with works done by his white colleagues during the cold war, his choice of masks and masking as a theme

The Negro artist in the United States lies in a peculiar province—a spiritual geography. His art is self-consciously national while, at the same time, special—ethnically regional. It attempts to speak with two voices, one from the stage of national culture and the other from the soul of ethnic experience. Nor is this condition wholly a matter of the artist’s will or intent. It is his ethnic fact. It is as if it were defined in the eternal constitution of things that to be a Negro artist in America one must, in some way, be a

race-conscious ­artist. 28

must also be considered in relation to African Americans’ attempts to confront and overcome Jim Crow segregation and racism in the post–World War II period. Masks had become a part of vernacular African American culture in ways that did not have the same resonance with mainstream white artists. In Harlem during the 1920s and 1930s masks—as physical artifacts—had a special place in the visual culture of the community. Exhibitions of African artifacts

With Lawrence, we can clearly see that he knew and

were frequently mounted at the 135th Street branch of

re­sponded to the imagery and styles of the Euro-­American

the public library and also in the commercial galleries of

artistic tradition but also chose subjects from black

midtown and downtown Manhattan. 33 Charles Alston,

­working-class life and respected black cultural practices.

Lawrence’s first teacher, had helped Alain Locke install

In 1946 he wrote: “My pictures express my life and experi-

one such exhibition of African sculpture and masks at

ences. I paint the things I know about and the things I have

the 135th Street library. 34 To scholars such as Locke,

experienced. The things I have experienced extend into

African masks not only pointed to the ancestral legacy

my national, racial and class group. So I paint about the

but also were reminders of the African contribution to

American Negro working class.”29 Close readings of Law-

the development of European modernism and interna-

rence’s art allow us to explore that double-voiced quality

tional culture. 35

in Lawrence’s work and tease out meanings not immedi-

As noted in Chapter 1, civic leaders from Harlem, as

ately evident in his subject matter and style. As Gates

well as artists and writers, journeyed to midtown for the

remarks: “It is in the vernacular that, since slavery, the

first extensive exhibition of African artifacts, held at the

black person has encoded private yet communal cultural

Museum of Modern Art in the spring of 1935.36 Even be-

rituals.”30 Put another way: if, in the dialectic of Lawrence’s

fore MoMA’s big show, however, examples of African

work, the national (the “American”) is the thesis and the

masks and sculpture began appearing as motifs in the

verna­cular-cultural (the “African American”) the anti­

work of contemporary African American artists, such as

thesis, then the agency of the personal resolves Du Bois’s

Palmer Hayden, Lois Mailou Jones, and Malvin Gray

“two un­re­conciled strivings” by setting the dialectic in

Johnson. In 1933 Hayden received a $100 prize from the

motion. 31 It becomes the compelling need of any courageous and

Harmon Foundation for his Fétiche et Fleurs (Museum of African American Art, Los Angeles). This academically com­

socially concerned artist, such as Lawrence, to reconcile

posed table still life containing a Fang reliquary sculp- 

Du Bois’s contradictions through his or her personal

­ture and piece of Kuba cloth along with a vase of lilies

practice of art, just as it takes a movement of people (and

declared the dual cultural heritage he embraced.37 Malvin

their actions) to effect the changes necessary to push

Gray Johnson’s Negro Masks (1932, Fig. 156) hung in the 

forward and resolve the contradictions inherent in his-

1933 Harmon Foundation exhibition; when he painted his

tory. 32 In short, Lawrence made his art by confronting the

Self-Portrait (1934, Smithsonian American Art Museum,

national, time-specific culture of the cold war with his lived

Washington, D.C.), he paid homage to Africa by including

210  masks and masking

Fig 156   Malvin Gray Johnson, Negro Masks, 1932. Oil on canvas, 281⁄4 x 191⁄8 in. (71.8 x 48.7 cm). Hampton University Museum, Hampton, Virginia. Fig 157   Lois Mailou Jones, Les Fétiches, 1938. Oil on canvas, 251 ⁄2 x 21 1⁄4 in. (64.1 x 54 cm). Smithsonian American Art Museum, Wash-

ington, DC, Museum purchase made possible by N. H. Green, R. Harlan, and F. Musgrave. Photo: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC/Art Resource, NY.

Negro Masks in the background.38 Lois Mailou Jones, in

When the work of James Lesesne Wells’s students

her Paris-executed Les Fétiches (1938, Fig. 157), empha-

from the Harlem Art Workshop was exhibited in Septem-

sized style affinities with African art and used fluid forms

ber 1933, a New York Herald Tribune reviewer singled out

to create decorative patterns, rhythms of identical shapes,

“the colored papier-maché masks” as “among the most

and contrasting colors.39

striking objects.” “In these lurid and occasionally gro-

In a basic sense, masks are imagined faces, not repre-

tesque productions can be seen influences of the African

sentations of reality. When worn, they allow the wearer

primitive,” the critic claimed. “Some bear a striking re-

temporarily to take on another persona. As discussed in

semblance to the masks of voodoo doctors, grinning

Chapter 1, Lawrence showed an affinity for masks early

prognathous faces ornamented with furs and tufts of

in his art training, while studying at Utopia House under

feathers.”42 But that was not what Wells thought. A press

Charles Alston. Alston was struck by Lawrence’s original-

release issued by the Harlem Adult Education Committee

ity, imagination, and “very curious vision” that led the

noted that Wells saw the masks as “largely imaginative.

young artist to manipulate line and color to make “fan-

He felt that they contained an exaggerated grotesque-

tastic masks” without having ever seen ones from Afri-

ness, which made them rather exceptional studies. He

ca.40 A few years later, at the Harlem Art Workshop, Law-

stated that an unusual interest was taken in making them

rence made three-dimensional papier-mâché masks,

and that while he lectured on African Masks and showed

which may have looked like the ones photographed by

pictures of them only one revealed any African influence,

James L. Allen in Fig.

8.41

the rest were original in treatment.”43 The critic from the masks and masking  211

Herald Tribune assumed that when African American stu-

for the masking theme that took hold in Lawrence’s art

dents made masks they would want to imitate African

in the early 1950s, months after he returned home from

masks. One suspects that the “grinning prognathous

the psychiatric ward of Hillside Hospital in Queens.46

faces” were in the eye of the critic beholder. The teacher, however, insisted that although African art may have been a starting reference point, the masks were not copies but original inventions. We might say that the stu-

the personal/private context

dents had reached that balance of “influence and auton-

The personal context of Lawrence’s work was inevitably

omy” that Henry Louis Gates Jr. learned to respect from

informed by the cultural context for African Americans in

the jazz musician Skip James, who bent tradition with

New York in the late 1940s. What Ralph Ellison recom-

creative improvisation to create innovative music.44

mends as a fruitful way to engage literature has relevance

Making masks was not just an activity for students.

to Lawrence’s work: “Perhaps the ideal approach to the

The New York Amsterdam News reported in July 1936 on

work of literature would be the one allowing for insight

the “masks of African types” made by Beulah Woodard,

into the deepest psychological motives of the writer at

a Los Angeles–based African American artist then visiting

the same time that it examined all external sociological

New York. Woodard explained: “I found the types inter-

factors operating within a given milieu. For while objec-

esting, picturesque, colorful; in the primitive African there

tively a social reality, the work of art is, in its genesis, a

is much of which Negroes today should be proud. My love

projection of a deeply personal process, and any ap-

of the African lore and my admiration of the primitive

proach that ignores the personal at the expense of the

types made me want to do my share towards helping to

social is necessarily incomplete.”47 In the late 1940s El-

preserve them. In a few years they will be gone, and un-

lison was acutely aware of the psychological divide be-

less we work now they will be lost to us forever. . . . I am

tween African Americans and whites. At that time Law-

recording types as rapidly as I can.”45 The masks she dis-

rence was directly confronting his own psychological

played did not emulate African masks used in ritual

issues. Therapy brought him to a new consciousness,

dances; instead, they presented, in a naturalist style, the

which in turn generated a greater complexity in the post-

faces of a Masai warrior, Emperor Haile Selassie, Booker T.

1950 paintings.

Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Frederick Douglass.

In July 1949 Lawrence had himself admitted to the

In Harlem, as elsewhere in the United States, people

psychiatric ward of Hillside Hospital in Queens, where he

donned masks for Halloween, a subject that appealed to

stayed for more than a year, with time out for an ex-

Lawrence. Lawrence chose this subject for Halloween

tended Thanksgiving/Christmas holiday in the winter of

Sand Bags (1937, see Fig. 22), an early work in which

1949–50.48 His dealer, Edith Halpert, arranged for him to

the masks are not just decorative objects but devices for

have experienced doctors, began supplying him with

alluding to racial ambiguity and violence. On an urban

painting materials, and helped Gwendolyn Knight find a

sidewalk a male figure wearing a white head mask with

job at Condé Nast Publications. Lawrence’s stay at Hill-

a pointed hood wields a sandbag; his hands are black

side was beneficial, and he never showed any qualms

and his legs are a yellow tan. He targets a youth with a

about letting others know he had received psychiatric

black head and pink hands and feet—perhaps a cos-

help there.

tume, perhaps not. At the left a male of indeterminate

Lawrence never made clear, however, the circum-

age with a white face and pink hands intervenes, either

stances that led to his illness, although he reported to FBI

to rescue or pin down the youth. Strolling pedestrians

investigators in 1977 that he had been hospitalized “be-

with either white or black faces ignore the incident. Only

cause of exhaustion and tension from overwork.”49 His

the white-faced baby in the arms of a woman turns to

artist friends offered their own comments and explana-

look at the trickster wielding the sandbag. But can we,

tions. Elton Fax reported that the news “came as a sur-

as viewers, really take this as a matter of course, as just

prise  .  .  . that Lawrence had ‘suffered a breakdown’ ”

a child’s game? This image helped lay the groundwork

when he seemed to be at the height of his career.50 Ro-

212  masks and masking

mare Bearden and Harry Henderson have speculated that

Hughes but by communists, and the Daily Worker had

Lawrence’s very success had brought him anxieties about

always reviewed it favorably. Although the FBI did not be-

whether his creative abilities would ever develop beyond

gin a file on Lawrence until 1953, and Lawrence never

his popular narrative paintings of the 1930s and early

joined the Communist Party, he was involved in activities

1940s and that his fame had alienated him from the com-

organized by communists and leftist artists.55

munity of black artists. In their words: “Lawrence was

A review of his FBI file reveals the names of organiza-

troubled by the recognition that poured down on him

tions to which Lawrence belonged and gives a good sense

while many of his Harlem artist friends, whom he consid-

of what the government considered “subversive” activi-

ered fine painters, were ignored. He grew nervous about

ties. In 1946 he participated in an exhibition held in De-

painting problems he was now tackling. Like other artists,

troit under the sponsorship of the New Masses and the

he was extremely sensitive and plagued with self-doubt.

National Negro Congress. The New Masses had also hon-

His success became unreal to him. Maybe, he felt, he had

ored him at a banquet in January 1946.56 In October 1947

only been lucky.”

51

he participated in a conference sponsored by the Na-

Later informants and second-guessers may have for-

tional Arts, Sciences, and Professions Council of the Pro-

gotten the flare-up of cold war anticommunism in 1949,

gressive Citizens of America, an organization on the FBI’s

which would have affected Lawrence and his friends on

list of subversive organizations, and earlier that year he

the

Left.52

In January 1949 the Smith Act trial began in

Manhattan: twelve New York City leaders of the Commu-

had been a sponsor of the group’s participation in a May Day parade.

nist Party, including the black New York City councilman

The most controversial activity with which Lawrence

Benjamin Davis Jr., were accused of advocating the over-

was associated, as both a sponsor and a panel speaker,

throw of the U.S. government. Langston Hughes, then

was the communist-organized Scientific and Cultural

under surveillance by the FBI, wrote in the February 5 is-

Conference for World Peace, held at the Waldorf-Astoria

sue of the Chicago Defender that the trial was

Hotel during late March 1949. This was a watershed moment, when anticommunism ratcheted up and the mass

the most important thing happening in America today  .  .  .

media joined with HUAC and the FBI in “naming names.”57

because it is your trial—all who question the status quo—who

The April 4 issue of Life magazine devoted five pages to

question things as they are—all poor people, Negroes, Jews,

an article, headlined “Red Visitors Cause Rumpus,” on

un-white Americans, un-rich Americans are on trial. . . . They

the conference and its attendees, including visitors from

are being tried because they say it is wrong for anybody—

the Soviet Union such as Dmitri Shostakovich. The last

Mexicans, Negroes, Chinese, Japanese, Jews, Armenians—to

two pages printed a gallery of photographic mug shots of

be segregated in America; because they say it is wrong for anybody to make millions of dollars from any business while the workers in that business do not make enough to save a few hundred dollars to live on when they get old and broken down and unable to work anymore; they are being tried because they do not believe in wars that kill millions of young men and make

fifty American writers, artists, politicians, and others whom Life referred to as “dupes and fellow travelers.” Those pictured included Albert Einstein, Charlie Chaplin, Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Norman Mailer, Thomas Mann, Lillian Hellman, and, closer to home for

millions of dollars for those who already have millions of dol-

Lawrence, Adam Clayton Powell Jr. and Langston Hughes.

lars; they are being tried because they believe it is better in

To Life, “These are the prominent people who, wittingly

peace time to build schools, hospitals, and public power proj-

or not, associate themselves with a communist-front or-

ects than to build warplanes and battleships.53

ganization and thereby lend it glamour, prestige, or the respectability of American liberalism.”58 Though Law-

By this time Lawrence was a friend of Hughes. Just three

rence later insisted that McCarthyism had never affected

weeks before these remarks, Lawrence and Hughes at-

his work, as a supporter of the Waldorf conference and

tended the opening of the Downtown Gallery exhibition

other communist-affiliated groups, he must have known

of Lawrence’s drawings for Hughes’s One-Way Ticket.54

it was just a matter of time before he might also see him-

Lawrence’s work had long been admired not only by

self pictured in Life or Time as a “communist dupe.” masks and masking  213

Lawrence no doubt followed the controversy surround-

ment of his doctors.63 When he emerged from Hillside

ing the singer Paul Robeson’s speech at the World Peace

Hospital in August 1950, he had produced eleven paint-

Congress in Paris in April 1949, which the press inaccu-

ings, called the Hospital series, which were exhibited at

rately described as a declaration that African Americans

the Downtown Gallery from October 24 through November

Union.59

And Lawrence

11, 1950. Lawrence’s project to give social significance to

must have been distressed to learn that the baseball

personal adversity was noted by both the New York Times

would not fight against the Soviet

player Jackie Robinson had become one of HUAC’s star

Magazine and Ebony magazine, which ran spreads on the

witnesses by pillorying Robeson.60 Could any sensitive

artist’s work. Aline Louchheim (Saarinen) wrote the Times

person not be affected by this turn of events involving (in

piece before the Downtown Gallery show opened. She

different ways) two of his heroes? Meanwhile, the trials of

mentioned Van Gogh in the asylum at St. Remy as a pre-

the “Hollywood Ten” were under way in Washington, D.C.,

decessor to Lawrence but quickly qualified her remark:

with ten directors and scriptwriters accused of bringing subversive content to post–World War II films. There was, in fact, intense psychological pressure on black artists and others, such as Jackie Robinson, to affirm their patriotism. African Americans faced a difficult choice. Either you turned your back on the progressives who had fought with you to end segregation, or you risked

Actually, there is no genuine parallel between the Dutchman and the young American. Dr. Emanuel Klein, who has been Lawrence’s doctor and has long studied the relation between art and neurosis, explains: “Unlike Van Gogh, Lawrence simply had nervous difficulties neither particularly complicated nor unique, which became so much of a burden that he voluntarily sought help. These paintings did not come from his temporary

alienating yourself from the embattled black community,

illness. As they always have—and as is true for most real

which wanted you, as a “race representative,” to be per-

artists—the paintings express the healthiest portion of his

ceived as “patriotic.” Langston Hughes, whose art was

personality, the part that is in close touch both with the inner

nourished by the black community, was caught in this

depths of his own feeling and with the outer world.”64

dilemma. As recounted in detail by Arnold Rampersad, Hughes often spoke out as a man of the Left, but he began

Louchheim insisted on the continuity between the early

to retreat from the overtures of his communist and pro-

1940s narrative series of African American community life

gressive friends during this period. Moreover, just being

(the Harlem series) and history (the Migration, John

an African American coping with racism could have dam-

Brown, and War series) and the new “hospital” paintings.

61

aging psychological effects. As J. Saunders Redding ob-

Ebony, in its April 1951 issue, headlined the article on

served in On Being Negro in America (1951), “Having to

Lawrence: “New paintings portraying life in insane asy-

avoid prejudice and segregation is itself unwholesome,

lum project him into top ranks of U.S. artists.” The writer

and the constant doing of it is skating very close to a

assured the magazine’s readers that Lawrence deserved

psychopathic edge.”62

to be placed in the “front ranks of America’s foremost

Professional pressures, a fear of losing his base of

artists. . . . There is general agreement among art experts

support in the Harlem community, the climate of racism,

that the new pictures are emotionally richer, technically

and anticommunist persecution of progressives and lib­

more advanced and socially more significant than Law-

erals, compounded by overwork—all, in my opinion, pre-

rence’s previous work.”65 Ebony also quoted Lawrence’s

cipitated Lawrence’s breakdown. By the summer of 1949 

doctor and attempted to elicit a response from Lawrence

he could no longer function normally. He, his wife, and 

about his hospital stay, but he only commented: “This is

his dealer recognized that he needed immediate medi- 

a record of what happened. There is nothing for me to

cal help.

add in words.”66 Later, in 1961, he could publicly admit: “I gained a lot: The most important thing was that I was

n

able to delve into my personality and nature. You have

Although Lawrence had the courage to enter the psychi-

people to guide you, and I think it was one of the most

atric ward voluntarily, he was fortunate to have the emo-

important periods of my life. It opened up a whole new

tional support of Knight and Halpert and the encourage-

avenue for me; it was . . . a very deep experience.”67 In

214  masks and masking

Fig 158   Square Dance, 1950. Casein tempera on paper, 215⁄8 x 295⁄8 in. (55 x 75.3 cm). Williams College Museum of Art, Bequest of

Leonard B. Schlosser, Class of 1946 (91.20).

1985 he repeated: “It was very important to my develop-

their dominance.”69 Lawrence, had he been a writer, might

ment and growth. . . . Coming in contact with those who

have said the same. In conversations with interviewers,

were in the hospital and doing a series of works on that

Lawrence always stressed the importance of his personal

particular experience . . . was a very valuable experience

experience in the making of his art and the necessity of

for me. . . . It gave me a dimension, another dimension,

being disciplined when he went about it. By controlling his

that’s been very helpful.”68 In addition to learning about

painting techniques and following a regular work schedule,

himself, as the only African American on his ward, Law-

Lawrence learned to compose his fears.70

rence came to understand white people and realized that they shared many of the same fears.

The paintings Lawrence did at Hillside focus on patients’ taking part in various forms of therapy and hence

In On Being Negro in America, Redding had also argued

have titles such as Creative Therapy, Recreational Ther­

that as a prelude to freedom it was necessary to gain an

apy, and Occupational Therapy No. 1 and Occupational

understanding of one’s demons, which could be achieved

Therapy No. 2. Others indicate the activities the patients

only through analysis: “To observe one’s own feelings,

participated in together: Drama—Hallowe’en Party,

fears, doubts, ambitions, hates; to understand their begin-

Square Dance (Fig. 158), and In the Garden.71 In Depres­

nings and weigh them is to control them and to destroy

sion (1950, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York), masks and masking  215

Fig 159   Psychiatric Therapy, 1949. Casein tem-

pera on paper, 18 3⁄8 x 23 3⁄8 in. (46.7 x 59.4 cm). Hillside Hospital North Shore—Long Island Jewish Health System. Photo courtesy Sotheby’s Inc. © 2009.

somber men, heads bent, walk on the ward, isolated from

masking—literal and psychological—engaged in protec-

one another; in Sedation (1950, Museum of Modern Art,

tively by black people throughout American history and

New York), pajama-clad men, standing together, stare at

of the necessity of performance to hide and preserve one’s

their pills. Psychiatric Therapy (Fig. 159) is unusual be-

inner integrity. Some fifty years earlier, in 1895, the black

cause of the close-up view and detail with which Law-

poet Paul Laurence Dunbar wrote his famous ­fifteen-line

rence renders the features of the two men involved in a

poem “We Wear the Mask,” a meditation on the cultural

therapy session. The figure on the left, probably the psy-

dissembling that is at the heart of masking. The poem

chiatrist because of his assured stare and upright pos-

reads:

ture, listens to the hunched figure, the patient, whose eyes are closed while he appears to be speaking. The

We wear the mask that grins and lies,

theme of the blind man who makes his way through life

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—

occurs in several of Lawrence’s early paintings, for ex-

This debt we pay to human guile;

ample, Blind Beggars (Fig. 25), but here the “blind”

With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,

man—a surrogate for Lawrence—is concentrating so in-

And mouth with myriad subtleties.

tensely on understanding his inner life that he shuts out

Why should the world be overwise,

his surroundings.

In counting all our tears and sighs? Nay, let them only see us, while   We wear the mask.

masking and performance in african american culture

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries To thee from tortured souls arise. We sing, but oh the clay is vile Beneath our feet, and long the mile;

Perhaps it was through therapy, when probing his psychic

But let the world dream otherwise,

past, that Lawrence became keenly aware of the role of

  We wear the mask!72

216  masks and masking

Dunbar’s poem expresses what African Americans have

avenue for African Americans searching for independence

implicitly known from the era of slavery, through Jim Crow,

and a decent wage. Harlem embraced talent, and its

to today—that psychological masking is necessary as a

theaters and nightclubs showcased major jazz musicians,

buffer from insults and humiliation and as a way to keep

singers, and actors; these stars were the pride of the whole

private both one’s inner self and the codes of one’s group:

community.77 Lawrence found inspiration in the vaudeville

“let them only see us, while / we wear the mask.”

and theatrical productions he saw in Harlem. He later re-

As Lawrence explained in a 1983 interview, his strategy

called, “Going to the Apollo Theater was a ritual of

for dealing with racism was to stay above it and not let

ours . . . to see the comedians—vaudeville. I grew up with

himself be personally affected: “We grew up with it. If I

this. The actors made the circuit of the East Coast and

went out now, and I had a negative kind of experience, I’m

came back every four weeks. We got to know the

ready for that, because I grew up with that. . . . How do

performers.”78 By turning to the black performer as a

you feel about it, how are you going to handle it?” He

subject, Lawrence was reconnecting to the cultural codes

quickly answered his own question: “You try to protect

of the black vernacular.

yourself by not allowing yourself to become a victim of this thing if you possibly can help it.”73

Lawrence surely knew of the history of minstrelsy and the black theater in the United States. Enslaved African

The phenomenon of masking is not confined to Ameri-

Americans performed on southern plantations, drawing

can blacks but shared by other colonized persons. In

on dance and movement traditions they had brought

1952 Frantz Fanon, a black medical doctor and psychia-

from Africa. As early as 1827, white actors became celeb-

trist from the Antilles who became an activist writer,

rities by borrowing and distorting African American cul-

wrote Black Skin, White Masks, a psychologically probing

ture— blackening their faces with burnt cork, speaking in

analysis of the futile efforts of his black countrymen to

an exaggeratedly black vernacular speech, and perform-

become white Frenchmen. His insights have bearing on

ing a caricature of black life for white audiences.79 Then

many of Lawrence’s paintings. In a chapter entitled “The

black men, such as Billy Kersands, took over the minstrel

Fact of Blackness,” Fanon observes: “As long as the black

roles, imitating and even embellishing the grotesque wa-

man is among his own, he will have no occasion, except

termelon-eating caricatures created by white actors. Both

in minor internal conflicts, to experience his being

white and black performers suspected that many in the

through others.”74 In contrast, once the black man begins

white audiences had a psychological need to see enact-

moving among white people, he becomes self-conscious

ments of the stereotypes of blacks as stupid, lazy, and

that he is being measured by a standard other than that

immoral. Such a doubled travesty was humiliating for

of his own community. Fanon’s observation is a varia-

black actors, even though it meant acting roles. 80

tion on W. E. B. Du Bois’s “double-consciousness”—“this

Ralph Ellison weighed in on minstrelsy and masking in

sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of

his 1958 essay “Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke.”

others.”75 The double consciousness can be almost for-

Agreeing with the literary historian Stanley Edgar Hyman,

gotten on those occasions when one is enveloped by

Ellison sees the “darky” entertainer as a product of “the

one’s own community.

Anglo-Saxon branch of American folklore,” a folklore that

The ideas of masking and double consciousness seem

views the world in terms of the polarities of evil and good,

integrally connected to performers, who present one face

darkness and light, depravity and purity. The dramas that

on stage and another off. When Lawrence told me in 1985

emerge from this folklore and its cast of characters are

that “the comedian developed out of . . . the mask,” he

the fantasies of whites and are controlled by whites.

meant that the impulse to masking came first and that

Hence the “darky” performer is a white man acting out

performance provided a justifiable opportunity to conceal

the role of darkness. When black entertainers take the

and mask one’s true persona.76 In choosing to depict

role of the Minstrel Man, they are enacting “a symbolic

performers, Lawrence was also aware that throughout

role basic to the underlying drama of American society,”

American history the performing arts had provided an

so they “assume a ritual mask—the identical mask and

masks and masking  217

role taken on by white minstrel men when they depicted

lection of short stories, Laughing to Keep from Crying. Its

comic Negroes.” The role thus played “makes use of ne-

epigraph reads: “When you see me laughing / I’m laughing

gro idiom, songs, dance motifs and word-play”; however,

to keep from crying.” The epigraph is credited to “Tradi-

it does not “grow out of the Negro American sense of the

tional Blues”—that is, to the vernacular tradition in music.

comic . . . but out of the white American’s Manichean fas-

(Huggins may also have been thinking about the blues

cination with the symbolism of blackness and whiteness

when he used the phrase.)

expressed in such contradictions as the conflict between

The white actor W. C. Fields allegedly referred to Bert

the white American’s Judeo-Christian morality, his demo-

Williams, a black actor specializing in blackface routines

cratic political ideals and his daily conduct.” Ellison adds:

in the early twentieth century, as “the funniest man I ever

“Being ‘highly pigmented,’ as the sociologists say, it was

saw and the saddest man I ever knew.”85 Williams, a light-

our Negro ‘misfortune’ to be caught up associatively in

complexioned man, had to press hard on the black cork

the negative side of this basic dualism of the white folk

to create the required degree of blackness for his routine.

mind, and to be shackled to almost everything it would

But even if Williams had been blacker, he would still have

repress from conscience and consciousness.”81

needed to perform the ritual of blackening his face to en-

In other words, Ellison interprets the drama of the Min-

act the cultural construction of blackness.86 In that physi-

strel Man as psychologically controlled by and for the

cal act he could distance himself and thus preserve his

white man, who wants to combat the forces of “darkness”

inner self from the external travesty—the self-deprecating

that lurk within white American folklore: “The mask, this

jokes, the banter, the display of stupidity paired with cun-

willful stylization and modification of the natural face and

ning, the songs, the jerking, shuffling, dancing, and acro-

hands, was imperative for the evocation of that atmo-

batics that were all part of the expected formula for the

sphere in which the fascination of blackness could be

construction of blackness.

enjoyed, the comic catharsis achieved. The racial identity

Langston Hughes understood the expectations of the

of the performer was unimportant, the mask was the

audience and the contradictions the entertainer faced

thing (the ‘thing’ in more ways than one) and its function

when he wrote his poem “Minstrel Man,” included in Alain

was to veil the humanity of Negroes thus reduced to a

Locke’s anthology The New Negro (1925):

sign, and to repress the white audience’s awareness of its moral identification with its own acts and with the human

Because my mouth

ambiguities pushed behind the mask.”82 To Ellison, this

Is wide with laughter

travesty affects both performer and audience, creating

And my throat is deep with song,

“self-humiliation” for the black performer and “a psychological dissociation from this symbolic self-maiming” for the white audience.83 It is tragicomic, for through the putative comedy the audience achieves a tragic catharsis— the release from the need to cry. Nathan Huggins similarly described the pain that African Americans who played minstrel roles experienced: “But the rub is that the contempt for self and race on which such humor turns must be ever-present to make it work. Lurking beneath the surface of amused accommodation was the uneasiness—‘you have to be one to know

You do not think I suffer after I have held my pain So long. Because my mouth Is wide with laughter, You do not hear My inner cry, Because my feet Are gay with dancing, You do not know I die.87

one’—which might at any moment bubble up, twisting the smile into a grimace of hurt. Truth to tell, it was laughing

Laughing to keep from crying; dancing to keep from dying.

to keep from crying.”84 By using this last phrase, Huggins

Hughes’s only novel was titled Not without Laughter

may have been referring to Langston Hughes’s 1952 col-

(1930).

218  masks and masking

Much of the minstrel tradition continued into the mid– twentieth century, but in Harlem it was modified to “grow out of the Negro American sense of the comic,” as Ellison wanted. It is likely that Lawrence and his friends attended the nightclubs, theaters, and vaudeville in Harlem along with other African Americans to have a good time, to hear the great jazz of Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, the Ink Spots, and Hazel Scott; to see the ­dancing of Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, the young Sammy Davis Jr., Katherine Dunham, and Ethel Waters; and to hear and see the great comic actors, such as Eddie Anderson, famous as the “Rochester” character on the Jack Benny radio show.88 Elements of minstrelsy may have remained, but in Harlem the consciousness was different. Harlem was their place, where they could forget the stereotypes of Broadway and Hollywood. At the Apollo Theater Lawrence and his friends must have had a good time—laughing with performers such as comedians Tim Moore and Johnny Lee (Fig. 160) and not at them. Like the commedia dell’arte of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, black vaudeville on the “chitlin circuit” had its stock characters, some dressed in baggy or motley clothes repugnant to bourgeois tastes, and they could be very funny.89

Fig 160   Comedians Tim Moore and Johnny Lee at the Apollo, late

1930s. Photo © Morgan and Marvin Smith. Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

lawrence’s performance paintings The contradictions between laughing at and laughing with

and yellow leaves drift about them, suggesting the passing of time. Their exaggeratedly white faces are the masks of

the masked or minstrel figure provide the thick context

Greek tragedy and comedy, common motifs in Western

in which Lawrence developed his twelve Performance

European art. Comedy, on the right, extends his arms

tempera paintings, shown in late January through mid-­

outward and wears a bright red shirt under his somber

February 1953 at the Downtown Gallery. Although masks

brown-black jacket. His legs, clad in brown trousers, cross

figure prominently as motifs in the performance pictures,

at the knee. His bright red grinning lips and red painted

masking—in all its permutations mentioned above—in-

fingernails heighten the contrast with the black-clad figure

forms the content of the series as a whole. Close read-

of Tragedy, hunched over at the left, hugging his chest and

ings of six of those paintings suggest the double-voiced-

weeping giant tears. Comedy grimly grins, whereas Trag-

ness of Jacob Lawrence.

edy succumbs to his pain. To Lawrence, tragedy has ele-

Among all the masks depicted by artists in the cold war era, the crying mask was unique to Lawrence’s oeuvre.

ments of the comic and comedy can encompass the tragic. Laughing to keep from crying.

This is not surprising given Lawrence’s familiarity with the

This melancholy-comic dialectic pervades black folk-

laughing-to-keep-from-crying trope in African American

lore and black literature.90 For example, Claude McKay

culture. The crying mask first occurs in Tragedy and

writes in his novel Home to Harlem: “He [the protago-

Comedy (Fig. 161). Two figures sit on a park bench as green

nist] remembered once the melancholy-comic notes of a

masks and masking  219

Fig 161   Tragedy and Comedy, 1952. Egg tempera on hardboard, 24 x 32 in. (61 x 81.3 cm). Private collection. Image courtesy DC Moore Gallery, New York.

‘Blues’ rising out of a Harlem basement before dawn . . .

showing us all his teeth in a smile made for us. And his

melancholy-comic. That was the key to himself and to his

smile as we see it—as we make it—always means a gift’ ”)

race.  .  .  . No wonder the whites, after five centuries of

and Geoffrey Gorer (“The whites demand that the blacks

contact, could not understand his race. . . . No wonder

be always smiling, attentive, and friendly in all their rela-

they hated them, when out of their melancholy environ-

tionships with them”).92 High laughter, deep laughter,

ment the blacks could create mad, contagious music and

laughter from the belly could be an effective assault on

high laughter.”91 The strategy was to keep one’s human-

the sensibilities of those in positions of power. As the his-

ity; the tactics were to use humor defiantly as a weapon

torian Joseph Boskin has observed, unrestrained black

in that cause.

laughter usually provoked whites: “The passionate guffaw

Whites expected grinning from blacks, especially ob-

was a marvel and an annoyance.”93 But in his work Law-

sequious grinning. Frantz Fanon riffs on this theme, quot-

rence represses laughter to a controlled grimace, which

ing Bernard Wolfe (“ ‘It pleases us to portray the Negro

gives him greater moral leverage.

220  masks and masking

Grinning and guffawing as a defense had its psycho-

often depicted with a black face, black mask, or half-black/

logical price. The poet Derek Walcott could have been

half-white mask, was of African origin, perhaps modeled on

speaking of Lawrence’s Tragedy and Comedy when he

an African slave.97 Certainly the diamond pattern on the

observed: “So the people, like the actors, awaited a lan-

trousers of the figure on the left in Lawrence’s painting

guage. They confronted a variety of styles and masks,

suggests the triangular patterns characteristic of Harle-

but because they were casual about commitment,

quin’s costume.98 The background may provide a clue for

ashamed of their speech, they were moved only by the

interpretation. Time magazine reported that Lawrence had

tragic-comic and farcical. The tragic-comic was another

described Vaudeville as “my memories of the Apollo The-

form of contempt. They considered tragedy to be, like

ater at 125th Street . . . real vaudeville . . . I wasn’t thinking

English, an attribute beyond them.”94 Indeed, Tragedy in

of any particular act. The decorated panel behind? I never

Lawrence’s picture is a passive, huddled, and pathetic

saw it; I made it up. You can’t just put together things

figure—he is the tragicomic figure, not the heroic, larger-

you’ve seen. I wanted a staccato-type thing—raw, sharp,

than-life, Promethean figure we expect. And Comedy is

rough—that’s what I tried to get.”99 Although the “raw,

farce—not a sophisticated wit, but someone who paints

sharp, rough” decorated panel enforces the mood of un-

his fingernails red.

ease that we experience from looking at the two vaudevil-

McKay’s remarks about the melancholy-comic apply

lians, the patterned background is directly behind only the

equally to Lawrence’s Vaudeville (see Fig. 152). Here two

Minstrel Man. Behind the Harlequin figure is a dark, color-

elaborately costumed black figures stand against a quilt-

less panel, and an emphatic black shadow outlines his left

like decorative backdrop of circles, triangles, and bands

side. For contrast, artists often set a patterned costume

of color. The left figure wears baggy green clothes, a

against a flat uniform background but put a black costume

broad-brimmed hat, and white gloves. He holds a long ba-

against a more colorful background. Here the effect is that

ton with a top in the shape of a rooster, and he grimaces

the Harlequin figure seems to emerge from a darkened

at his companion. Large tears roll down the face of the fig-

portal into the colorful world of Minstrel Man.100

ure on the right, who is dressed in formal attire with tails

Lawrence’s painting Makeup (Fig. 162) depicts a scene

and a bashed-in silk top hat. The art historian Richard

in a theater dressing room. In the background four ra-

Powell astutely observes: “The two black ­comedians—​

cially ambiguous figures stare into their mirrors and con-

frowning, crying, and confronting one another as if facing

front the reflected images of masklike faces, one side

off in a dramatic, solemn pas de deux—digress from their

black and the other white. Are the images in the mirrors

expected comedic roles and, instead, offer a strange, un-

reflections of the figures or allusions to yet other masked

settling image. Juxtaposing broad gestures and exagger-

figures? While the half-black/half-white mask is associ-

ated, clownlike clothing with sorrowful faces and a frag-

ated with Harlequin, it also suggests a syncretic culture

mented background, Lawrence turned this world of

and a symbiotic interdependency of the races. African

slapstick humor, off-color jokes, and malapropisms into

American culture may originally have had its roots in vari-

something introspective and serious. . . . Rather than pre-

ous African cultures, but it grew, flourished, and developed

senting his black vaudevillians as shallow buffoons, Law-

into something else within white European American

rence pictorially energized and humanized them, making

culture and in the process became centered as an integral

them—and ultimately the entire black performance tradi-

part of modern American culture. The result is an ambigu-

tion of which they are a part—into vehicles of culture,

ity of identity—with the biracial masks mirroring aspects

truth, and, most significant, compassion.”95

of us all.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. suggests that these two figures

In the foreground two white figures—a female on the

represent Harlequin on the left greeting Minstrel Man on

left and a male on the right—face each other and play

the right.96 In his literary study Figures in Black Gates

cards (a game of fortune). Are they innocently passing

draws on late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century visual

the time, or will the draw of a card affect the figures in

evidence to argue that the European Harlequin, who is

the background? Game playing—whether chess, cards, or

masks and masking  221

Fig 162   Makeup (also known as Dressing Room), 1952. Egg tempera on hardboard, 20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 61 cm). Courtesy of Michael Rosen-

feld Gallery, LLC, New York, NY.

pool—has been a frequent theme in Lawrence’s work.101

of a skull, and a whimsical skull at that—a memento mori,

While often suggesting male socializing, it also taps into

a reminder of death, which slyly looks over at the figure.

the notion of life as a game, just as the world is a theater

In the distance, on the spotlit stage, a top-hatted black

in which each of us is an actor, like Hamlet, performing

man stretches out his arm holding a skull. Blood drips

his or her destiny.

from his hand, and at his feet lies another skull. Between

In Night after Night (Fig. 163), a foreground figure, am-

the foreground figure and the actor on stage two ominous

biguous in gender, stands in the wings of a stage and

figures stand in the wings. The black hoods of their robes

looks down on a table or ladder, or perhaps a lectern

mostly obscure their faces. Their presence and the skulls

stand, on which papers are strewn. On the far right is a

suggest the finality of death—the final performance of the

crumpled object, the lower part of which bears the face

night after many nights.102 Near at hand are the ropes

Fig 163   Night after Night, 1952. Egg tempera on hardboard, 24 x 18 in. (61 x 45.7 cm). Private collection. Image courtesy DC Moore Gallery, New York.

Fig 164   Marionettes, 1952. Egg tempera on hardboard, 181⁄4 x 241 ⁄2 in. (46.4 x 62.2 cm). High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Purchase with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts and Edith G. and Philip A. Rhodes, 1980.224.

that could bring down the curtain at any moment. The

All the world’s a stage,

exaggerated top hat and formal suit of the black-faced

And all the men and women merely players;

actor on stage suggest minstrelsy—vernacular American

They have their exits and their entrances;

culture; the skull held by the actor alone on stage sug­

And one man in his time plays many parts.

gests Hamlet—high European culture. The image is thus double-voiced. Lawrence’s own imagination attempts to

Jacques refers to how an individual can play many parts

reconcile the two striving ideas: the blood dripping from

over a lifetime. But even within the same moment one can

the hand suggests his effort to strip away the actor’s

play many parts—a fact that can lead to the pathologies

mask, then the face, down to the elemental humanity of the

about which Frantz Fanon wrote.

skull. To Death—and at death—all skulls are the same color. The scene itself also reminds us of Jacques’s speech in Shakespeare’s As You Like It: 224  masks and masking

Lawrence designed Marionettes (Fig. 164) with eighteen masklike heads and one dog’s head spread across the bottom of the picture frame, with large loops of string lacing them together and draped curtains crushing down

Fig 165   Curtain, 1952. Egg tempera on hardboard, 20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 61 cm). Private collection.

upon them. The heads are variously masks, dolls, and

voids that create the illusion, as social manipulation itself

skulls. Ambiguity resides here as well—do the strings

is generated by illusions. What might be the source of this

­manipulate hands, or do the hands manipulate the strings?

image, the spectacle that would stir his imagination?

On close inspection we see that one white hand, at the

Perhaps Lawrence had seen the WPA’s “all Negro” puppet

lower left, halfway to the center, firmly holds a string at-

troupes that put on minstrel shows, popular in the North,

tached to some of the heads. The strings going upward

where puppets leapt, jigged, and did splits to minstrel

seem to go nowhere—in fact, on close inspection, we see

tunes. He may even have seen such puppet shows at the

that they have been formed by Lawrence’s method of

CCC camp in Middletown, New York, where he worked in

“painting on either side of the line.”

103

In this case black

the late spring and summer of 1936.104

and gray shapes are painted up to the penciled line on the

“For sheer horror there is ‘Curtain [Fig. 165],’ ” wrote the

underpainting, leaving the underpainting to represent the

New York Times critic Stuart Preston. He described how

strings. Thus the strings have no substance—they are the

“a shroud of descending damask decapitates the line of masks and masking  225

smiling performers” and concluded: “A slightly ridiculous

clenched teeth through which the ventriloquist throws his

moment has been captured and given a macabre twist.”105

voice literally pierce the dummy’s mouth. The dummy’s

Indeed, Curtain, like Marionettes, contains figures crowded

voice is a performed blackness, but would it be controlled

into the lower horizontal band of the painting with swags

by the ventriloquist or by the conventions of white men’s

of curtain bearing down on them. Five figures in formal

bigotry? Does it make a difference? On closer inspection

evening wear—three women and two men—confront the

we see that only the black dummy has a body; the ven-

audience. Unlike Preston, I do not interpret the figures as

triloquist is merely a head with a stalklike neck. The blue

decapitated; rather, they are very much present in the

shape, which we might first perceive as a body, is just a

world of African Americans. The thin, scrimlike band

shape. The hand to the left of the head is actually the

stretched horizontally across the top half of their faces

hand of the patron to the left. In short, the roles are re-

is—in the words of W. E. B. Du Bois—“the Veil that lay

versed, as if to suggest that it is the dummy who speaks

between [the black individual] and the white world.” Show-

for the African American. Ventriloquism becomes com-

ing beneath the veil in this painting are white cheeks,

plexly layered; it is another form of masking, of speaking

chins, and grimacing teeth. The ambiguity of the double-

transgressively while maintaining the illusion that the

ness is apparent, and we should recall Du Bois’s further

words come from someone else’s mouth.107

thoughts: “The Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a

During the early 1950s Lawrence continued to paint

veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—

pictures with mask motifs and masking as a theme. A

a world which yields him no true-self-consciousness, 

small painting of 1954, The Masquerade (Fig. 167), re-

but only lets him see himself through the revelation of 

peats a theme seen in an earlier 1946 painting, The

the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-

Masked Ball (private collection). In both paintings Law-

consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self

rence suggests a gothic interior with a red-and-black

through the eyes of others.”106 The veil calls to mind Dun-

checkerboard floor. Whereas the earlier work suggests

bar’s “mask that grins and lies . . . hides our cheeks and

figures in various costumes dancing, with the figure of

shades our eyes.” The blood-spattered shirtfront of the

Death hovering in the upper right, in the 1954 painting

central male figure suggests Dunbar’s line “With torn and

Death takes a more active role by manipulating the fore-

bleeding hearts we smile.” Yet the actor in Lawrence’s

ground woman, who curtsies to the right. In the back-

painting still stands at the end of the act—facing his audi-

ground at the left, two formally dressed, rigidly standing

ence despite either being assaulted from the outside or

men, one wearing a yellow mask and the other a red

hemorrhaging from within.

mask, flank another woman also attired in formal clothes

Ventriloquist (Fig. 166), also known as Harlem Night­

and wearing a black mask. The man wearing the red

club, portrays another facet of the Minstrel Man, who is

mask dangles from his hand a black mask. This strange

not only seen but also heard. It is an integrated scene

picture suggests the closeness of death to the unmasked

with black and white couples, the men dressed in tuxe-

black woman in the foreground who does not play by the

does and the women in evening clothes, many wearing

codes and masquerade as the others do. The image re-

hats with light net veils partially covering their faces. The

calls the George Balanchine ballet La Valse, which de-

diagonal placement of the tables evokes a sense of move-

buted at the New York City Ballet in February 1951 and in

ment that the other paintings of the Performance series

which ballerinas and their male partners dance increas-

do not have. The plant fronds placed in crystal vases on

ingly faster to the frenzied rhythms of Ravel’s music as

the tables provide further visual agitation. At the center

Death stalks the stage.

of the composition, the focus of the nightclub patrons’ at-

Dancing also engages the four couples in Celebration

tention, is the ventriloquist, whose brown face codes him

(1954, Fig. 168). The sparkling lights that radiate from the

as an African American. He holds on his lap his black-

women’s earrings obscure their faces; and bling, as we

faced, white-lipped, top-hatted stereotypical Minstrel

know, can be an effectively intimidating masking. Red and

Man dummy. We see the dummy’s head in profile; the

yellow flowers both decorate their hair and lie strewn on

226  masks and masking

Fig 166   Ventriloquist, 1952. Egg tempera on board, 197⁄8 x 24 in. (50.5 x 61 cm). Harvard University Art Museums, Fogg Art Museum, Daniel A. Pollack, Class of 1960, American Art Fund and Gift of Dr. Ernest G. Stillman, Class of 1907, by exchange, TL40616. Photo: Imaging Department, © President and Fellows of Harvard College. Fig 167   The Masquerade, 1954. Egg tempera on hardboard, 87⁄8 x 117⁄8 in. (22.5 x 30.1 cm). The State of New  York; Collection of the Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building, New York.

Fig 168   Celebration, 1954. Egg tempera on hardboard, 237⁄8 x 171⁄8 in. (60.6 x 43.5 cm). Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 1966. Photo: Lee Stalsworth. Fig 169   Masks, 1954. Egg tempera on hardboard, 24 x 173⁄4 in. (61 x 45.1 cm). Collection of Elizabeth Marsteller Gordon.

the floor beneath their feet. The middle figure wears a

rest on the table at the back. At the upper right is a crying

dress with a red, yellow, black, and tan diamond pattern

mask, which, as Henry Louis Gates Jr. has observed,

(like Harlequin). The men, though more soberly dressed,

resembles Harlequin.109 On the floor at the bottom edge

sport impressive rings that also radiate sparkling lights.

sits a black cat on a green rug. Tints and shades of green,

Thin vertical lines across the composition suggest stream-

a color Lawrence did not frequently use, dominate the

ers or perhaps webs entrapping them within a glitzy gaiety

palette. The masks, skulls, and puppets have overwhelmed

that suggests artificiality.

the artist’s private studio and seem as if they might pro-

Lawrence’s 1954 Masks (Fig. 169) depicts a studio

liferate and threaten his ability to express his inner experi-

interior filled with masks and masklike forms. Stuart

ences through paint. The face on the canvas propped

Preston, in a short review for the New York Times, dis-

against the easel looks more like a mask that reveals no

missed the work as “a litter of symbols.”108 In the center

emotion than a portrait expressive of the sitter’s personal-

an easel holds a portrait of a black man, perhaps meant

ity. Who is this man on the easel? We do not know what

to be an artist’s self-portrait. On the table and floor are

Lawrence chose to conceal. A year earlier, in 1953, he

ten masks, either representations of masks in paint or

had been rejected by the government as a security risk

actual masks. A jointed wooden model of the human

to go overseas under the sponsorship of the U.S. Informa-

figure and a human skull, both common art studio props,

tion Agency. 110 This was a fact he concealed—masked—

228  masks and masking

Fig 170   Supermarket—All Hallow’s Eve, 1994. Gouache on paper, 195⁄8 x 25 5⁄8 in. (49.8 x 65.1 cm). Private collection.

Image courtesy of Francine Seders Gallery, Seattle. Photo: Eduardo Calderón.

when he later told scholars that he had “declined” the

the ultimate visage that seals memories and puts to rest

agency’s invitation. Perhaps he would have declined

the private person.

anyway, but in the U.S. government’s view he was a

In summary, Lawrence, like the novelists of Harlem,

transgressor who had supported too many of the wrong

knew and responded to the imagery and styles of the

organizations.111

Euro-American artistic traditions, but he also drew on shared black vernacular cultural practices. What he

n

painted came from deep experience, reading, and reflec-

At the end of his life, in 1994, Lawrence did a series of

tion that he could not always articulate verbally, but of

twelve paintings set in the supermarket. Most of the works

which he became acutely conscious after his therapy at

show shoppers selecting merchandise, but in Supermar-

Hillside Hospital. His paintings are, indeed, veiled autobi-

ket—All Hallow’s Eve (Fig. 170) the theme of masking reap-

ographies. As we have seen in this chapter, during the

pears. Four figures stand in the foreground. The central

1950s he, as an African American with progressive politi-

figure, a man with a skull-like head, holds a skull, and

cal beliefs, had to confront tensions on two public fronts:

another skull floats next to his knee. He looks down at a

in the world of cold war political repression and that of

small dog, the head of which is also a skull like the man’s.

Jim Crow racism. Through the trope of masking, Lawrence

Even within the supermarket the rituals of tricksters pre-

was able to compose within himself, and thus psychologi-

vail. But there is the solace that death is the final mask—

cally control, those two persisting tensions. masks and masking  229

8

the paintings of the protest years, 1955–70 In order to do justice to their subject matter, in order to depict Negro life in all of its manifold and intricate relationships, a deep, informed and complex consciousness is necessary, a consciousness which draws for its strength upon the fluid lore of a great people, and moulds this lore with the concepts that move and direct the forces of history today.

richard wright, “Blueprint for Negro Literature,” 1937 I like to feel that the Negro struggle is a symbol of man’s struggle. . . . You see, early maybe I didn’t think this. Maybe I thought the Negro struggle was unique. And, of course, all struggles are unique in that when and where they take place they have a uniqueness. But generally I think it’s all one.

jacob lawrence, interview with Carroll Greene (1968)

The art historian Milton Brown has noted that in the mid-1950s, “at the height of the McCarthy era, [Lawrence] returned in the Struggle series to the revolutionary history of the American people. And he also returned to the sources of his art, to the Mexican muralists and social realism.”1 At a time when many socially concerned realist artists either were attempting to construct new iconographies to express their despair about contemporary political conditions or had abandoned figuration altogether for abstraction, Lawrence returned to American history—its victories and its infamies. Soon afterward, however, during the 1960s, Lawrence focused attention on contemporary struggles, on the civil rights and antiwar movements. The underlying humanism of Lawrence’s “protest” art is apparent in these paintings as well as later works, such as the 1983 Hiroshima panels, a re-

lawrence’s struggle series As the civil rights movement was just beginning, Lawrence decided to create another series on American history—one that integrated blacks into the struggles of the young American nation beginning with the colonial era. In an interview with Selden Rodman, conducted about this time, he explained: “The history of the United States fascinates me. Right now, I’m reading in it, looking for any episode that suggests a symbol of struggle. The part the Negro has played in all these events has been greatly overlooked. I intend to bring it out. We were not just slaves before the Civil War. We were volunteers in all the wars. We played a great part.”2 Later, in an interview with Carroll Greene in 1968, Lawrence elaborated on his rationale for presenting a new version of history that included African Americans:

sponse to John Hersey’s account of the devastating

As late as a few years ago in the 1950’s the Negro had not

consequences of the atom bomb’s explosion over that

been included in the general stream of history. . . . Now . . .

Japanese city.

there’s a more conscious effort to put the Negro back where

Fig 171   American Revolution, 1963. Gouache and tempera on paper, 23 x 15 in. (58.4 x 38.1 cm). Private collection. Image courtesy of Peg Alston Fine Arts, New York.

he belongs in American history. I mean up till now he’s been

hastily put together. These weaknesses may reflect the

taken out, just excluded, or put aside.  .  .  . Historians have

fact that Lawrence no longer had Alain Locke to mentor

glossed over the Negro’s part as one of the builders of Amer-

him or the savvy dealer Edith Halpert to help him polish

ica, how he tilled the fields, and picked cotton, and helped to

the grant application and line up recommendations. Per-

build the cities. Now I don’t want to be sentimental and say well the Negro did all this. . . . This wouldn’t be true either. I mean there were many other groups coming from Europe who contributed. However these other groups always get mentioned. The Polish, the Italians, the English, they’re all mentioned as to their contributions. . . . So . . . I thought it would

haps he was applying too soon after his 1945–46 fellowship. In any event, the Guggenheim Foundation turned him down.6 Lawrence did, however, get smaller fellowships from the Yaddo Foundation at Saratoga Springs, New York, for the summer of 1954 and the fall of 1955. From the

be a good thing if I did[,] plus the fact I think American his­

Chapelbrook Foundation in Boston he received a substan-

tory is a fascinating subject.  .  .  . Again this had to do with

tial fellowship for 1955.7

struggle, the struggle of man and showing as part of the

Halpert no longer represented Lawrence because in

struggle . . . the American Negro. . . . This was not a Negro

1953 she had made a deal with her assistant, Charles

series. It isn’t just Negroes. It dealt with . . . Negroes who were

Alan, who was eager to open his own gallery. She kept the

with Washington when he crossed the Delaware. Not as slaves.

older artists whose works she had been handling for

These people . . . had signed up to take part in the American

decades, and Alan took the younger artists, including

Revolution. 3

Lawrence. Although not as ambitious as Halpert or as skilled at public and press relations, he did help Lawrence

With his series Struggle  .  .  . From the History of the

by sending paintings off to major exhibitions, such as the

American People, Lawrence aimed to restore African

Whitney annuals; exhibitions at the Virginia Museum of

Americans to their rightful place in history.

Fine Arts, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Brooklyn Mu-

As he had done with the Migration series, Lawrence

seum, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts;

planned his Struggle series carefully. Seeking funding,

and, importantly, the Venice Biennale. 8 He did not give

the artist applied in January 1954 to the Guggenheim

Lawrence a solo exhibition until December 1956, when

Foundation for a year’s grant. The project, he explained,

Lawrence had finished thirty panels of the Struggle

would “consist of a series of paintings depicting selected

series.

events from the history of the United States and covering

Lawrence did not paint the Struggle panels all at once,

the period beginning with the landing of Captain Christo-

as he had with his earlier history series; instead, he

pher Newport on Chesapeake Bay in 1706 and ending

painted them individually, when he could find the time.9

4

with the armistice of World War I on November 11th 1918.”

The slashing diagonals and vigor of movement character-

Excited about the new series, he thanked Lang­ston Hughes

istic of the Struggle paintings, so different from the static

for sending him a copy of Famous American Negroes,

brilliance of the Performance paintings, imply an urgency

which “will aid me greatly in my

research.”5

to convey an immediate and direct content. Most of the

In his project outline to the Guggenheim Lawrence pro-

panels deal with war and violence, with flailing swords,

vided a long list of historical dates and topics—four sin-

firing cannons, and man-to-man combat; the captions are

gle-spaced pages—and estimated that the series would

often long quotations from historical figures, such as Pat-

total almost eighty panels. For example, under the rubric

rick Henry, Paul Revere, Thomas Paine, and Henry Clay,

“The Civil War,” he listed fourteen specific incidents, from

or anonymous participants. In this respect Lawrence cre-

“The underground railroad, 1850” to “A president assas-

ated a revisionist history a decade before young scholars

sinated 1865,” but then noted there would be ten paint-

in the universities began to reject the “great man” ap-

ings (not fourteen) selected in that group. A reader of his

proach in favor of a social history “from below.”

outline might be baffled by the project’s ambitious scope

Black slaves, Native Americans, and women occupy the

and its plethora of topics. No informing narrative with a

spotlight of Lawrence’s chronicle. For example, Panel 5

rationale was included with the application, which seems

(Fig. 172)—“We have no property! We have no wives! No

232  the paintings of the protest years

children! We have no city! No country!—Petition of Many

ample of 1950s critics’ responses to realist works that

Slaves, 1773”—depicts a slave revolt, with black men fight-

included imaginative and comprehensible symbols.

ing with pikes against their white owners while their arms are still shackled. In Panel 27 (private collection), the text

Lawrence’s temperas throughout are spirited, colorful, and rise

highlights the cry of a Georgia slave in 1810: “For freedom

above the sheer realism and postery effects (into which they

we want and will have, for we have served this cruel land

might so easily have fallen) by virtue of the emotion he has

long enuff.” Two black men at the center of the composi-

brought to his task and through his consistent symbolizing

tion fend off two white men who attack them with knives

rather than merely representing his themes—it is the spirit of

and swords. The clenched teeth of the white men press against the flesh of the black men, who hold their ground. Some panels, however, are much more abstract. In Panel 23 (private collection)—based on Henry Clay’s 1813 statement that “if we fail, let us fail like men, and expire

the events he has chosen rather than mere realistic representation. Quotations from letters, documents and speeches have been selected rather than titles for the pictures and help to explain the rather exalted mood which the artist has maintained throughout—the opening words of the Constitution to accompany an interpretation of the convention, the petition of slaves for redress of their wrongs, the wintry silence of Valley Forge

together in one common struggle”—irregularly shaped

and the enduring figures against the snow. Such moments he

areas of white, representing sails on a ship, dominate the

has made to live again. Beginning in low key he has brightened

composition. In the lower register, we see just the flung-

his palette as he unfolds his story and his flatly stylized forms

back head and arm of a small figure as he drops his sword

nevertheless have striking emotional ­impact.10

after his eye has been pierced by a sweeping black line—a sword thrust at him by an unseen assailant from behind

Devree recognized that such symbols were not arcane but

a sail at the upper right. As Lawrence had learned from

easily understood, as in a good history lesson.

his earlier panels, the artist does not need to show the

Other reviewers were equally enthusiastic. The Time

whole figure; the part will stand for the whole. Similarly,

magazine reviewer declared that Lawrence had “broad-

in Panel 13 (Fig. 173), labeled “Victory and Defeat,” the

ened his range, taken in not only the Negro, but the whole

long arm of a British officer (note the red sleeve) offers

nation. His ambitious subject: the birth of the U.S. and its

his sword to the hand of his victorious opponent over a

struggle for freedom.” The reviewer ended by praising

pile of cannonballs. Panel 11 (Fig. 174), “An Informer’s

“An Informer’s Coded Message”: “By showing a dramatic

Coded Message,” focuses in on the heads of two men in

closeup of the two informers, he has neatly rendered the

a dark place; the informer’s teeth (the only white in the

feeling of furtiveness and secretiveness in espionage.”11

picture) press against the ear of the listener. Some of the

J.R.M., in a brief review for Arts, felt that the paintings

panels call to mind the subjects of Goya’s Disasters of War.

deserved to be murals: “They possess the thematic de-

For example, the subject of Panel 12, “And a Woman Mans

velopment, the dramatic simplicity and the straightfor-

a Cannon” (private collection), is a woman with a white

ward sense of rhythm and movement that would show to

bonnet who fires a rifle alongside a man, while another

better advantage as full-scale murals. The thrusting di-

standing woman, a pistol tied to her body by her dress

agonals, the reduced palette maintain a consistency of

sash, turns to look at the action while presumably tending

approach from the dramatic figure of Patrick Henry to the

to the cannon. Goya’s What Courage! similarly showed

ponderous and awkward shapes of the covered wagons

women in the thick of battle, with one firing a cannon.

in the final painting of the selection on view. One can

The critics’ reviews in January 1957 praised the thirty

imagine that in the thirties, under the auspices of the

small (12 x 16 inch) but powerfully imagined panels. Law-

W.P.A., such a series would have found its proper place

rence could not have asked for a more positive review

in a public building. A similar opportunity today is no

than that offered by Howard Devree of the New York

doubt lacking.”12 While the Time reviewer revealed the

Times. The review deserves to be quoted at length not

era’s concern with conspiracies, the Arts reviewer

only for what it says about Lawrence but also as an ex-

yearned for the 1930s era of public murals.13

the paintings of the protest years  233

Fig 172   Struggle . . . From the History of the American People, Panel 5: “We have no property! We have no wives! No

children! We have no city! No country!—Petition of Many Slaves, 1773,” 1955. Egg tempera on hardboard, 16 x 12 in. (40.6 x 30.5 cm). Private collection. Image courtesy DC Moore Gallery, New York.

Fig 173   Struggle . . . From the History of the American People,

Panel 13: “Victory and Defeat,” 1955. Egg tempera on hardboard, 12 x 16 in. (30.5 x 40.6 cm). Private collection. Image courtesy DC Moore Gallery, New York. Fig 174   Struggle . . . From the History of the American People,

Panel 11: “120.9.14.286.9.33-ton 290.9.27 be at 153.9.28.  110.8.17.255.9.29 evening 178.9.8 . . . —An Informer’s Coded Message,” 1955. Egg tempera on hardboard, 1515⁄16 x 11 15⁄16 in. (40.5 x 30.3 cm). Private collection. Image courtesy DC Moore Gallery, New York.

the early years of the civil rights movement

the 1960s. Sit-ins at segregated lunch counters began in

In the mid-1950s Lawrence watched with interest the pro­

earnest in 1960, and the following year blacks and whites

The civil rights movement gained momentum during

gress of the civil rights movement. In 1954 the Supreme

known as Freedom Riders journeyed together on inter-

Court made a landmark decision for that cause in Brown v.

state buses to the South to put to the test a Supreme

the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. It ruled that

Court ruling against segregated transportation. Although

“separate but equal” public school systems were uncon-

the Freedom Riders were beaten and jailed, they contin-

stitutional because they deprived black children of their

ued their rides and the pressure for integration. More civil

Fourteenth Amendment rights to equal protection under

rights workers flooded the South, registering voters as

the law. The social psychologist Kenneth B. Clark, with

well as participating in demonstrations. Though they were

whom the Lawrences had been friends since Clark’s days

committed to the principles of nonviolent civil disobedi-

as a student of Augusta Savage, helped win the plaintiffs’

ence, they frequently encountered attacks by police and

case by testifying about the psychological studies he had

local racists.16

done with children and dolls. In monitored tests, when he

In 1963, when black civil rights leaders challenged

had asked black children to choose the dolls they wanted

segre­gationist policies in Birmingham, Alabama, they

to play with, they had invariably chosen white over “col-

­received major media coverage. The well-orchestrated

ored” dolls. His conclusion was that such children had

desegregation campaign of the Southern Christian Lead-

developed an inferior self-image—preferring to be “white”

ership Conference (SCLC) began on April 3 with boycotts

rather than “colored”—and his manuscript “Effect of Preju-

of stores, kneel-ins at white churches, and sit-ins at lunch

dice and Discrimination on Personality Development” was

counters, followed by massive arrests. The strategy of

subsequently cited in the Court’s decision.

nonviolent confrontation had been crafted by the Rever-

Lawrence seemingly takes his cues from Clark in Play­

ends Fred Shuttlesworth, Wyatt T. Walker, Martin Luther

room (1957, Fig. 175), which shows three girls seated in a

King Jr., and Ralph Abernathy. To prevent King and others

playroom surrounded by dolls—some nine in all. The dolls

from marching, Eugene “Bull” Connor, an ardent segre-

are of different colors—black, white, brown, blue, half-

gationist in charge of Birmingham’s police and fire de-

black/half-white, part-red—but also of different genders

partments, obtained an injunction that the civil rights

and different classes; note the elegant blue female doll in

leaders defied on Good Friday, April 12. King, Abernathy,

the background and the white tuxedoed male doll who

and Shuttlesworth were arrested and jailed, but the 

leans on her, in contrast to the wooden puppets the mid-

demonstrations continued. The entire African American

dle girl holds. The dolls take on an emotional intensity;

community of Birmingham was united in its determina-­ 

the skeletal white, black-cloaked doll in the foreground

tion to expose racism in the South and in Birmingham in

seems to look at the brown decapitated doll lying next to

particular.

it. Choosing dolls is serious business, as Clark had ob-

Protests were carefully planned in the weeks that fol-

served: “Learning about races and racial differences,

lowed. On May 2 at 1:00 p.m. a phalanx of fifty teenagers

learning one’s own racial identity, learning which race is

left the SCLC staging area inside the Sixteenth Street

to be preferred and which rejected—all these are assimi-

Baptist Church singing “We Shall Overcome” and

lated by the child as part of the total pattern of ideas he

marched toward the white business district. Police im-

acquires about himself and the society in which he

mediately arrested them. More waves of children poured

lives.”14 Perceptions about one’s race, as Clark and Law-

out of the church all afternoon and into the vans of the

rence knew, affect one’s social and emotional

health.15

arresting police. By the end of the day, 959 children had

Fig 175   Playroom, 1957. Egg tempera on hardboard, 20 x 16 in. (50.8 x 40.6 cm). The William H. Lane Collection, Boston.

236  the paintings of the protest years

Fig 176   Charles Moore, Police Dogs Attacking Demonstrator dur­ ing Anti-segregation Protest in Birmingham, Alabama, 1963. © 1963 Charles Moore/Black Star. Fig 177   Two Rebels, 1963. Lithograph, 301 ⁄2 x 201⁄8 in. (77.5 x 51.1

cm). Private collection.

been sent to jail. The next day photographers were on hand as more young people and adults continued to protest. Connor called out eight police dog units to halt civil rights demonstrators from marching downtown and had firemen in readiness with high-powered water hoses to stop the marchers.17 Photographs of the attacks, taken by Bill Hudson, Charles Moore (Fig. 176), and others, were sent around the world by wire services, and Life pub-

we existed [in] or we perceived to exist. . . . It’s like say-

lished Moore’s images in its May 17, 1963, issue. Still the

ing, ‘See? I told you so. There it is.’ ”19 The Lawrences ad-

demonstrations continued—in Birmingham and soon

mired the bravery of the Birmingham protesters and hoped

across the country. According to a U.S. Department of

for the movement’s success. Lawrence and his friends had

Justice report, there were 1,412 demonstrations in three

always known that small and large, individual and collective

months of 1963.18 Jacob Lawrence and Gwendolyn Knight must have

acts of resistance against racial injustice can have a cumulative effect toward change.

watched with horror and disgust as the attacks in Birming-

Just before the events in Birmingham, Lawrence, with

ham unfolded on television and in the newspapers and

the encouragement of his friends Robert Gwathmey and

newsmagazines, but they were hardly surprised by the

Philip Evergood, had agreed to have a solo exhibition at

­police’s harsh treatment of blacks. Police brutality, vicious

the Terry Dintenfass Gallery in New York. To publicize

dogs, and repressive tactics were part of the collective ex-

the exhibition, Dintenfass asked Lawrence to make an

periences of African Americans since the days of slavery

ink drawing for a poster. Lawrence based his design

and Reconstruction, and African American authors had

(Fig. 177) on one of his tempera paintings, Two Rebels

portrayed that violence in their fiction. Lawrence later re-

(1963, Harmon and Harriet Kelley Foundation for the

called that he had not been shocked by the events in the

Arts), which portrayed four white policemen carrying two

life of Bigger Thomas, Richard Wright’s protagonist in his

black men. The heads of some fifteen witnesses crowd in

novel Native Son (1940): “It reinforced that condition which

on the tempera scene. In the poster that number has been

238  the paintings of the protest years

reduced to ten heads that float like moons of light above

although challenged, were still on the books in southern

a single protester and his police captors with their billy

states. Yet the symbolism expressed by the fine attire

clubs dangling from their hands.

and formal nature of the double wedding portraits also

Although the poster might seem to announce a theme of social protest for the exhibition, half of the paintings

suggests the couples’ calculated and preplanned decision to marry across race. 21

did not focus directly on civil rights activities. Instead,

Critical attention, however, highlighted five paintings

Lawrence painted themes from previous years: two paint-

with immediately apparent ties to current civil rights

ings depicted children (Boy with Kite, 1961; All Hallow’s

struggles. Vivien Reynor wrote for Arts: “In his new paint-

Eve, 1960); one, entertainment (Cabaret, 1962); two, mi-

ings Lawrence is chiefly occupied with events in the

gration (Travellers, 1961; Northbound, 1962); and two, a

South. . . . He translates the issues of racial dispute into

library (Library II, 1960; Library III, 1960). The remaining

condensed patterns that administer sharp jabs rather

seven works all clearly indicted racial prejudice, although

than knockout blows. Praying Ministers in their robes fol-

reviewers would not as readily connect two of these (In­

low their mission surrounded by soldiers; Ordeal of Alice

visible Man among the Scholars, 1963; Taboo, 1963) to

represents the Negro child in a white dress—she is riddled with arrows and beset by grimacing white female

current events. In Invisible Man among the Scholars (1963, private col-

devils. If Lawrence’s work has become less lyrical, his

lection), the “invisible man”—a clear reference to the title

skill at expressing his feelings in dense, well-composed

of Ralph Ellison’s 1947 novel—is isolated in a black co-

patterns continues to be impressive.”22 Praying Ministers

coon in the left background and ignored by the white stu-

(1962, Spelman College, Atlanta) presents a number of

dents sitting at a seminar table with their notebooks. The

black and white ministers and rabbis bending their heads

rhythms of the painting and the glances of the students

and praying while behind them stand protesting students,

pull our eyes toward the white professor, at the right,

one of whom waves a flag. A white and a black soldier

draped in his colorful academic robes, who presides over

flank the scene, prominently displaying their rifles and

the scene, holding his lecture notes. When Lawrence

ammunition. Police or soldiers appear in three other

painted this picture, he may have had in mind James

paintings: Two Rebels, Soldiers and Students (1962), and

Meredith, a former air force staff sergeant and African

Four Students (1961). We can surmise that news photo-

American who had attempted to transfer from an all-

graphs and television images of the events of the early

Negro college to the segregated University of Mississippi

1960s triggered these paintings.

in September 1962. Though he was at first rejected by

Ordeal of Alice (Fig. 179), which raised the level of in-

the university, the courts ruled in his favor; then the gov-

tensity in Lawrence’s paintings, drew the most comment

ernor of Mississippi personally blocked his entrance into

from critics. Arrows pierce the white dress and stockings

the main campus building. After some hesitation Presi-

of the black schoolgirl carrying books and walking along

dent John F. Kennedy called in the National Guard, and

a pathway bordered by small flowers. Bright red blood

Meredith, accompanied by federal marshals and state

from her wounds stains her clothing. The symbolism refers

troopers, was allowed to register. Once enrolled, he found

to the martyr Saint Sebastian, who was sentenced by the

himself isolated and ignored by the white students, like

Roman emperor to be shot with arrows when his Christian

the figure in Invisible Man among the Scholars, but he

faith was discovered. 23 Alice in her neat attire contrasts

stayed and graduated in the summer of 1963.

20

with the six leering red, blue, and brown trolls who taunt

The image in Taboo (Fig. 178) is more static, with two

her with their grinning ivory teeth. Such creatures were a

couples facing us like formal wedding portraits: a white

new element in Lawrence’s work. Their gyrations and

groom and his elaborately attired black bride and a black

menacing gestures press against her, blocking her access

groom and his equally richly dressed white bride. The

to an education.

painting’s title alerts us to the social transgressiveness of

Alice’s “ordeal” should be seen in terms of history.

the figures’ actions; in 1963 antimiscegenation statutes,

Eight years had passed since the 1954 Supreme Court

the paintings of the protest years  239

Fig 178   Taboo, 1963. Egg tempera on hardboard, 197⁄8 x 237⁄8 in. (50.5 x 60.6 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of the Zelda and

Josef Jaffe Family, 2002. Fig 179   Ordeal of Alice, 1963. Egg tempera on hardboard, 24 x 20 in. (61 x 50.8 cm). Private collection, New York. Image courtesy DC

Moore Gallery, New York

ruling in the Brown case that the states must desegre-

rassed by a mob of white women as she walked toward

gate public schools “with all deliberate speed.” But racist

Central High in Little Rock on September 4 (Fig. 180).

school boards resisted. The most publicized confronta-

Lawrence’s picture of Alice resonates with this photo-

tion occurred in Little Rock, Arkansas, between racists

graph, but the artist exaggerates the reality into grim

and nine African American teenagers attempting to de-

poetry.

segregate that school system in 1957. 24 Governor Orville

Lawrence knew that racism and racial taunting by ig-

Faubus called out the National Guard to protect the seg-

norant and ranting bigots leave long-lasting scars on

regationists. A famous news photograph by Pete Harris

black children. Many instances of such traumas have

depicts one of the nine children, Elizabeth Eckford, ha-

been recorded in African American history and literature,

240  the paintings of the protest years

and they were part of every black person’s personal experience. One child who experienced such assaults was Ruby Bridges, who integrated the William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans in 1960 when she was six years old. White parents boycotted, picketed the school, and threatened violence, so marshals accompanied her to school. For an entire school year one sympathetic white teacher, Barbara Henry of Boston, met alone with her, while the Harvard child psychiatrist Robert Coles counseled her weekly. In 1964 Coles published Children of Crisis: A Study of Courage and Fear, in which he gives the history of Ruby and paraphrases her own impressions of her ordeal. 25 As we have noted, the integration of public schools and resistance to it were issues well covered by the media in the early 1960s. Lawrence called his young girl “Alice,” alluding to the figure from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland who must negotiate the bizarre world of taunting irrational adults, as Ruby Bridges

did. 26

When interviewed by Newsweek,

Lawrence admitted he had painted a nightmare, com-

Fig 180   Pete Harris, Elizabeth Eckford, One of the Little Rock Nine, Pursued by the Mob outside Little Rock Central High School, Sep­ tember 4, 1957. © Bettmann/c o r b is .

menting: “It must be hellish . . . it must be like a dream— out of this world. You see they’re human beings, and yet they’re like animals.” He explained how Alice had become

parochial.”29 Here, as in many other remarks, Lawrence

the focus of these racists’ irrational hate. “The little girl

spoke of himself as a conduit for universal experience, of

becomes a symbol where they can get it [their hate] out.

which his own experience, as well as that of African

These people have no insight. It’s sad that they’re that

Americans, was paradigmatic.

way. They’re worse off than the girl.” The interviewer noted

The editors of Motive, a magazine sponsored by the

that “Lawrence paints the nightmare, but with the natural

Methodist Student Movement, trusted Lawrence to speak

unforced compassion of a man who is not at war with

for them when they asked him to paint a picture for their

himself.”27 Discussing the gnomelike figures in an inter-

October 1963 cover “to help underscore the urgency of

view in 1995, Lawrence reiterated that they were meant

our times and expose the raw face of hatred and evil and

to represent “an ugly situation” that could be expressed

oppression.”30 With memories still vivid of James Mere-

characters. 28

dith at the University of Mississippi in September 1962

only by distorting the

At the time of the 1963 Terry Dintenfass exhibition,

and the police dogs of Birmingham in May, Lawrence

Lawrence told a Chicago Defender reporter: “Yes, it would

submitted American Revolution (1963, see Fig. 171). A

be valid to call me a social protest painter, . . . but I don’t

black man wearing a suit and tie stands erect in the mid-

feel I protest only, or purely, because I’m a Negro. I use

dle of a composition while snarling, lunging dogs and

the ­Negro symbol because of my personal experience—­

men wearing canine masks menace him from the edges.

naturally, I couldn’t use the Indian or Chinese or Euro-

One dog-masked figure at the right manipulates a stick

pean symbol because these people aren’t mine—but I like

puppet of an Aunt Jemima–type figure in front of the pro-

to think I go beyond the regional and deal with humanity.

tagonist. The bright primary colors with tints of the same

I expect to continue with the Negro symbol, because it’s

hues shrilly scream at the viewer. Both the girl in The Or­

the one I know best, but I hope I transcend the strictly

deal of Alice and the man in American Revolution endure

242  the paintings of the protest years

and violence, Warhol does not personalize the event. We have no idea what Warhol might feel about the situation. In contrast, Lawrence’s small, cabinet-size image projects the anguish that he and others felt. The vast support for the civil rights movement became clear to the nation when A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and the activist Bayard Rustin mobilized the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963. Both had agitated for a similar march some twenty years earlier. Other civil rights leaders joined them: Roy Wilkins of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), James Farmer of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), John Lewis of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Whitney Young Jr. of the Urban League, and Martin Luther King Jr. of the SCLC. The turnout numbered at least a quarter million demonstrators. 33 King’s “I Have a Dream” speech electrified his audience, and souvenir pictures—reproductions of collages made from Life magazine photos of the police dog and fire hose attacks in Birmingham and other civil rights scenes—were sold for a dollar. 34 The counterattack came when a bomb went off in a Birmingham church a few weeks later, on September 15, killing four black children. To Lawrence, children meant family, family meant com­ munity, and communities determined the health of the nation. The future held uncertainties, and Lawrence felt Fig 181   Andy Warhol, Red Race Riot, 1963. Synthetic polymer paint and silk screen ink on canvas, 11 ft., 5 in. x 6 ft., 10 1 ⁄2 in. (3.5 x 2.1 m). Museum Ludwig, Cologne. Art © 2009 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: The Andy Warhol Foundation, Inc./Art Resource, NY.

the psychological tensions generated by the intense racism. What kept his emotions in control was translating those feelings into art. In his interview with Mort Cooper of the Chicago Defender, Lawrence elaborated: “Most of us Negro artists react to our positions and conditions as other Negroes do: emotionally. It has nothing to do with art. My

the almost paralyzing effects of fear as they face the vicious snarling beasts. 31

job is to strive for the proper transition from the emotional to the intellectual. And if I want to grow, as both a man

Andy Warhol also explored the possibilities for imagery

and a painter, I have to develop compassion so I won’t be

in the Birmingham attacks, but his approach differs con-

one-sided in what I wish to get across. Compassion has

siderably from Lawrence’s. In Red Race Riot (1963, Fig.

to be part of anger if a truly powerful statement is to be

181), Warhol chose the moment when police dogs tear a

made.”35 The tight control Lawrence exercised over his

protester’s clothes from his body. Warhol’s very large

art is palpably apparent in The Family (1964, Fig. 182).

canvas, with its repeating images stacked up like televi-

This picture presents a family at mealtime. An adult

sion sets, is the public, news service image that draws on

sits at the end of a table facing the viewer, with two chil-

media spectacle.32 Although the color red signals danger

dren on either side; they all bend over their plates. In the

the paintings of the protest years  243

Lawrence had never thought of himself as an organizer or leader, but he had acquired prestige, especially when Ebony magazine ran an article in its September 1963 issue, “Leading Negro Artists,” stating that Lawrence was “hailed by many as the dean of current Negro painters.”37 Because of his preeminence as an artist, groups called on him to lend his name and support to fund-raising for the civil rights movement. Lawrence found himself in the position of heading up an art committee to raise funds for SNCC. His friend Philip Evergood praised his work for SNCC, but the mounting pressure of events and the overwhelming responsibility of making a commitment to a cause that would take him away from his art making and his teaching created anxieties for him. 38 Terry Dintenfass, his dealer, later recalled that Lawrence had been suffering psychologically because of the demands that his involvement with the civil rights movement made on him. One day, when Mrs. Arthur B. Spingarn, wife of the lawyer and NAACP president, dropped by the Terry Dintenfass Gallery to see an exhibition, she was moved to ask Dintenfass about Lawrence’s health. Fig 182   The Family, 1964. Egg tempera on hardboard, 24 x 20 in.

(61 x 50.8 cm). Private collection.

background hover two massive cloaked and masked figures; on the knobs of the chairbacks are tiny, rounded

Dintenfass’s account of that visit, as told to Paul Cummings, deserves to be quoted at length because of her frank description of Lawrence’s mental distress:

It was a civil rights exhibition [at the Terry Dintenfass Gallery]. It was really political. It was when the blacks turned “black” from being “Negro.” Everybody was very confused. I had Ray-

grimacing faces, like voudou charms. I asked Lawrence

mond Saunders who had been Negro one week and black the

about the small demonlike faces and whether they held a

next. Jake wasn’t comfortable being black, and his paintings

connection to voudou or Santeria, a folk religion prac-

were getting very tight. His doctor came into the gallery and

ticed in the Brooklyn community where the Lawrences

asked if Jake was all right. I said I thought he was all right but

lived. Lawrence seemed amused by the question and

not the greatest. The doctor said he thought Jake was getting

chuckled that perhaps they were part of his “racial mem-

uptight again and couldn’t I arrange to have him sent some-

ory.” When pressed, he became serious and stated that

where. I said there’s no money. Just after the doctor left this

the picture related to the way he felt then; he used the demons as a “symbol” of his own subjective response to “hard times.” “They represent emotional intensity, hate. We are surrounded by it.”36 Yet the soaring plant stems with their bright green leaves and large red flower grow-

old, old lady [Mrs. Spingarn] came in. . . . She sat down and asked, “How is Mr. Lawrence?” I said, “Well, he’s pretty good.” She said, “What do you mean ‘pretty good’? You know he’s been sick.” I said yes, I knew he was sick, but that he was fine. But it seemed that because of the whole situation, a great deal of weight was put on Jake be-

ing up from the large seeds placed in front at the bottom

cause they wanted him to be like the leader, and Jake is really

edge of the picture also symbolize Lawrence’s enduring

not a leader. He’s a painter. And he was very nervous about it.

optimism.

His doctor had been in, and . . . thought it would be a good

24 4  the paintings of the protest years

idea if we could send him away. She said, “Well, where would you send him?” I said, “Well, he wants to go to Nigeria.” She said, “Is he married?” . . . I said, “Yes, he is.” “Does he have children?” I said, “No.” “Well, how much does it cost to go to Nigeria?” I hadn’t the faintest idea. She was a bossy old lady. She said, “Go to the telephone and find out.” So I went to the phone, and it was $960 round trip. She said, “Oh.” And with that she got up and left. She didn’t buy anything. About an hour later a chauffeur came in with an envelope with $2,500 in it saying, “This is for Mr. Lawrence to go to Nigeria.” I almost dropped dead. I called up Jake, and he couldn’t believe it. He said he knew who she was, but he had never met her. I said he better quickly arrange it. 39

Lawrence had visited Nigeria for a week in late October and early November 1962, when the Mbari Artists and Writers Club, through the New York–based American Society of African Culture, had invited him there to accompany an exhibition of his work.40 For the tour Lawrence selected part of the Migration series, which was subsequently shown in both Lagos and Ibadan.41 His brief visit

Fig 183   Festival of the Images, Ilobu, in Ulli Beier, Art in Nigeria,

1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960). Courtesy Cambridge University Press.

opened his eyes to the visual spectacle of Nigeria and its creative arts (Fig. 183). He returned to New York with the hope of planning a longer stay in Africa with his wife, and

States.43 The Cuban Missile Crisis in the fall of 1962 had

Mrs. Spingarn’s largesse now made that possible. They

increased cold war tensions, and travel abroad was se-

left for an eight-month sojourn, from April to November

verely re­stricted.

of 1964.

After the Lawrences finally did set themselves up in Lagos, however, they found the Nigerians to be gracious

escape to nigeria

hosts. Ulli Beier, a leading German scholar whose book Art in Nigeria, 1960 must have been known to the Law-

The U.S. State Department did not sponsor Lawrence and

rences, introduced them to other artists and offered them

Knight’s trip. The couple paid their own travel and living

the use of his house in Oshegbe.44 In Lagos, Lawrence

expenses. In fact, the U.S. government made both the trip

gave informal weekly workshops to young Nigerian artists

to Africa and their stay there difficult for them. Knight was

at the center of the American Society of African Culture.45

denied a U.S. visa, but because she was born in Barbados,

After their successful exhibition at the Mbari Club in La-

a British protectorate, she was able to obtain a British

gos, the U.S. government, in a flip-flop typical of the cold

passport. Knight recounts that when they got to Lagos in

war period, encouraged the Lawrences to exhibit their

April 1964 they were “black-listed upon arrival, unable to

work at the State Department’s auditorium.46 They ac-

secure housing, and under constant surveillance” by

cepted the offer, and their paintings were also sent to

American government officials.42 Although the Lawrences

Ibadan under State Department sponsorship.

did not realize it then, the reason for the hostile responses of the U.S. officials hinged on the fact that Lawrence 

Lawrence produced at least eight tempera paintings and five drawings in Nigeria in 1964. One of these paint-

had an FBI file, which documented his former affiliations 

ings, Antiquities (1964, James E. Lewis Museum of Art,

with organizations considered subversive to the United

Morgan State University), repeats the motif of skulls

the paintings of the protest years  245

Fig 184   Street to Mbari, 1964. Tempera, gouache, and graphite on paper, 221⁄4 x 307⁄8 in. (56.5 x 78.4 cm). National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. James T. Dyke. Image courtesy of the Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

frequently found in his earlier paintings. It shows a tur-

focuses on women in the marketplace selling commodities

baned market woman presenting a tray of small African

rather than on male socializing.

deities, amulets, and skulls. However, the majority of the Nigerian paintings, such as Street to Mbari (Fig. 184), Meat Market, Four Sheep, and Roosters, emphasize an overall scene filled with people and objects typical of African marketplaces: vendors, shoppers, children, tables, foodstuffs, skulls, chickens, sheep, flies, roosters, statuettes,

return to the united states: the role of the artist in the freedom struggle

bolts of fabric, and the corrugated iron roofs of the street

In late 1964 the Lawrences returned to the United States,

stalls—all organized into colorful patterns of repetitive

to the intense reality of the unfolding civil rights drama.

forms. When asked in 1995 whether the patterns were

While they were in Africa, riots had erupted in Harlem,

inspired by African textiles, Lawrence replied that he had

Rochester, Jersey City, Paterson, Elizabeth, Philadelphia,

always been conscious of patterns in his Harlem com-

and the Chicago suburb of Dixmoor, and riots continued

munity, from his earliest memories.47 His Nigerian street

to erupt after their return. In fact, it is not clear whether

scenes differ from his Harlem scenes, however, in that he

Menagerie (1964, Fig. 185) was completed before Law-

246  the paintings of the protest years

Fig 185   Menagerie, 1964. Watercolor and gouache on paper, 21 1 ⁄2 x 301⁄4 in. (54.6 x 76.8 cm). Private collection. Image courtesy DC Moore

Gallery, New York.

rence left Africa or when he returned to the United States.

they are also symbolic reminders of the nightmarish ­riots

Two policemen lean down to sort out a pack of chickens;

that occurred during the Lawrences’ absence in Africa.

behind them are cages holding strange animals. One of-

The male figure in Dreams grits his teeth as he attempts

ficer holds a long-tailed creature with a red head and

to get some respite, but sleep cannot banish the small

horns. Floating to the right are disembodied grimacing

reminders of hate and bigotry that surround him. This

faces looking down at a snake that slithers along the bot-

­image is far removed from the cozy End of the Day (see

tom edge. Lawrence’s message seems ambiguous: are

Fig. 139), with its couple lying in bed and leisurely reading

the police maintaining authority or imposing their own

the newspapers, which Lawrence painted when he came

chaos?

home from the war to Gwendolyn Knight.

As if the interlude in Africa had never happened, Law-

In the few weeks before the couple moved, in early

rence painted Dreams No. 1 (1965, Fig. 186), which in its

1965, to the Boston area, where Lawrence would begin

iconographic and emotional intensity recalls The Family

his appointment as a visiting artist at Brandeis Univer-

(Fig. 182). A couple lies sleeping on a brass bed, on the

sity, Lawrence began a series of large ink drawings, called

rails of which hang small amulets of spirit forms and

Struggle, on the subject of violent confrontations of pro-

­devils. Visually these are related to voudou objects, but

testers with the police.48 Executed in black and white with the paintings of the protest years  247

Fig 186   Dreams No. 1, 1965. Gouache on paper, 31 x 221 ⁄2 in. (78.7 x 57.2 cm). New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut, Charles F. Smith Fund, 1989.03. Photo: E. Irving Blomstrann.

Fig 187   Struggle III—Assassination, 1965. Brush

and ink and gouache on paper, 22 x 301 ⁄2 in. (55.9 x 77.5 cm). DC Moore Gallery, New York. Image courtesy DC Moore Gallery, New York.

touches of red, the drawings purposely obscure the racial

ment to attend to inequities and injustices at home.

identities of both the civilians and the police. Lawrence’s

Protest Rally (ca. 1965, Colby College Museum of Art),

drawings were timely, for violence continued to mark na-

which depicts a student holding up his arms in a gesture

tional events. Struggle III—Assassination (Fig. 187) also

of solidarity before a crowd of other students, thus reso-

may have referred to the assassination of Malcolm X on

nates with both the civil rights and the antiwar move-

February 21, 1965, when the Lawrences were just leaving

ments, of which Lawrence would have been aware on the

the New York area. They arrived at Brandeis in March

campus of Brandeis. In his drawing Confrontation (1965,

1965, the month of the famous march from Selma to

Fig. 188), Lawrence shows the police moving in to block

Montgomery, which had its own standoffs between police

the students. At the end of the spring 1965 semester, after

and marchers. By making these drawings Lawrence was

Lawrence wrapped up his responsibilities at Brandeis, the

controlling his emotional responses to horrific events.

couple moved back to New York—this time to 211 West

During 1965 the antiwar movement gained momentum.

106th Street in Manhattan.50

Already in 1964 the War Resisters League had held a

In July 1966 Time magazine commissioned Lawrence

demonstration to protest U.S. military involvement in

to paint a portrait of Stokely Carmichael, then the chair-

Southeast Asia. Many New York artists friendly to Law-

man of SNCC, for a cover.51 Carmichael had been in the

rence had formed a group called Artists and Writers Pro-

news since his role as a leader in the June 1966 “March

test against the War in Vietnam.49 It was clear that the

against Fear.” It had begun on June 5 as a much-­publicized

Vietnam War was escalating. Although Lyndon B. ­Johnson

solo march by James Meredith, the man who had inte-

had won the presidential election in 1964 in part be-

grated the University of Mississippi. Meredith wanted to

cause a large segment of the citizenry rejected the “bomb

call attention to continuing segregation problems, but only

­Hanoi” rhetoric of Republican candidate Barry Gold­

thirty miles out of Memphis he was shot and wounded by

water, Johnson himself was secretly planning just such

a sniper. This event galvanized Carmichael and others to

an offensive.

finish the march. That July, at a CORE convention in Bal-

The goals of the antiwar and the civil rights move-

timore, Carmichael gave the keynote speech, in which,

ments began to merge; both movements wanted govern-

according to a Time report, he “launched an attack on

the paintings of the protest years  249

fig 188   Confrontation, 1965. Brush and ink on paper, 24 x 171 ⁄2 in. (61 x 44.5 cm). Private collection. Image courtesy DC Moore Gallery,

New York. Fig 189   Portrait of Stokely Carmichael, 1967. Casein tempera, gouache, and brush and ink on paper, 223⁄8 x 141 ⁄2 in. (56.8 x 36.8 cm).

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. NPG.91.145.

just about everyone.” The Time reporters were repelled

Lawrence accepted the commission and traveled to

by Carmichael’s “Black Power” rhetoric and the direction

Atlanta, where he stayed several days making study

in which the civil rights movement seemed to be headed.

drawings of the SNCC leader. Lawrence later recalled that

Time quoted Carmichael: “This is not a movement being

Carmichael was “fiery, very active, and very much in

run by the liberal white establishment or by Uncle Toms.

command.”53 The portrait (Fig. 189) shows Carmichael

What you have been doing all the time is letting them

dressed in denim overalls and a work shirt, the garb he

define how we are going to fight. The extremists in this

wore when traveling in the back country of Lowndes

country are not us. They are the ones who forced the

County to persuade African Americans to register to vote.

Negroes to live in the conditions they are now in.” The

Heavy-lidded and focused, Lawrence’s Carmichael ges-

convention, according to Time, passed a resolution urging

ticulates with his hand as he speaks. Around his shoulder

that “black power replace assimilation and moral suasion

comes a panther, the symbol of the Lowndes County

as the dominant philosophy, theme and method of the

Freedom Organization in Alabama and later the symbol

movement.”52 After Carmichael’s election as chair of

of the Black Panther Party.54 Lawrence portrayed his

SNCC, the organization dropped white staff and volun-

subject in the way Carmichael wanted to be seen—as a

teers from its membership.

man of the people.

250  the paintings of the protest years

Events of the later years of Lyndon Johnson’s presi-

ratism and black nationalism, but Lawrence believed that

dency—​the formation of the Black Panthers in late 1966,

the black experience was inseparable from the American

student protests against the war in Vietnam, the urban

experience.58 When questioned in 1968 by Carroll Greene

riots of 1966 and 1967, the assassination of Martin Luther

about his stand on these issues, Lawrence replied: “I like

King Jr. in 1968, and the demonstrations and arrests at

to think I’ve expanded my interest to include not just the

the 1968 Democratic Party convention—kept up the pres-

Negro theme but man generally and maybe if this speaks

sure on Lawrence and other artists of social conscience.

through the Negro I think this is valid also. . . . I would

Urban blacks demanded that colleges and universities

like to think of it as dealing with all people, the struggle

incorporate black studies programs into their curricula.

of man to always better his condition and to move for-

Artists and art students edged toward militancy, and

ward. . . . I think all people aspire, all people strive toward

books and articles appeared championing the new, mili-

a better human condition, a better mental condition

tant black consciousness and the Black Power movement.

generally.”59

Addison Gayle Jr., in his introduction to an ­anthology of

When Lawrence participated on a panel of black

essays entitled The Black Aesthetic (1971), de­clared: “The

­artists—​also including Romare Bearden, Sam Gilliam Jr.,

serious black artist of today is at war with the American

Richard Hunt, Tom Lloyd, William T. Williams, and Hale

society as few have been throughout history.”55 The Black

Woodruff—at a symposium held at the Metropolitan Mu-

Power movement was consolidating itself.

seum of Art preceding the Harlem on My Mind exhibition

Lawrence has recalled that the black students at Pratt

in 1969, he reiterated his beliefs that the struggles of Af-

Institute, where he returned to teach after his visit to

rican Americans had a universal significance. Lloyd,

Brandeis, often displayed antagonistic and ambivalent

younger than the other artists and also a member of the

feelings toward him. Lawrence was black, but as a teacher

Black Emergency Cultural Coalition, argued that black

he represented tradition and authority. In a 1982 inter-

artists should create a “black art.” Lawrence, with the

view Lawrence elaborated:

concurrence of the other artists, argued that there is no “black art”—only “art,” although artists may be black. As

That was the time when all the black students would sit to-

to his support for the civil rights movement, he said: “I

gether in the cafeteria. If you didn’t sit with these students,

think you can relate in any number of ways, and the indi-

you were criticized, and if you did sit with the students, the

vidual artist has to solve it in his own way. He may par-

attitude was “What are you doing here?” I had those kinds of

ticipate through the content of his work, or by donating

problems, but they didn’t bother me too much.

[to civil rights fundraising efforts] a piece that has no

Of course, I was a black but I was also in a position of authority, and those students were striking out in all directions. If you were seen as part of the Establishment, they didn’t realize that your struggle had been as great as theirs. What I found is that you could accept the health of this rebellion in-

specifically relevant content. I know that we all relate to the civil rights movement, and we all make contributions. We give because we want to give. It’s an obvious way of helping, not a spiritual one, but it’s a way that has an im-

tellectually, but emotionally you couldn’t. You’d want to tell

mediate, definite benefit.”60 Lawrence did not adopt the

these people, “Look, I’ve been through some things, too, and

stridency of the young radicals, but he did produce pic-

so have the people before my generation, and they’re the ones

tures that captured the violence inherent in the struggle

who made it possible for you to have this kind of

protest.”56

for racial equality. Wounded Man (1968, Fig. 190) represents both the ef-

In a 1995 interview Lawrence added that he knew at the

fects of violence and a determination to stay the course.

time that black students were “very angry about our so-

A well-built young black man, partially obscured by the

ciety” and that he felt other black and white academics

wooden boards of a building, stands defiantly. Blood

were not sufficiently sensitive to black students’ desire to

spurts from a chest wound, recalling the wounding of

address issues of race and not just master the techniques

Christ by the centurion’s spear at Calvary. The tenseness

of art making.57

of his hands and his facial expression alert us to his re-

Many of the young, black art students advocated sepa-

sistance and resolve to continue fighting. When composthe paintings of the protest years  251

Fig 190  Wounded Man, 1968. Gouache on paper, 291 ⁄2 x 22 in. (74.9 x 55.9 cm). The Walter O. Evans Collection of African American Art.  FIG 191  Cover for Freedomways (winter 1969). Courtesy School of Theology Library, Boston University. Lawrence’s drawing is based  on his painting Wounded Man (Fig. 190).

ing the image in 1968, Lawrence may have recalled the

Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,

1919 poem by Claude McKay, “If We Must Die”:

Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!61

If we must die, let it not be like hogs Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, Making their mock at our accursèd lot. If we must die, O let us nobly die, So that our precious blood may not be shed In vain; then even the monsters we defy

In his youth Lawrence had admired McKay, and he would have known that McKay had intended his poem to speak about all oppressed people.62 Lawrence’s wounded man image became an iconic symbol that he used again when asked to do the winter 1969 cover for Freedomways (Fig. 191), a journal of opinion for the civil rights movement

Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!

that vigorously promoted integration rather than black

O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!

nationalism.

Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,

The image of “mad and hungry dogs” in McKay’s poem

And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!

and in Lawrence’s 1963 painting American Revolution

What though before us lies the open grave?

continued to function as a powerful symbol to depict rac-

252  the paintings of the protest years

Fig 192   Confrontation at the Bridge, 1975. Gouache on paper, 221 ⁄2 x 301⁄4 in. (57.2 x 76.8 cm). Commissioned by Transworld Art, New York, for portfolio of silkscreen prints. Private collection.

ists’ barbarism. The motif appears again in Lawrence’s

“The Role of the Artist in the Freedom Struggle.”64 Rustin

1975 print Confrontation at the Bridge (Fig. 192), which

made it clear that the racialized concept of a “black art”

takes as its subject the 1955 civil rights march from

did a “disservice to the artistic process”: “The black art-

Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery, the state capital.63 The

ist, whether or not he considers himself as such, is an

marchers were repeatedly stopped by the Selma police

essential member and a most important member of the

at the Edmond Pettus Bridge just outside Selma. In Con­

freedom struggle. In saying this, I do not want to imply

frontation the dog and menacing background shapes

that the Negro artist should resemble in any way the so-

threaten the crowd of people on the bridge. The people,

cial artist. The very concept of a social artist, an artist

symbols of persistence and endurance, do not falter; they

whose objective is to sell a cause or to sell a political

seem to heed the refrain of the song “We Shall

party or even to sell Negroes, is a vulgarity and would be

Overcome.”

a misunderstanding of the nature of art and of the Negro

In the summer of 1970 the NAACP awarded Lawrence

struggle.” Rustin’s point was that Lawrence differed from

the Spingarn Medal at a ceremony in Cincinnati. Bayard

the “social artist” who made “protest art” as propagan-

Rustin, in presenting the award, delivered the address,

da.65 To Rustin, Lawrence had placed himself inside the the paintings of the protest years  253

struggle through his creative acts: “What we have, there-

York, such as Brooklyn Stoop (1967, frontispiece), which

fore, is that the black artist is a part of the very struggle

shows a black child and a white child playing with a single

for justice and freedom by the fact that he paints or cre-

blue-faced doll. Unlike the children in his 1957 Playroom,

ates a poem because, by so doing, he is expressing the

the girls are outdoors. Their doll is neither black nor

imaginative creativity and creation, and every time our

white; its race is indeterminate. And Lawrence has

recipient tonight paints a great picture, he automatically

painted the doll’s eyes in such as way as to suggest that

adorns the struggle.” Rustin compared Lawrence’s art to

the doll could be looking at either of them. Even in times

other great art in its tendency to “create a consciousness

of street violence and social upheaval, Lawrence could be

amongst men” and concluded: “The black artist’s role is

an optimist. His scenes of black and white builders work-

to reveal to all the human core of the human experience

ing together and children playing together are potent

as seen through the black experience. It is because Jacob

symbols of integration and a hope for the future.

Lawrence, with his beautiful canvases, has done precisely that, that we honor him.” Lawrence responded to Rustin’s words by acknowledging that any “degree of success as a creative artist” he had achieved was “mainly due to that black experience

coda: the hiroshima paintings Lawrence took the opportunity to transcend racial and

which is our heritage—an experience which gives inspira-

national consciousness in the eight tempera and gouache

tion, motivation, and stimulation.” Lawrence consistently

paintings he designed in 1983 for the reissue of John

and repeatedly expressed these thoughts over the follow-

Hersey’s Hiroshima. When Sidney Shiff, owner of the

ing decades. He never forgot the “encouragement which

Limited Editions Club, New York, commissioned him to

came from the black community”—to convert the black

choose any book he wanted for a deluxe hand-crafted

experience into the human experience and in so doing to

edition, Lawrence chose Hersey’s gripping narrative of the

create a consciousness of all people’s struggles for a bet-

atomic bombing of Hiroshima, first published in the New

ter life.66

Yorker on August 31, 1946, and then published as a book.

Later, Lawrence insisted that his pictures were not

In this series the artist attempted not to illustrate Hersey’s

“protest paintings.” In doing so, he might seem to have

account but rather to evoke the horror in metaphoric vi-

retreated from his 1963 statement to the Chicago De­

sual terms.

fender that “it would be valid to call me a social protest

Hersey’s narrative follows the lives of six people, includ-

painter.” However, like Alain Locke, he considered propa-

ing a German Catholic priest and a Japanese Methodist

ganda to be one-sided and felt that the label of “social

minister, from the hours before the bomb exploded on

protest painter” would subvert his determination to use

August 6, 1945, to the moment of the blinding blast at

“the Negro symbol” to represent the Everyman who

8:15 a.m., through the following hours, then days. The

struggles for freedom. When President Jimmy Carter in-

most able of the six struggled to help their neighbors;

vited Lawrence to the White House in 1980 to honor him

those too wounded endured their agonies as best they

for painting pictures that protested racism, he declined,

could. Hersey weaves together the subjective impressions

telling a Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter: “I never use

of all six with the raw physical facts, such as the location

the term ‘protest’ in connection with my paintings. They

of the epicenter, statistics of the human toll, and medical

just deal with the social scene.  .  .  . They’re how I feel

descriptions of the progress of radiation sickness. We are

about things.”67 Lawrence, by his own assessment, was

told about the “noiseless flash”:

beyond protest. Indeed, throughout the years of protest Lawrence painted many pictures that did not treat protest at all:

There was no sound of planes. The morning was still; the place was cool and pleasant.

pictures of people studying in libraries, socializing in pool

Then a tremendous flash of light cut across the sky. Mr.

halls, and hanging out on the streets and stoops of New

Tanimoto [the Methodist minister] has a distinct recollection

254  the paintings of the protest years

that it traveled from east to west, from the city toward the

After reading John Hersey’s powerful and very moving book

hills. It seemed a sheet of sun. Both he and Mr. Matsuo [his

“hiro s him a” in preparation for these illustrations, I went into a

friend] reacted in terror—and both had time to react (for they

mental retreat. Because this book is such a strong statement

were 3,500 yards, or two miles, from the center of the explo-

of man’s inhumanity to man, I found this work to be a most

sion). . . . Mr. Tanimoto took four or five steps and threw him-

challenging book to illustrate. In my attempt to meet the chal-

self between two big rocks in the garden. . . . He felt a sudden

lenge, I read and reread this work several times and, in doing

pressure, and then splinters and pieces of board and frag-

so, I began to see great devastation in the twisted and muti-

ments of tile fell on him. He heard no roar.68

lated bodies of humans, birds, fishes and all of the other ani-

Hersey tells us of the fires that raged throughout the

fauna and the land that was at one time alive, was now seared,

city, started primarily from flammable material falling as

mangled, deformed and devoid of life. And I thought, what

debris on cooking stoves, and about the surviving popula-

have we accomplished over these many centuries? We have

tion who took refuge in the parks and along the rivers. A

produced great geniuses in music, the sciences, the arts,

mals and living things that inherit our earth. The flora and the

few passages give the flavor of Hersey’s account—the stoicism, the heroism, and the pathos:

dance, literature, architecture and oratory among many other disciplines. And we have in the meantime, developed the means to destroy in a most horrible manner, that life that is

To Father Kleinsorge, an Occidental, the silence in the grove

our god given right.

by the river, where hundreds of gruesomely wounded suffered together, was one of the most dreadful and awesome phenom-

Lawrence ends: “I do hope that these illustrations have

ena of his whole experience. The hurt ones were quiet; no one

done full justice to John Hersey’s poignant statement.”72

wept, much less screamed in pain; no one complained; none

Lawrence was not the first artist to paint the atomic

of the many who died did so noisily; not even the children cried;

blasts. In Chapter 7 I discussed Philip Evergood’s Renun­

very few people even spoke. And when Father Kleinsorge gave

ciation, a realist painting that relies on symbolic forms to

water to some whose faces had been almost blotted out by

project its message. I also mentioned Ralston Crawford,

flash burns, they took their share and then raised themselves

another Downtown Gallery artist, who was commissioned

a little and bowed to him, in thanks.69

by Fortune to travel to the test site at Bikini Atoll in 1946

Mr. Tanimoto, who had commandeered a boat, tried to ferry people stranded in the tidal estuaries of Hiroshima to higher ground:

and translate what he had witnessed into paintings. In December 1946 the Downtown Gallery mounted Ralston Crawford: Paintings of Operation Crossroads at Bikini, an exhibition that Lawrence no doubt saw, since he and

He reached down and took a woman by the hands, but her skin slipped off in huge, glove-like pieces. He was so sickened by this that he had to sit down for a moment. Then he got out into the water and, though a small man, lifted several of the men and women, who were naked, into his boat. Their backs

Gwen always attended the openings of Downtown Gallery artists. When the December 1946 issue of Fortune reproduced two of Crawford’s paintings, the text accompanying Test Able (Fig. 193) quoted Crawford: “My forms and colors are not direct transcription; they refer in paint

and breasts were clammy, and he remembered uneasily what

symbols to the blinding light of the blast, to its colors,

the great burns he had seen during the day had been like: yel-

and to its devastating character as I experienced them

low at first, then red and swollen, with the skin sloughed off,

in Bikini Lagoon.”73 Crawford’s forms suggest things com­

and finally, in the evening, suppurated and

smelly.70

ing apart and flying through the air by combining jagged edges with smoothly straight and curved contours—­

Heroism merges with horror in Hersey’s relentlessly pite-

characteristics Lawrence might have recalled when he

ous account.71

began his own panels.

After Lawrence submitted the eight paintings to Shiff,

Lawrence, however, in respecting the narrative of Her­

he wrote a statement, dated September 6, 1983, that de-

sey’s book, represented the effects of the first blast (at Hi­ro­

serves to be quoted in full:

­shima) on the thousands of civilians who were unwilling

the paintings of the protest years  255

Fig 193   Ralston Crawford, Test Able, 1946. Oil on canvas, 23 5⁄8

x 175⁄8 in. (60 x 44.8 cm). Georgia Museum of Art, The University of Georgia, Eva Underhill Holbrook Collection of American Art, Gift of Alfred H. Holbrook. This image was reproduced in Fortune (December 1946).

victims of the devastation. His panels (Pennsylvania Acad-

The colors Lawrence chooses are blasted primaries: the

emy of the Fine Arts) evoke both the horrors graphically

pink is the blinding flash on red; the yellow, an eerie glow;

detailed by Hersey and the quietude suggested in those

the blue, a chalky cobalt. Brown and black representing

passages portraying the community’s shared trauma.74

trees and the earth give accent to the other colors. The

Lawrence’s faces are skulls—white in front with red, pink,

forms have no neat edges—like “skin sloughed off.” Indeed,

or brown eye sockets and red at the base: “faces . . . almost

the savagely ripped shapes jerk our eyes about—as if we

blotted out by flash burns.” The scenes suggest the mo-

were viewing a war zone through the lens of a hand-held

ment when the noiseless flash occurred: the figures in

movie camera from a fast-moving jeep. Lawrence’s flat

Farmers look up to see the sky, arrested in their work as

collage aesthetic is perhaps the most appropriate style

Mr. Tanimoto was. The chaos Mr. Tanimoto and others

for conveying the enormity of the cataclysm, the universal-

experienced occurs in Market (Fig. 194) and Street Scene,

ity of suffering, and pathos without sentimentality.

where large pieces of building debris fly through the air

With this series Lawrence revealed his engaged human-

past people’s heads. The stoicism of the figures in People

ism—his sensibility that understands art not as Ma­tisse’s

in the Park (Fig. 195) suggests the image Father Kleinsorge

“good armchair,” which comforts the weary, but as a ter-

describes where “no one wept, much less screamed in

rible beauty with transformative powers to awaken us to

pain.”

our humanity.

256  the paintings of the protest years

Fig 194   Hiroshima: Market, 1983. Tempera and gouache on paper, 23 x 171 ⁄2 in. (58.4 x 44.5 cm). Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Alexander Harrison Fund. Fig 195   Hiroshima: People in the Park, 1983. Tempera and gouache on paper, 23 x 171 ⁄2 in. (58.4 x 44.5 cm). Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Alexander Harrison Fund.

epilogue Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.

charlie parker, 1949

move to seattle

and colleague in the art department. One of his graduate painting students, Allan Kollar, recently recalled Lawrence

In the last three decades of Jacob Lawrence’s life, he and

as “a soft spoken man, who was fully engaged with the

Gwendolyn Knight made their home in Seattle, Washing-

individual he was communicating with.  .  .  . He never

ton. They often spoke about going back to New York when

turned away students who sought his guidance.”4 After

they retired, but they returned only on brief trips to visit

retirement he devoted himself full time to his art in the

friends and see exhibitions.1

quiet of his attic studio in suburban Seattle (Fig. 196).

They had been lured to the West in September 1969 by

Seattle provided the Lawrences with a fresh start, and

a teaching job at California State College in Hayward. 2

civic leaders and museum directors quickly drew him into

Knight and Lawrence moved to Berkeley, and Lawrence

the local art scene. He received commissions from the

took up his duties as a visiting artist for two academic

Washington State Capitol Museum for five paintings on

quarters. In March they moved on to Seattle, where Law-

the life of George Washington Bush (1973) and from the

rence held another visiting artist appointment at the Uni-

Seattle Art Commission for a poster design for Bumber-

versity of Washington for the spring quarter. That sum-

shoot, an annual arts festival, in 1976.5 In 1978 he com-

mer, when they were back in New York, the university

pleted a mural commission, Games, for the Kingdome

offered him a full-time appointment as full professor, but

Stadium in Seattle.

he stayed on at Pratt Institute.3 In 1971 Lawrence finally

Seattle liberated the Lawrences from the frantic pace

accepted the offer from the University of Washington,

of the New York art world and gave them more time for

and the couple moved to Seattle, where he taught until

themselves. When Lawrence lived in New York he con-

his retirement in 1983. He became an admired teacher

stantly received requests to contribute or lend his name

259

Fig 196   Mary Randlett, Jacob Lawrence on

the Stairs to His Attic Studio, Seattle, 1983(?). © Mary Randlett, University of Washington Libraries.

to charitable institutions, progressive organizations, and 6

certain kind of growth, a certain kind of development.”8

radical groups. While he maintained cordial relationships

Indeed, Lawrence’s works in Seattle, with the exception

with many contemporary New York black artists, he was

of the powerful Hiroshima series, lost some of their edge.

not part of the groups that formed in the black artistic

They became more subdued in color, as he explained to

community during the 1960s. When Romare Bearden,

the Seattle reporter Bonnie Hoppin: “I think the greyness

Hale Woodruff, Merton Simpson, Norman Lewis, Emma

[of the Seattle area] has been a great influence. . . . Prior

Ames, and others formed the group Spiral in 1963, they

to my coming here, I didn’t grey my colors. Out here, you

did not include Lawrence or Knight. One of Spiral’s goals

can’t help but grey color to get it more atmospheric. . . .

was to increase exhibition opportunities for its members,

It’s not grey color; it’s the greying of color.”9 Lawrence’s

many of whom were still struggling for national recogni-

works also became more decorative, with none of the

tion, while Lawrence had already achieved success in the

­demon faces and prickly forms of his works from the

art world. They made him aware that they did not need

1960s.

him for their group.7 When the Studio Museum in Harlem

That the couple’s lifestyle differed in Seattle is evident

was founded in 1968, it was Bearden, not Lawrence, who

in the photographs of the two of them captured by Mary

was involved. Perhaps most important, teaching at both

Randlett in the mid-1980s. Unlike the studio photographs

Pratt Institute and the Art Students’ League was draining.

by Irving Penn and Arnold Newman taken in the late

It is not surprising that Lawrence responded positively

1940s, in which Knight and Lawrence are dramatically

when universities outside New York asked him to teach.

presented as an art world celebrity couple, Randlett

During an interview with the literary historian Henry

shows them relaxed outdoors, in a park near their home

Louis Gates Jr., Lawrence acknowledged differences be-

(Fig. 197). As in many photographs of the couple, the

tween living in the West and in the East: “You have all of

camera focuses primarily on Lawrence, and he recipro-

the tensions and all of the negative factors and problems

cates by looking back. Gwen is seated next to him and

in the East but I wouldn’t give up that experience and in

looks off into the distance, but she projects a strong, in-

the West it’s so easy to live but I guess it can prevent a

dependent presence.

260  epilogue

Fig 197  Mary Randlett, Gwendolyn Knight and Jacob Lawrence in Seattle, mid-1980s. © Mary Randlett, University of Washington Libraries.

gwendolyn knight

listened to the older artists around us and then we would talk

As they had been from the very beginning of their relation-

amongst ourselves and she was one of the people who in-

ship, Lawrence and Knight were close companions in the

spired me in those early days and has continued to inspire me

Seattle years. She was with him everywhere—in photo

as an artist and as a thinker. Those things are very important

shoots, traveling to exhibition openings and to universi-

and have become even more important because you realize

ties to accept honorary degrees, and abroad. As a young couple they had talked and encouraged each other, and she had helped him prepare his gessoed panels and select captions for his works. To an interviewer in 1987 Law-

it’s fate that certain things come together and certain people come together and it’s a very learning and a very rewarding experience . . . and a very stimulating experience for me. [.  .  .] Before our marriage, we worked in the same studio together . . . it’s been a collaboration . . . I don’t know what

rence emphasized her importance to him from their early

you’d call it . . . a very abstract kind of relationship as well as

Harlem days:

a physical relationship [.  .  .] but then she always also gave another kind of experience, that’s difficult to verbalize . . . the

Gwen came into my life in about 1934 and with the passage of

putting together of the panels was physical . . . but the criti-

time, I realized how important this meeting was. We had many

cism, the comments, and the talk about the series was maybe

artists in the Harlem community [. . .] she was one in my age

even more important . . . and this is what she gave me. And

group and we stimulated each other, we talked about art and

that series [The Migration of the Negro], I guess, came into

Gwen was always [. . .] very productive and curious . . . We

being because of her stimulation as well as mine. 10

epilogue  261

Asked by a Seattle Times reporter about her marriage,

printmaking. In 1976 the Seattle Art Museum gave her a

Knight replied that she and Lawrence were always mutu-

solo exhibition, and she began to submit paintings to

ally supportive. There was “a meeting ground because we

group exhibitions.14 When the Lawrences moved to Hori-

talk about the art scene. Our life together has been about

zon House, an assisted living facility in downtown Seattle

11

looking at art. We have this in common.” They also liked

in December 1995, they took three adjoining apartments:

reading and seeing friends together. They usually both

the middle apartment was their joint living space, and the

painted at home, but in the later Seattle years Knight

two bracketing apartments provided studio space for

rented her own studio space about a mile away.

each of them. They showed together in a two-person ex-

Knight was always a painter, even if at mid-career she

hibition at the Minneapolis Museum of Art in 1998. The

did not exhibit her work. She had spent two years at

Women’s Caucus for Art honored Knight in 1993. Three

Howard University studying art, and when she came to

years after Lawrence died, in 2003, she had a major ret-

New York she took classes with Augusta Savage. In the

rospective at the Tacoma Art Museum.

late 1930s she received recognition as an artist, showing

Lawrence encouraged her efforts and praised her art

with the Harlem Artists Guild artists and in exhibitions at

to an interviewer in 1987: “She’s a very lyrical painter,

the Harlem Community Art Center.12 After her marriage

very poetic, very romantic in her painting, entirely differ-

to Lawrence, during their years in New York, she painted

ent from me. She has a feel for color that is very lyrical

occasionally but did not push herself forward, as was not

and [has] a certain kind of rhythm. Her approach is feeling

untypical of women married to successful male artists.

out the canvas as she goes[,] for clothing [it] with color,

The artist Whitfield Lovell, who became friends with

with lines and form and light and dark. . . . I can appreciate

Knight after Lawrence died, had the impression “that

Gwen . . . because we are so different.”15

there was no lack of artistic talent, but Gwen probably did not work at her art career aggressively. She may have taken a supportive back seat position to Jake. . . . There were many obstacles inherent in being an artist. Gwen was not only black but she was also a woman. She 

lawrence’s privacy The artist Rudolf Baranik taught at both the Art Students’

happened to be married to a very successful artist, and

League and Pratt Institute along with Lawrence in the

so it might have been a challenge navigating through an

1960s. May Stevens, Baranik’s wife, later recalled Law-

already volatile art scene.”13 Many others share his as­

rence as “handsome, well dressed, gentle, amiable and

sessment.

quiet. But he was not easily knowable.” Stevens believes

Knight would be the first to admit that although she

that Baranik admired Lawrence because he was serious

liked to paint she did not have the single-minded focus of

and honorable and a unique and arresting artist. To Bara-

her husband. Other activities interested her, including

nik, it was enough to have such moral men and women in

dance, especially modern dance. When Lawrence taught

the world; they did not need to reveal their inner lives.16

at the children’s camp Wo-Chi-Ca in the summer of 1943,

Lawrence’s reserved manner protected his privacy; he

Knight directed a play in which the children participated,

would never reveal any personal animus. His anger was

and she painted the scenery as well. At Black Mountain,

the abstract anger against world injustices that he chan-

during Lawrence’s summer school teaching in 1946, she

neled into his art. He would not let outside worries disturb

set up informal dance lessons. When Lawrence was hos-

his psyche and perhaps trigger another nervous break-

pitalized in 1949, she took a job with Condé Nast and

down. He knew he was vulnerable, and he did not want to

worked there for about ten years. But when they lived in

lose control again. Staying above his anxieties was a way

Nigeria for eight months during 1964, she painted along-

to maintain his balance and to keep his mind free to focus

side him.

on his art. When the artist Jack Whitten confessed to Law-

Removed from the very social art world of New York,

rence that he felt close to a nervous breakdown because

Knight took herself more seriously and tried her hand at

of pressures on himself as an artist and a black man, Law-

262  epilogue

rence responded, “Keep your mind on the plastic”—that

Lawrence’s dealer in Seattle, Francine Seders, helped

is, concentrate on the formal structures of art.17

out, and Bridget Moore, his New York dealer, attended to

Lawrence protected himself by deflecting questions

the couple’s needs when they were back East.

that might penetrate the wall of his hard-won composure. Those of us who came to know him through our interviews respected that. Many questions I dared not ask.

professional life in seattle

Although I would attempt to approach sensitive issues

In the last twenty-five years of Lawrence’s life his paintings

through indirection, Lawrence seldom responded. When

became nationally known to a new generation. The Whit-

I asked him about incidents of racism he had experi-

ney Museum of American Art organized a traveling retro-

enced, he would say, “Oh, it wasn’t so bad,” or “You

spective exhibition of his work in 1974, and the Seattle Art

learned to live with it.” I would not press him further. I

Museum mounted an even larger traveling show in 1986. 21

was always conscious that I was of a different generation,

The book-length essay by Ellen Harkins Wheat for the

a different race, a different gender.

18

He was most relaxed sitting in a cocktail lounge, smok-

Seattle exhibition was the first definitive study of the artist. Two focused exhibitions traveled in the 1990s: the Hamp-

ing a cigarette, sipping a martini, and talking with Knight

ton University Museum’s Jacob Lawrence: The Frederick

and other people he trusted. At moments when no tape

Douglass and Harriet Tubman Series of 1938–40 (1992),

recorder was whirring away, when no probing questions

curated by Wheat, and the Phillips Collection’s Jacob

were being asked, when there was just friendly talk about

Lawrence: The Migration Series (1993), curated by Eliza-

world politics, national and regional news, or, at times, art

beth Hutton Turner. 22 Lawrence also had smaller solo

world gossip, he could let down his guard. On one such

exhibitions across the country. During the 1970s and

occasion he told me that as a young artist he had had to

1980s Terry Dintenfass continued to be his dealer in New

walk a fine line with some art world groups—for instance,

York, and Francine Seders represented him on the West

the communists who attempted to recruit him for their

Coast. In the 1990s Midtown Payson Gallery and then DC

meetings and the gay intellectuals and writers with whom

Moore Gallery represented him in New York. He increas-

he enjoyed talking and who admired him. He liked and

ingly garnered national honors, awards, and honorary

learned from both groups, but he felt he had to tread

degrees, including the National Medal of Arts from Presi-

carefully so as not to embarrass or offend either one. At

dent George H. W. Bush. 23

that point he would chuckle over his own shrewd maneu-

In Seattle he was involved in many printmaking

verings, inhale his cigarette, and sip the martini; Knight

­projects—​often supervising the printmakers who trans-

would give way to peals of laughter.19 She always actively

formed his older paintings into lithographs or silkscreen

contributed to the conversation and would provide the

prints. During these years he worked with master print-

words for him when he became tongue-tied or hesitant.

makers to produce over ninety screenprints and litho-

Lawrence never rejected anyone who helped him. They

graphs. Peter Nesbett, when working at the Francine

were all, to him, a part of his community; and when speak-

Seders Gallery, gathered information on the prints, and in

ing publicly, he would regularly recite all the groups who

1994 the gallery produced the first edition of the catalogue

had contributed to his education—the Garveyites, the

raisonné of Lawrence’s prints. 24 The following year the

church preachers, the communists, the Harlem intel­- 

Jacob Lawrence Catalogue Raisonné Project was set up

lec­tuals and artists. 20 Without hesitation he always cred­

as an independent organization, with Nesbett as director.

it­ed those who had guided and reached out to him along

He soon brought in Michelle DuBois as co-director. The

the way.

two of them worked full time on recording and photograph-

Toward the end of their lives, the Lawrences relied on their friends in Seattle, particularly Barbara Earl Thomas,

ing all of the artist’s paintings, drawings, and murals, with the active participation of Lawrence and Knight.

a talented young artist who had been Lawrence’s student,

In 2000, the year Lawrence died, the University of Wash­

to drive them to market and to doctors’ appointments.

ington Press published Nesbett and DuBois’s two-volume

epilogue  263

Fig 198   Cabinet Maker, 1957. Casein tempera on paper, 301 ⁄2 x 221 ⁄2 in. (77.5 x 57.2 cm). Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 1966. Photo: Lee Stalsworth.

Fig 199   Poster Design . . . Whitney Exhibition, 1974.

Gouache and tempera on paper, 301 ⁄16 x 221 ⁄4 in. (76.4 x 56.5 cm). Private collection. Image courtesy DC Moore Gallery, New York.

set: the catalogue raisonné and Over the Line, a book of

and admired Addison Bates, a dancer and cabinetmaker

essays by leading Lawrence scholars. To coincide with

who had mounted an exhibition of Lawrence’s work on

these publications, Elizabeth Hutton Turner of the Phillips

the walls of his apartment at 306. Like the figure in Cabi­

Collection mounted a traveling retrospective exhibition for

net Maker (Fig. 198), Bates was a large, muscular man. 26

which Over the Line served as the

catalogue. 25

The artist had always remained fond of him, and Bates undoubtedly was the inspiration for the painting. Lawrence marveled that carpentry tools seen in Italian Re-

the late builder scenes Lawrence never stopped painting street scenes of chil-

naissance paintings were still in use and saw “aesthetic beauty in how the tool emerges from the hand and how the hand itself is a beautiful tool.”27

dren playing, women shopping, and men strolling along

His 1974 painting Poster Design . . . Whitney Exhibition

and kibitzing, but increasingly, beginning in the 1970s,

(Fig. 199), created for the retrospective at the Whitney

carpenters and construction workers came to dominate

Museum of American Art, combines the nuclear family of

his street scenes. Carpentry tools and the people who

father, mother, boy, and girl with a racially integrated crew

used them had fascinated him since his youth. He knew

of three builders in the background. Although walking

epilogue  265

along the sidewalk, the family has access to the spaces

patterns created by workers, scaffolding, piles of lumber,

where new buildings are being erected, in contrast to The

and tools all made for vibrant and varied compositions.

Wall of 1941 (see Fig. 92), which symbolizes the impenetrable wall of segregation. Lawrence produced some twenty paintings of builders

Although Seattle was peaceful, with its lush gardens, rolling hills, lakes, harbors, gray skies, and Pacific Ocean, Lawrence yearned for the streets and tenements of his

and carpenters in the 1970s, four or five paintings in the

youth, the glare of neon lights, and the dense parade of

mid-1980s, occasional paintings in the early 1990s, and

humanity hurrying along crowded sidewalks. Indeed, when

twelve in 1998 alone, with numerous drawings in all three

he painted The Studio in 1994 (see the print version in Fig.

decades. In these pictures Lawrence stressed the harmo-

201), showing himself at work in the attic studio of his

nious racial integration of workers, a necessary ingredient

suburban Seattle house, he included a scene through the

for building strong communities; in Builders (1980, Fig.

window of colorful tenement houses. In describing the

200), even women participate as builders. To Lawrence,

picture for an exhibition at the Bellevue Art Museum, he

the work ethic commanded respect—not just because

commented: “The window in the back represents the New

work puts bread on the table but because it can be exhila-

York tenements where I grew up. When I look out the

rating and labor brings people of all races together. 28 The

window in my studio now, there is a blank wall. I decided

266  epilogue

Fig 200   Builders, 1980. Gouache on paper, 34 x 251 ⁄2

in. (86.4 x 64.8 cm). Private collection. Photo: The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation/Art Resource, NY. Fig 201  The Studio, 1996. Lithograph, 30 x 221⁄8 in. (76.2 x 56.2 cm). Private collection. Image cour-  tesy Francine Seders Gallery, Seattle. Photo: Spike Mafford. Fig 202  Schomburg Library, 1987. Lithograph, 26 x 20 in. (66 x 50.8 cm). Private collection. Image cour­tesy Francine Seders Gallery, Seattle. Photo: Spike Mafford.

to bring some of New York into it by introducing what I

pentry, to African Americans as the path for their

remembered of the city.” He told the conservator Elizabeth

economic advancement. W. E. B. Du Bois, on the other

Steele that he “liked the pattern and the design” of the

hand, had championed a liberal arts education and ac-

shapes.

29

Memories of Harlem still lingered—​of that place

where community meant emotional support.

cess to voting in order to advance integrated citizenship. To Lawrence, both the builders and the librarians were

In the last dozen or so years of his life, he not only did

necessary, as indicated by his text caption for one of his

paintings on the builder theme but also returned to ear-

1947 paintings: “Knowing the value of an industrial skill

lier themes, such as men playing games—pool, chess,

as well as an academic education the Negro, for many

and cards 30—and people in libraries (Fig. 202). Law-

years, has worked hard to obtain both.”

rence’s library pictures give pictorial form to intellectual

In the mid-1990s Lawrence discovered a new theme—

labor and recall a debate he had been familiar with since

the modern supermarket with aisles loaded with produce,

his youth, about whether African Americans should focus

canned goods, toys, flowers, meat and fish counters, and

on economic advancement or social and political integra-

people jostling toward the checkout counters (see Fig.

tion. Booker T. Washington, the founder of Tuskegee In-

170). Once he and Knight were retirees in the suburbs

stitute, had advocated teaching basic skills, such as car-

who had to rely on taxicabs or their friends to drive them

epilogue  267

to the markets, trips to the mall and the supermarket

excelling in a field where no one of your race, gender,

loomed large in their lives.

background etc. has been accepted and embraced.”32

our assessment of lawrence today

and inspiration for the African American community. I first saw his work in person at the Museum of Modern Art in

Artists continue to admire Lawrence both for his work and

casso. . . . This was very meaningful for me.”

More than that, however, Lawrence was “a source of pride

for his integrity as an artist. Floyd Coleman, former chair

galleries along with Clyfford Still’s, Jackson Pollock, Pi­ In 1996, when Lovell met Lawrence at the Skowhegan

of the art department at Howard University, has described

School for Painting and Sculpture in Maine, he was im-

how he first encountered reproductions of Lawrence’s

pressed with the older artist’s gentleness and genuine

work in 1956 as a student in a drawing class taught by

interest in the art of younger students:

Hayward L. Oubre, the chair of the art department at Alabama State College, Montgomery. It was fascinating to read about Lawrence, his achievements and to see how he dealt with the figure in his compositions. I knew of Henry Ossawa Tanner’s work since high school, but did not know of Lawrence’s work until I was at Alabama State. Oubre emphasized composition and design in beginning painting. Again, Lawrence’s work was so helpful to me to see how to use color, line, shape and principles of design—proportion, rhythm and balance to create compelling creative narratives. Lawrence’s work was also very instructive in that it revealed again and again how an artist could deal with issues such as Black migration, segregation, poverty, and police brutality without eclipsing artistic concerns. In a word, Lawrence’s prodigious work and art world recognition helped me, and no doubt many others, to believe that it was possible for a black artist to achieve a high measure of success in the art world in the United States.

I believe that Jake had to be incredibly strong to have made such a name for himself when he did. In fact it must have been a huge responsibility for all those who dared to be creative in the face of discrimination and oppression. Still there did not seem to be an ounce of bitterness in him. He seemed aware of his contribution and he desired to graciously pass the baton to the next generations of black artists. All that he did with his life helped those of us who came along after him. He followed his path and did not waver. He did not succumb to temptation to delve into the trends of the concurrent modernist movements of his time.

Passing on the baton is an apt metaphor for Lawrence’s role in the history of American art. Lawrence rarely did sports figures, but in 1949 he painted The Long Stretch (Fig. 203). In a split-second moment a black player reaches base, passing the umpire seconds before the opposing team’s infielder catches the

Coleman added: “Lawrence, at times, had severe emotional

ball. The stretch of the runner’s leg and the stretch of

problems. Nevertheless, he produced a large body of high

the infielder’s arm compete for a successful play, but the

quality work. What puts Lawrence in the forefront is his

black runner wins. The umpire’s prominently outstretched

high productivity and the consistent high quality of his work

hand declares the runner is safe. Lawrence allegedly was

from the time he was quite young until his death.”31

inspired by baseball player Jackie Robinson, who inte-

When I asked the artist Whitfield Lovell to comment on

grated major league baseball when hired by the Brooklyn

the ways Lawrence might have been an inspiration to him,

Dodgers in 1947. 33 It was a blow to Jim Crow segregation

he said that Lawrence exemplified an African American

that should have happened sooner. That same year Law-

who had succeeded as an artist: “Coming along as a young

rence painted another baseball painting, Strike (Howard

art student in the 1970’s there were very few role models

University Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), which repre-

for African Americans in Art. I would like to be able to say

sented a white batter, a black catcher, and an integrated

that I did not need an example of a successful black artist

crowd of baseball fans behind.

in order to persevere. At the time I did not think that was

Passing on the baton was the specific message of Law-

important at all. However, in retrospect I realize that no

rence’s Study for the Munich Olympic Games Poster (1971,

matter what one says, it is very difficult to imagine oneself

Fig. 204). Editions Olympia commissioned twenty-eight

268  epilogue

Fig 203   The Long Stretch, 1949. Egg tempera on hardboard, 20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 61 cm). Private collection. Image courtesy DC Moore Gallery, New York. Fig 204   Study for the Munich Olympic Games Poster, 1971. Gouache on paper, 351 ⁄2 x 27 in. (90.2 x 68.6 cm). Seattle Art Museum, PONCHO. Photo: Paul Macapia.

artists to create designs for a limited edition of screen-

The word struggle, so often used by the Left to sug-

prints.34 In this representation of black athletes, three relay

gest what is necessary to gain justice and freedom for all

runners appear to reach the finish line simultaneously,

groups, had a deep meaning for Lawrence and frequently

followed by two other runners. The winner gets to the finish

came up in his conversations. Consistently, it was the one

line only because other athletes carried the baton first. To

word that symbolized his views on art and life. He told a

Lawrence there was opportunity for many to excel; just to

Seattle Times reporter in 1998 that early in his career he

be in the race was sufficient reason to take pride in the

had to struggle because he wasn’t very skilled. “So, with

accomplishments of oneself and one’s community.

formal problems and other things, I had to work harder.

Like the West African griots who keep the histories of

So there was a tension in the works. Now I have more

their communities vivid to future generations through the

skill but I would hope that there still is some struggle.

oral retelling of events, Lawrence aimed to tell the story

When you don’t feel struggle, there is no passion. It’s true

of working people’s lives—their work, their struggles

in civil rights, and in art.”35 In a lecture in 1982 he said,

against oppression, their small pleasures, and their pri-

“Man’s struggle is a very beautiful thing. . . . The struggle

vate moments—as he had known and observed them

that we go through as human beings enables us to de-

through the decades. This remained the creative goal of

velop, to take on further dimension.”36 Indeed, for Law-

Jacob Lawrence and his contribution to both our history

rence, the experience of struggle was the key to life. He

and our art. That was the goal, and the moral lesson was

learned that in Harlem in the 1930s, it defined his mod-

“struggle.”

ernism, and it stayed with him all his life.

270  epilogue

acknowledgments

In my research and writing of this Jacob Lawrence book

I want to thank the office of the Dean of Arts and Sciences

my debts are many. First I want to thank Henry Louis Gates

at Boston University and Walter O. Evans and Barbara Earl

Jr. for his unflagging support and encouragement of my

Thomas of the Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Founda-

efforts to interpret African American art, from the time

tion. Jan and Warren Adelson, valued friends from long-

he arrived at Harvard University in September 1991 to take

time standing, unexpectedly and generously contributed

up the duties of teaching and directing the W. E. B. Du

to the production costs of printing so many of the Law-

Bois Institute for African and African American Research.

rence paintings in color.

During that academic year I was fortunate to be a fellow at the Institute, as I was again during 2006–7.

Many colleagues read all or parts of the manuscript in its various draft iterations and offered suggestions

Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Hu-

and constructive criticism. They include Richard Cour-

manities in 1995 and later, during 2005–6, from the

age, Roy Grundmann, Anita Patterson, Kymberly N.

Humanities Foundation of Boston University, the Gilder

Pinder, Kim Sichel, Maren Stange, May Stevens, Diane

Lehrman Institute of American History, the Smithsonian

Tepfer, Margaret Rose Vendyres, and Alan Wallach. I

American Art Museum, and the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

thank them all. Additional colleagues and friends who

Research Center provided me with funds to carry out my

gave me research tips, wrote letters of recommendation,

research in different parts of the United States while on

relayed information, loaned books and photographs,

leave from my teaching responsibilities. Funds from the

listened to my ideas, and cheered me on include Brian

Society for the Preservation of American Modernism

Allen, Richard Anderson, Alejandro Anreus, Mary Ann

allowed for additional travel. For assistance with the ex-

Calo, Susie Cohen, Robert Cozzolino, David C. Driskell, Ruth

penses of acquiring images and paying for permissions,

Fine, Ilene Forte, Edmund Barry Gaither, Deborah Gardner,

271

Ann Gibson, David D. Hall, Jeanne Hamilton, halley k

National Portrait Gallery, especially SAAM Director Eliza-

harrisburg, Erica Hirshler, Mamie Hyatt, Paul J. Karl-

beth Broun, Virginia Mecklenberg, JoAnn Moser, Wendy

strom, Mary Kiffer, Leslie King-Hammond, Lizzetta

Wick Reeves, William H. Truettner, and the librarians Ce­

LeFalle-Collins, Therese Leininger-Miller, Gail Levin, Di-

cilia Chin, Alice Clarke, and Stephanie Moi. Judy Throm,

ana Linden, Chris McKay, Wilson Moses, Greg Nolan,

the Chief of Reference Services for the Archives of Ameri-

Francis V. O’Connor, Richard J. Powell, Karen Quinn,

can Art, was a fount of knowledge about the Archives, as

Robert Ribera, Michael Rosenfeld, Joan Saab, Dread

is her successor Marisa Bourgoin; Liza Kirwin, Curator of

Scott, Helen M. Shannon, Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw,

Manuscripts, has always been most helpful. I do not want

Sidney Shiff, Lowery Stokes Sims, Aimee Soubier, Diane

to forget the generosity of Robert Brown, when the AAA

Robbins Tepfer, Elizabeth Hutton Turner, Ann Prentice

had offices in Boston. Beverly W. Brannan was helpful at

Wagner, Deborah Willis, Alona Cooper Wilson, and espe-

the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of

cially Jeffrey C. Stewart, who offered suggestions for

Congress. Cynthia Mills, assisted by Amelia Gorelitz, ran

readings, helped me frame my conceptual approaches,

the Fellows Program at the Victor Building, and they

and often rescued me from a morass of tangled ideas

made my tenure as a Smithsonian fellow most pleasant.

and speculations. I also want to express my gratitude to

I enjoyed swapping research notes with other fellows

Michelle DuBois for sharing with me in many conversa-

during my four months there, especially with Stephanie

tions her knowledge about Lawrence and Knight. At Boston University, I am grateful to Dean Virginia

Mayer Heydt, Jennifer Greenhill, and James Wechsler. Rodney Greene and Floyd Coleman invited me to test my

Sapiro, Professors Fred S. Kleiner and Katherine O’Connor,

ideas about Lawrence at a lecture I gave at Howard Uni-

and Arleen Arzigian, Cheryl Crombie, Mary Curran, Fran

versity. Steven L. Jones, our D.C. landlord, was most

Heaton, and Marc Mitchell. Graduate students Melissa

accom­modating.

Renn, Kenneth Hartvigsen, and Natania Remba were in-

At the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Research Center in

dispensable in tracking down information and helping me

Santa Fe, I want to thank Director Barbara Buhler Lynes,

organize my files. At the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute over

who made my stay both intellectually rewarding and plea-

the years, I am grateful not only to Henry Louis Gates Jr.

surable. I appreciated the friendship of the other fellows

but also to staff members Christina Agawu, Vera Ingrid

and especially Lois Rudnick, who took us off to pueblos

Grant, Lisa Gregory, Dell Hamilton, Donald Yacovone, and

and forests, showed us Mabel Dodge’s home, and recom-

the late Nathan I. Huggins and Richard Newman. I want

mended the best restaurants in the area. On the staff of

to acknowledge the collegiality of Du Bois fellows, espe-

the Research Center I want to acknowledge Heather Hole

cially David Bindman, Gretchen Long, Catherine Mane-

and Eumie Imm-Stroukoff, who facilitated many of my

gold, Hudita Mustafa, Susan Reverby, and Patricia Sulli-

research requests. In Santa Fe many other people made

van. Ashley Farmer, a Harvard graduate student, helped

our three-month stay very pleasant: May Stevens intro-

me with research.

duced us to the local art scene; Katherine Neville was a

During 2005–6 my husband, Kevin Whitfield, and I lived

most gracious landlady, and her friend Richard Morehead

in New York, Washington, D.C., and Santa Fe, and I hun-

kindly facilitated our move. Julie Schimmel provided good

kered down at the research centers with Lawrence-related

companionship, and Lucy Lippard and Harmony Ham-

archival materials. At the Schomburg Center for Research

mond offered good advice.

in Black Culture of the New York Public Library, where I

In Seattle, where we traveled several times, I want to

held a Gilder Lehrman Institute fellowship, I want to thank

thank Mary Whitfield for her hospitality. Barbara Earl

Director Howard Dodson, Diana Lachatanere, Tammi Law-

Thomas of the Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation

son, and Mary Yearwood. Sharon Howard, a senior librarian

allowed me to review the files and books still held by the

at the Schomburg Center, was our generous landlady.

Lawrence/Knight estate before they were dispersed to

In Washington, D.C., I want to thank the curators and

archives and libraries. Her counsel has been invaluable,

staff at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the

and I very much appreciate her ongoing encouragement.

272  acknowledgments

On the motor trip from New York to Washington D.C.,

for facilitating the loans of many transparencies. I want

and on to Santa Fe, many facilitated both my research

to also thank photographer Michael Hamilton for helping

and our creature comforts. I would like to thank the fol-

me secure images for the book.

lowing: Mimi and Steve Rosenthal of Norfolk, Virginia;

Without archives accessible to the public and their

Charlotte and Will Moore of Wilmington, North Carolina;

helpful staff, scholars would be hampered in their probing

Nancy and Robert Renn of Kiawah Island off the South

into the layers of history and biography that make up any

Carolina coast; Efram Burk of USC/Beaufort, who invited

serious study of a cultural figure. I want to thank Sean

me to lecture to his class on Lawrence and showed us the

Noel and Charlie Niles of the Howard Gotlieb Archival

offshore island sites where the Gullah once lived. Walter

Research Center at Boston University; Randall K. Burkett

O. Evans, President of the Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence

of the Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library of

Foundation, was most generous with his advice when we

Emory University; Eve Sinaiko of the College Art Associa-

passed through Savannah. Amy Lighthill steered us to the

tion; Diana Lachatanere, Curator of the Manuscripts, Ar-

best Atlanta fried chicken. Mary Bendolph and Mary Ann

chives and Rare Books Division of the Schomburg Center

Pettway of Boykin and Gee’s Bend, Alabama, showed us

for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library;

quilts and the Farm Security Administration housing built

Joellen ElBashir, Curator of Manuscripts at the Moorland

in the 1930s. Others I visited along the trip included Wil-

Spingarn Research Center of Howard University; Morgan

liam Fagaly of the New Orleans Museum of Art, J. Richard

Swan at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library,

Gruber of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, Priscilla

Yale University; Nicolette A. Dobrowolski of the Special

Lawrence and John H. Lawrence of the Historic New Or-

Collections Research Center of the Syracuse University

leans Collection, Tish and Dean Burnham of Austin, and

Library; Christopher Harter and Brenda Billips Square of

Stephanie Taylor of Las Cruces, New Mexico.

the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University.

In interviews and e-mails, various artists provided in-

Too numerous to mention individually, the staff that

formation and impressions of their experiences and

handled curatorial questions and reproduction rights at

friendships. They include Benny Andrews, Rudolf Baranik,

the various museums that own Lawrence’s work were

Bob Blackburn, Elizabeth Catlett, Walter Christmas, Floyd

unstintingly helpful. And I thank them all. However, I want

Coleman, Allan Kollar, Whitfield Lovell, Georgette Sea-

especially to single out Elsa Southgall and Trish Waters

brooke Powell, May Stevens, Barbara Earl Thomas, and

at the Phillips Collection; Wendy Hurlock Baker, Photo

John Wilson. Through my friendship and many visits with

Order Coordinator at the Archives of American Art; Van-

Jacob Lawrence and Gwendolyn Knight, I gained consider-

essa D. Thaxton-Ward and Jeanne Zeidler of Hampton

able insight into what it meant to be an African American

University Museum; Anita Duquette of the Whitney Mu-

artist in mid-twentieth-century America.

seum of American Art; Barbara Wood at the National

Dealers and collectors, such as Peg Alston, Margaret

Gallery of Art; Lizanne Garrett at the National Portrait

Asch, Barbara Guggenheim, and Sandra B. Lane, have

Gallery; Jackie Burns of the Getty Museum; and Denise J.

also been enormously helpful. Over the years the late Terry

Bastien of the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of

Dintenfass, Lawrence’s dealer from 1963 to the 1980s,

Design.

consistently encouraged me to write on Lawrence. I want

For those who facilitated permissions to reproduce

also to thank her son, Andrew Dintenfass, for his gener­

artists’ works, I want to thank Craig Tenney of Harold Ober

osity in enabling me to obtain and reproduce the poster

Associates; Theodore H. Feder of Artists Rights Society;

for Lawrence’s first show at the Terry Dintenfass Gallery.

Tricia Smith and Timothy McCarthy at Art Resource;

Lawrence’s Seattle dealer, Francine Seders, has been

Jonathan B. White of the Margaret Bourke-White Estate;

supportive as well. During the 1990s DC Moore Gallery

Renate Reiss for the Estate of Winold Reiss; Monica P.

began to handle his works, and they currently handle his

Smith of the Morgan and Marvin Smith Estate; Bruce

estate. I am most grateful to Bridget Moore, Edward De

Kellner, Successor Trustee of the Estate of Carl Van Vech-

Luca, and Heidi Lange for their support and advice and

ten; Elinor R. Tatum of the New York Amsterdam News,

acknowledgments  273

the staffs of Black Star Publishing Company, Corbis,

who both read the manuscript with care and assisted with

and Visual Artists and Galleries Association, Inc.; and

the production, along with Claudia Smelser, the designer,

the photographer Mary Randlett. I am especially grate­

and Janet Villanueva. The book became what it is through

ful to the National Archives and the Library of Congress,

their superb ability to solve layout issues and their exact-

both governmental organizations that keep the images

ing standards.

accessible to everyone and in the public domain. If I

My family has always been there for me and supported

have overlooked any copyright holders, I apologize in

me in numerous ways: Gail Gorton, John Biddiscombe,

advance. Corrections will be made in the next edition of

Marianne Jackson, Frank Irwin, and our children: Christina

this book.

Hills, Mary Whitfield, Bradford Hills, Emily Whitfield, and

At University of California Press, Stephanie Fay had

Andrew Whitfield. I am especially grateful to Kevin Whit-

faith in the project from the beginning, and it was a plea-

field, my husband and partner for thirty-five years, whose

sure to submit the manuscript to her superb editorial

ability to strategize arguments and whose editorial skills

skills. Eric Schmidt good-humoredly volleyed my many

have been invaluable. He has also been a good sport about

questions and was patient with my errant permission

accompanying me on my various journeys over the twenty-

forms. Elisabeth Magnus was a thoughtful editor, who

five years I have been involved with various Jacob Law-

corrected some glaring errors, as was Sue Heinemann,

rence projects. I dedicate this book to him.

274  acknowledgments

appendix

jacob armstead lawrence and his family

Jacob Armstead Lawrence was born September 7, 1917,

heading a household that still included her three daugh-

in Atlantic City, New Jersey, where both parents were

ters and working as a “domestic.” In the 1930 census for

then working.

Washington, D.C., “Rosa L. Armstead” is living in Wash-

Lawrence’s mother, Rosalee Armstead Lawrence (b. 1895; d. September 21, 1969), the daughter of William

ington, D.C., as a cook for a patent attorney. Lawrence’s father, Jacob Lawrence (b. October 29,

Armstead and Rosa Lee Armstead, hailed from Alexan-

1890; d. July 14, 1952), was from Charleston, South Caro-

dria, Virginia. In his address book of the 1960s, Lawrence

lina. On June 5, 1917, shortly after the United States en-

lists his mother as “Rose” Lawrence, living in Harlem at

tered World War I, Jacob Lawrence filled out a draft reg-

240 West 149th Street. In the notice of her death, typed

istration card in Atlantic City, New Jersey, stating that he

by her family, she is listed as Rosalee.

1

His maternal grandmother, Rosa Lee Armstead (b. ca.

was married and was a cook. He served in the army from September 25, 1918, to December 18, 1918. 3

1864; d. September 14, 1951), was one of the founding

Another “Jacob Lawrence,” probably the artist’s pater-

members of the congregation of the Ebenezer Baptist

nal great-grandfather, is listed in the Ancestry Library

Church of Alexandria, Virginia—a congregation that under

Edition’s South Carolina Death Index as having been born

the leadership of Rev. Fields Cooke broke away from the

about 1828 in Beaufort, South Carolina, and as dying on

Third Baptist Church of Alexandria in 1881. 2 She married

April 15, 1918, at the age of ninety. According to the 1870

William Armstead and had two other daughters, Bertha

census of Beaufort, South Carolina, he was a farmer and

and Annie. In the 1900 census for Alexandria, William is

lived with his wife, Maria, three young children, and a

listed as a hotel porter. In the 1910 census, William is no

seventy-year-old woman, Rachel Lawrence (probably his

longer listed, and Rosa Lee Armstead is recorded as

own mother). His name appears in the 1880, 1900, and

275

1910 census records listing more children but no son

Lawrence was also not close to his mother, although

named “Jacob.” However, a “Jacob Lawrence” is included

she continued to live in Harlem, and he rarely mentioned

in the 1890 city directory of Charleston, South Carolina,

her to his interviewers.10 When she died on September

and is listed as a fisherman.

26, 1969, he did not attend her funeral, but he sent $500

Lawrence and his parents moved to Easton, Pennsyl-

to his relatives for the funeral expenses.11 At the time he

vania, where the three of them are listed in the city’s 1920

was probably already living in Hayward, California, begin-

census as living at 455 Pine Street. His father was em-

ning the fall quarter as visiting artist at California State

ployed as a cook in a hotel and his mother as a “servant”;

College (now California State University/East Bay).

his father is also listed in the 1920 Philadelphia census as

Gwendolyn Knight was born on May 26, 1913, in Bar-

a lodger living at 425 Tenth Street and working as a cook

bados, to Miriam Helena Small (b. March 29, 1894; d.

in a restaurant. Although not listed in the 1920 census,

July 28, 1984) and Malcolm Knight, a white Barbadian,

the artist’s sister, Geraldine, was apparently born in Eas-

who died when she was two years old.12 When Gwendolyn

ton in 1919, and his brother, William, was born in 1923 in

was seven years old, a Mr. James and his wife, Isabel

Philadelphia, where Rosalee Lawrence had moved and

Desmora James, became her foster parents and brought

had separated from his father.4 Rosalee at some point

her, their daughter Millicent, and their niece to live in St.

moved to New York City to find work, leaving the three

Louis. Six years later, in 1926, the James’s extended family

children in Philadelphia in foster homes. They joined her

moved to New York.13 In later life Knight rarely mentioned

in Harlem in 1930.

the James family. During these years she began to visit

Lawrence barely knew his father. To reporter Mort Cooper in 1963 he said: “In 1924 my father, who was a

Barbados and became reacquainted with her birth mother.14

cook on a Pullman train, disappeared, and I never saw

In fact, neither of the Lawrences, who never had chil-

him again.”5 The writer of Current Biography noted that

dren themselves, discussed their relatives in interviews;

“when Jacob was seven years old he [the father] de-

this is symptomatic of the times, for in the last decades

serted the family altogether.”6 However, in 1983 and 1984

of the twentieth century, interviewers querying artists

Lawrence told the art historian Ellen Harkins Wheat that

about their art would rarely ask about family matters. It

he had met with his father during the 1930s in Harlem,

was then assumed that private family matters had no rel-

where his father ran a corner store, and that his father

evance to the creation of art.15 During the 1990s the Law-

had bought him a violin and “every week” had given him

rences became close to Barbara Earl Thomas, a Seattle

“a couple of

dollars.”7

artist who had been one of Lawrence’s students at the

Geraldine married George Coles (b. April 16, 1918) and

University of Washington. She helped the couple by driv-

had three children, but she died in 1944 of tuberculosis.

ing them to daily errands and later accompanied Knight

At the time, Lawrence was in the Coast Guard, but he was

on trips. She is still involved with the Jacob and Gwendolyn

His brother, William Lawrence,

Lawrence Foundation.16 Lawrence died in Seattle on June 9,

with whom he seems to have had little contact after they

2000, and Knight died in the same city on February 18,

had become adults, died of a drug overdose in 1966.9

2005.

able to attend her

276  appendix

funeral.8

notes

abbreviations AAA

Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

Hughes Papers

Langston Hughes Papers, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript ­Library, Yale University

JRFA

Julius Rosenwald Fund Archives, Fisk University Library, Nashville, TN

Lawrence-Knight Papers

Jacob Lawrence and Gwendolyn Knight Papers, Archives of American Art. (Note that reels 4571–73   have been microfilmed from the Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Library.)

Leyda Papers

Jay Leyda Papers, Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University

Locke Papers

Alain Locke Papers, Manuscript Division, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University

MARBL

Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library, Emory University

MD, LOC

Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC

MoMA

Museum of Modern Art, New York

NARA-DC

National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC

NARA-MD

National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD

SCRBC

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

SCRC

Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Library

Van Vechten Papers

Carl Van Vechten Papers, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript ­Library, Yale University

Wright Papers

Richard Wright Papers, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

  277

introduction

11. Aaron Douglas, “The Negro in American Culture,” delivered at

The epigraphs are from Erwin Panofsky, “Iconography and Iconology” (1939), in Meaning in the Visual Arts: Papers in and on Art His­ tory (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1955), 39; and Stephen Greenblatt, “Culture,” in Critical Terms for Literary Study, ed. Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 227.

the First American Artists’ Congress, February 14–16, 1936, in Baigell and Williams, Artists against War, 84. 12. For discussions of artists on the Left, including African American artists, see Shapiro, Social Realism; Patricia Hills, Social Con­ cern and Urban Realism: American Painting of the 1930s, exh. cat. (Boston: Boston University Art Gallery, 1983); Andrew Hemingway, Artists on the Left: American Artists and the Communist

1. Jacob Lawrence, videotaped interview by Kinshasha Holman

Movement, 1926–1956 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,

Conwill, October 1991, Studio Museum in Harlem. I am grateful

2002); Bram Dijkstra, American Expressionism: Art and Social

to Naomi Nelson and Ethan Hall, who made the videotape avail-

Change, 1920–1950 (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2003); Ale-

able for my viewing at the Studio Museum in Harlem on April 28,

jandro Anreus, Diana L. Linden, and Jonathan Weinberg, eds.,

1992.

The Social and the Real: Political Art of the 1930s in the Western

2. In the 1920s, Marcus Garvey (1887–1940), a gifted orator, devel-

Hemisphere (University Park: Pennsylvania State University

oped a “Back to Africa” movement, with followers numbering in

Press, 2006). Dijkstra’s book contains illustrations not found

the thousands. His business ventures failed, he was convicted of

elsewhere (many are in his own collection); unfortunately, he

fraud in 1925, and he served two years in the Atlanta peniten-

does not adequately cite the scholarship of other writers.

tiary before deportation to Jamaica. However, Garvey followers

13. Charles Alston, essay for brochure of the 1938 exhibition Youth

were still active in the 1930s. Regarding communists in Harlem,

Turns to Art, with sixteen paintings by Lawrence, held at the

see Mark Naison, Communists in Harlem during the Depression

YMCA, 180 West 135th Street, Jacob Lawrence Papers, SCRC.

(1983; repr., New York: Grove Press, 1984).

14. Lawrence stated in a Harmon Foundation press release that

3. Panofsky, “Iconography and Iconology,” 39.

African Americans were faced with some of the same issues as

4. Two useful general histories of the 1930s are William E. Leuchten-

were the revolutionaries of Haiti and that they could change

burg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932–1940 (New

their lives: “How will it come about? I don’t know. I’m not a poli-

York: Harper and Row, 1963), and T.  H. Watkins, The Hungry

tician. . . . I’m an artist, just trying to do my part to bring this

Years: A Narrative History of the Great Depression in America

thing about.” See Harmon Foundation, press release, November

(New York: Henry Holt, 1999).

12, 1940, Downtown Gallery Records, reel ND5, AAA. See also

5. Audrey McMahon, “May the Artist Live?” Parnassus 5 (October

Chapter 3. 15. For this progressive, populist movement in the arts during the

1933): 2. 6. Romare Bearden and Harry Henderson, A History of African-

1930s and beyond, see Michael Denning, The Cultural Front: The

American Artists: From 1792 to the Present (New York: Pantheon

Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century (London: Verso, 1997).

Books, 1993), 234. 7. For an assessment of the ways communist influence was effective in terms of policy making but not necessarily in implementation,

16. Langston Hughes, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” Nation, June 23, 1926, 694.

see Roger Keeran, “The Communist Influence on American La-

17. Examples of such artworks would include Malvin Gray Johnson’s

bor,” in New Studies in the Politics and Culture of U.S. Commu­

Convict Labor, 1934; James A. Porter’s The Riot, 1938; Norman

nism, ed. Michael E. Brown, Randy Martin, Frank Rosengarten,

Lewis’s Dispossessed, 1938; Romare Bearden’s Soup Kitchen,

and George Snedeker (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1993).

1937; Joseph Delaney, Saint Bleecker (His Last Address), 1937.

8. Meyer Schapiro, “The Social Bases of Art,” delivered at the First American Artists’ Congress, February 14–16, 1936, and printed in the published proceedings, First American Artists’ Congress, ed. Stuart Davis (New York: American Artists’ Congress, 1936);

See also Matthew Baigell, The American Scene: American Paint­ ing of the 1930’s (New York: Praeger, 1974). 18. John Dewey, Art as Experience (New York: Minton, Balch, 1934), 6.

reprinted in Artists against War and Fascism: Papers of the First

19. Ralph Ellison, “Twentieth-Century Fiction and the Black Mask of

American Artists’ Congress, ed. Matthew Baigell and Julia Wil-

Humanity” (1946), in Shadow and Act (1964; repr., New York:

liams (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986),

Vintage International, 1995), 25. 20. See also Hughes, “Negro Artist,” 692–94.

112. 9. For example, see John Kwait [Meyer Schapiro], “John Reed Club

21. Alain Locke, “Self-Criticism: The Third Dimension in Culture,”

Art Exhibition,” New Masses (February 1933): 23–24, reprinted

Phylon 2, no. 4 (1950): 393. For Locke’s philosophical theories

in Social Realism: Art as a Weapon, ed. David Shapiro (New York:

on the relationship of the local to the universal, see Leonard

Frederick Ungar, 1973), 66–68.

Harris and Charles Molesworth, Alain L. Locke: The Biography of

10. Louis Lozowick, “Towards a Revolutionary Art,” Art Front 2 (July– August 1936): 12.

278  notes to pages

a Philosopher (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), especially 76, 161, 334–35. On page 334 the authors quote Locke

1– 4

from an article in the March 1925 issue of The World Tomorrow:

folk artist converged with the reductionist styles of abstract mod-

“We must uproot cultural partisanship and egotism, personal

ernists, the artist was termed a modern primitive” (121). See the

and professional, learn to produce art nationally or racially, or in

growing body of scholarly studies on the nature and appeal of

vital localism, even, but to consume it humanly and universally.”

African American “folk” art and culture, including Eugene W.

On page 145 they quote Locke from the May 1924 issue of the

Metcalf, “Black Art, Folk Art, and Social Control,” Winterthur

Howard Alumnus, in which Locke discusses Egyptian art from

Portfolio 18 (Winter 1983): 271–89; Kinshasha Holman Conwill, “In

Luxor: “Great cultures are the result invariably of the fusion of

Search of an ‘Authentic’ Vision: Decoding the Appeal of the Self-

several cultures, the impetus given to the one culture by contact

Taught African-American Artist,” American Art 5 (Autumn 1991):

with others—the fermenting of one civilization by another.” Har-

2–9; Robin D. G. Kelley, “Notes on Deconstructing ‘the Folk,’ ”

ris and Molesworth use Locke’s term cultural reciprocity to char-

American Historical Review 97 (December 1992): 1400–1408;

acterize Locke’s theory of the ways cultures come together to

Robin Lucy, “ ‘Flying Home’: Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, and the

interact, without one being dominant: in other words, cultural

Black Folk during World War II,” Journal of American Folklore 120, no. 477 (2007): 257–83. See also Richard Wright, “Blueprint for

syncretism.

Negro Literature” (1937), in Amistad 2: Writings on Black History

22. James A. Porter, Modern Negro Art (1943; repr., Washington, DC:

and Culture, ed. John A. Williams and Charles F. Harris (New York:

Howard University Press, 1992), 142.

Vintage Books, 1971), also at ChickenBones: A Journal, www 

23. J. Hillis Miller’s remarks on literary fiction apply equally to Law-

.nathanielturner.com/blueprintfornegroliterature.htm. See also

rence’s work: “In fictions we order or reorder the givens of expe-

Chapter 6.

rience. We give experience a form and a meaning, a linear order with a shapely beginning, middle, end, and central theme. The

26. Jacob Lawrence, transcript of interview by author, July 1985.

human capacity to tell stories is one way men and women col-

27. Henry Louis Gates Jr., introduction to Figures in Black: Words,

lectively build a significant and orderly world around themselves.

Signs, and the “Racial” Self (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), xv.

With fictions we investigate, perhaps invent, the meaning of human life.” See Miller, “Narrative,” in Lentricchia and McLaughlin,

28. Greenblatt, “Culture,” 227.

Critical Terms, 69.

29. The process of close reading that I suggest here is ultimately not compatible with the practice of deconstruction of Jacques Der-

24. I use the term collage cubist style because it entails the aesthetic of cut-out pieces of colored paper, wallpaper, or newspapers

rida and Paul De Man; for me the signs Lawrence created and

affixed to a support, as in works by early twentieth-century art-

that we read within the picture have their referents in the ver-

ists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. Later Picasso and

nacular world of which he is a part—at times either representa-

Braque painted flat shapes just in oil without the pasted papers,

tive of or alienated from.

but the aesthetic look was still “collage.”

30. By using thick context, I pay homage to Clifford Geertz, “Thick

25. Ellen Harkins Wheat, Jacob Lawrence: American Painter, exh. cat.

Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture,” in The

(Seattle: Seattle Art Museum, 1986), 32, notes that his early work

Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 3–30.

seemed “primitive” to many. She explains: “This quality is ef-

Thick context is what makes possible Geertz’s “thick description.”

fected because the figure/ground relationship is characteristically unresolved, the forms are flat and simplified, and objects appear

31. See W. E. B. Du Bois, “Of Our Spiritual Strivings,” in The Souls of

to float in space. Yet close examination reveals his firm grasp of

Black Folk: Essays and Sketches (1903; repr., New York: Bantam

structure and form.  .  .  . The apparent simplicity of the work is

Books, 1989).

countered by Lawrence’s sure sense of design; his early interest in boldly colored geometric pattern is still present.” Karen Wilkin, “The Naïve and the Modern: Horace Pippin and Jacob Lawrence, New Criterion 13 (March 1995): 33–38, has made astute observations about the telling difference between Pippin and Lawrence.

1. harlem’s artistic community in the 1930 s The epigraph is from J. Saunders Redding, On Being Negro in Amer­

There was and is considerable overlap among the definitions

ica (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1951), 121.

and concepts of the terms primitive, folk, naive, and untutored. Lizzetta LeFalle-Collins (“The Critical Context of Jacob Lawrence’s



1. For the basic facts of Lawrence’s life, see Appendix. For the

Early Works, 1938–1952,” in Over the Line: The Art and Life of

chronology of Lawrence’s life, I refer often to the basic bio-

Jacob Lawrence, ed. Peter T. Nesbett and Michelle DuBois, exh.

graphical information in the chronologies provided in the cata-

cat. [Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000], 121–35)

logues for exhibitions: Milton W. Brown, Jacob Lawrence, exh.

points out that “the term primitive was used in the 1930s to de-

cat. (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1974); Ellen

scribe art by self-taught and folk artists. The term also suggested

Harkins Wheat, Jacob Lawrence: American Painter, exh. cat.

a simplicity or a lack of sophistication frequently associated with

(Seattle: Seattle Art Museum, 1986); Elizabeth Hutton Turner,

the common man. When the so-called untutored qualities of the

ed., Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series, exh. cat. (Washing­

notes to pages

4 – 9 

279

Reed Quits 2 Jobs,” New York Amsterdam News, December 6,

ton, DC: Rappahannock Press/Phillips Collection, 1993); Peter T. Nesbett and Michelle DuBois, “Chronology,” in Over the Line:

1933, 1, 3. In 1937 Utopia Children’s House was serving 250 to

The Art and Life of Jacob Lawrence, ed. Peter T. Nesbett and

300 children a day.

Michelle DuBois (Seattle: University of Washington Press/Jacob



7. The Parent-Teacher Bulletin of P.S. 89, a copy of which is in the

Lawrence Catalogue Raisonné Project, 2000). As is typical for

General Research and Reference Division, SCRBC (Sc 371.103P),

chronologies in museum catalogues, sources are not cited, but

notes Lawrence’s fifth-grade attendance at P.S. 89 during the fall

all the authors were in touch with Jacob Lawrence and Gwendo-

1930 semester. I am grateful to Chris McKay for finding this

lyn Knight, and the recent catalogues include information based

document for me. Fax, Seventeen Black Artists, 148, confirms

on the Lawrence-Knight Papers and Downtown Gallery Records

Lawrence’s attendance at P.S. 89, which was described to Fax by

in the AAA. There are still small errors, especially concerning

Romare Bearden “as the school most of the tough street kids of

dates and the names of institutions. I have attempted to double-

the area went to.” Nesbett and DuBois, “Chronology,” 25, makes

check these previously published chronologies against the ar-

no mention of P.S. 89 and states that Lawrence attended P.S. 68,

chives, to correct the errors, and to provide citations for any new

the Frederick Douglass Junior High School (P.S. 139, at 140

information. Since Nesbett and DuBois’s “Chronology” is the

West 140th Street) and then the High School of Commerce (on

most recent published chronology of dates and events, I will

West Sixty-fifth Street). However, P.S. 68 was located at 114–

refer to it when pointing out discrepancies.

150 West 128th Street, some distance from his home on 143rd

Information can also be found in Elton C. Fax, Seventeen

Street. Fax, Seventeen Black Artists, 149, confirms his attendance

Black Artists (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1971); Romare Bearden

at Commerce High School. In a taped interview by Elton Fax,

and Harry Henderson, A History of African-American Artists:

September 17, 1970, Elton C. Fax Collection, box 5, Howard Gotlieb

From 1792 to the Present (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993);

Archival Research Center, Boston University, Lawrence mentions

and Peter T. Nesbett and Michelle DuBois, Jacob Lawrence:

all four schools—P.S. 68, 89, and 139, as well as Commerce High

Paintings, Drawings, and Murals (1935–1999), a Catalogue Rai­

School. It is not uncommon for New York City students, then and

sonné (Seattle: University of Washington Press/Jacob Lawrence

now, to attend schools outside their own district if they can pro-

Catalogue Raisonné Project, 2000) (hereafter cited as Cata­

vide a legitimate address to school authorities. 8. Charles Alston (1907–77) was born in Charlotte, North Carolina.

logue Raisonné). 2. For the history of Harlem, see Gilbert Osofsky, Harlem: The Mak­

His father, a rector in the Episcopal Church, died when Alston

ing of a Ghetto, Negro New York, 1890–1930 (1963; repr., New

was about seven years old. His mother remarried the uncle of

York: Harper and Row, 1968), and David Levering Lewis, When

Romare Bearden, and the family moved to New York. Upon

Harlem Was in Vogue (New York: Random House, 1979), first

graduating from DeWitt Clinton High School, Alston was admit-

published as articles in the New Yorker.

ted to the Yale School of Fine Arts as well as Columbia College.

3. “Harlem Block of 3,871 City’s Most Crowded,” New York Herald

He chose Columbia because he wanted a broad liberal arts

Tribune, September 16, 1935, 1 and 3, quoted in Cheryl Lynn

­education. See Charles Alston, interview by Albert Murray, Oc-

Greenberg, “Or Does It Explode?”: Black Harlem in the Great

tober 19, 1968, New York, AAA, www.aaa.si.edu/collections/

Depression (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 185.

oralhistories/transcripts/alston68.htm, and Charles Alston, in-

4. James Weldon Johnson, “Harlem: The Culture Capital,” in The

terview by Harlan Phillips, September 28, 1965, AAA, www.aaa.

New Negro: An Interpretation, ed. Alain Locke (New York: Albert

si.edu/collections/oralhistories/transcripts/alston65.htm. The

and Charles Boni, 1925), 301.

“Biographical Chronology” in Charles Alston: Artist and Teacher,

5. See Jacob Lawrence, transcript of interview by James Buell and

by Corrine Jennings, exh. cat. (New York: Kenkeleba Gallery,

David Driskell, February 4, 1982, Amistad Research Center, Mu-

1990), 20, notes that he worked on the Spectator (Columbia’s

seum Services Files, Tulane University.

newspaper) and drew cartoons for the humor magazine the

6. According to the New York Amsterdam News, Reed realized “the need of home care for the children of working mothers, organized a group and, with the aid of the Utopia Neighborhood Club and the Welfare Council of New York, raised more than $25,000

Jester. See also Alvia J. Wardlaw, Charles Alston (San Francisco: Pomegranate Communications, 2007). 9. Alston, interview by Phillips, September 28, 1965, www.aaa​.si  .edu/collections/oralhistories/transcripts/alston65.htm.

to launch and maintain the work of the house.” She also received

10. Wardlaw, Charles Alston, 113.

$37,500 from John D. Rockefeller Jr. to run the house for four

11. Alston, interview by Phillips, September 28, 1965, www.aaa.si 

years. When the Rockefeller money ran out, Reed appealed to

.edu/collections/oralhistories/transcripts/alston65.htm. Alston

the WPA, which supplied instructors, but by August 1937, with

recalled Lawrence as being about nine or ten years old, rather

cutbacks of government WPA employees, Utopia House had fal­ len on hard times. See “Utopia House Badly Hit by WPA ­Firings,” New York Amsterdam News, August 7, 1937, 7; and “Daisy C.

280  notes to pages

9 – 11

than the twelve or thirteen he was. 12. Alston, interview by Murray, October 19, 1968, www.aaa.si.edu/ collections/oralhistories/transcripts/alston68.htm.

13. Quoted in Fax, Seventeen Black Artists, 149. Fax’s procedure for writing his book was to tape-record the artists, then write up the

the philosophy department and Teachers College, where he continued to teach until 1939.

transcript as a first-person narration of continuous sentences

24. Holger Cahill, “American Resources in the Arts” (1939), in Art

without the usual repeats and “umms.” Both the handwritten

for the Millions: Essays from the 1930s by Artists and Adminis­

transcript and the audiotape are in the Elton C. Fax Collection,

trators of the WPA Federal Art Project, ed. Francis V. O’Connor

box 4, folder 1, and box 5, respectively, Howard Gotlieb Archival

(Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1973), 33–34. Many of the

Research Center, Boston University. 14. Quoted in Mort Cooper, “Portrait of a Negro Painter,” Chicago Defender, May 18, 1963, 9.

ideas in Cahill’s 1939 speech were first expressed in his introduction to the catalogue New Horizons in American Art, by Holger Cahill, exh. cat. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1936).

15. I am indebted to Elizabeth Hutton Turner, who first explored

25. John Dewey, Art as Experience (New York: Minton, Balch, 1934), 3.

Lawrence’s early education, including the influences of Arthur

26. Quoted in Samella Lewis, “Jacob Lawrence,” Black Art 5, no. 3

Wesley Dow and John Dewey; see Elizabeth Hutton Turner, “The

(1982): 5. A similar statement is quoted in Wheat, Jacob Law­

Education of Jacob Lawrence,” in Nesbett and DuBois, Over the Line, 97–109.

rence, 29. 27. Leslie King-Hammond, “Inside-Outside, Uptown-Downtown: Ja-

16. Arthur Wesley Dow, Composition: A Series of Exercises in Art

cob Lawrence and the Aesthetic Ethos of the Harlem Working-

Structure for the Use of Students and Teachers, rev. and enl. ed.

Class Community,” in Nesbett and DuBois, Over the Line, 74.

(1913; repr., Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).

King-Hammond quotes from Zora Neale Hurston’s essay “Char-

Mascheck’s introduction, 19, points out that the 1899 version

acteristics of Negro Expression,” in Negro—An Anthology, ed.

consisted of eighty-three pages and was called Composition: A

Nancy Cunard, ed. and abridged by Hugh Ford (1934; New York:

Series of Exercises Selected from a New System of Art Educa­

Frederick Unger, 1970), 53–54.

tion by Arthur W. Dow . . . Part I. In the subsequent 1913 edition

28. At the Sunday School he received an art prize for drawing a

of 120 pages, Dow elaborated on all his concepts. I refer in these

biblical map of the journeys of the Apostle Peter; see Nesbett

notes to Arthur Wesley Dow, Composition: A Series of Exercises

and DuBois, “Chronology,” 27. This information probably comes

in Art Structure for the Use of Students and Teachers, rev. and

from one of the frequent conversations Lawrence held with Nes-

enl. (1913; repr., New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1938), which con-

bett and DuBois, both of whom were in constant touch with him

tains the same 1913 text. When Alston returned to Columbia to

in Seattle during the time when the catalogue raisonné was in

earn an MA from Teachers College, he held the Arthur Wesley

preparation; see Nesbett and DuBois, Catalogue Raisonné.

Dow Fellowship; see Bearden and Henderson, History of AfricanAmerican Artists, 261.

The Abyssinian Baptist Church was founded in 1808 by a group of African Americans who refused segregated seating in

17. Dow, Composition (1913/1938), 50.

the First Baptist Church in downtown New York. The church

18. As Turner, “Education of Jacob Lawrence,” 99, has observed:

moved northward within Manhattan along with the demographic

“Following Dow’s method, instead of teaching figure studies and

shifts of the African American community. From Worth Street

other techniques of the academy, Alston taught objective or

(then Anthony Street) the church moved in the mid-1830s to

nonrepresentational drawing. Instead of passive description of

Waverly Place, located in the West Village in an area then called

the exterior world, Lawrence, following Alston, attended to the

“Little Africa.” The church subsequently moved to West Fortieth

surface of the artwork. The preestablished compositions of rugs

Street. In 1908 Dr. Adam Clayton Powell Sr. was called from Im-

functioned as templates. By copying them Lawrence was plot-

manuel Baptist Church in New Haven to serve as minister of the

ting the rectangle, mapping the space, becoming aware of all

Abyssinian Baptist Church. He organized the move to the pres-

pictures as compositional structures.”

ent location at West 138th Street and raised the funds to con-

19. Jacob Lawrence, typed transcript of interview by A. Jacobwitz

struct the existing church, which included Harlem’s first com-

from the “Listening to Pictures” program of the Brooklyn Mu-

munity center. When he retired in 1937, his son Dr. Adam Clayton

seum, 1968, Lawrence-Knight Papers, AAA, Gift of the Brooklyn

Powell Jr. succeeded him and matched his father’s reputation as

Museum. I have corrected plain in the transcript to plane, which

a dynamic orator. See “Brief History of the Abyssinian Baptist

the word plainly is.

Church,” undated handout obtained in 2005 from the Abyssinian

20. Dow, Composition (1913/1938), 50.

Baptist Church. See also his autobiography, A. Clayton Powell Sr.,

21. Jacob Lawrence, transcript of interview by author, May 20,

Against the Tide (New York: R. R. Smith, 1938). During the De-

1985. 22. Gwendolyn Bennett, “Jacob Lawrence,” Mainstream 1 (Winter 1947): 96.

pression, the church set up classes to train workers in new skills. Lawrence recalled to Carroll Greene (interview, October 26, 1968, AAA, www.aaa.si.edu/collections/oralhistories/transcripts/ 

23. See Turner, “Education of Jacob Lawrence,” 99. A leader in the

lawren68.htm): “I can remember some of his sermons. One of

progressive education movement, Dewey came from the Univer-

his famous ones was the dry bones sermon. And he was called

sity of Chicago in 1904 to Columbia with appointments in both

on to preach that sermon not only in his own church but as

notes to pages

13 – 15  

281

guest minister in other churches. And I heard him do that sev-

churches, and to paint new murals for churches, schools, and

eral times and he was very dramatic with it. He was quite a big

community centers. All of this was accomplished with the

personality when I was a kid.” Lawrence later did a series called

$20,000 that Mrs. Gibson had advanced to create the Emer-

Genesis, inspired by Powell Sr.

gency Work Bureau. McMahon spread the funds by paying the

29. Fax, Seventeen Black Artists, 148.

artists “the same wages as the open shop artisan.” The attitude

30. Ibid., 151. The records do not indicate exactly how long he stud-

of the CAA staff is best expressed by McMahon when she adds, “We emphasize this wage scale for two reasons. To hold art a

ied at Utopia House. 31. Jacob Lawrence, transcript of radio interview by Randy Goodman,

luxury is pernicious to the public and to all but a few very suc-

May 23, 1943, New York, Downtown Gallery Records, reel 5549,

cessful artists. The establishing of absurdly high prices for

frames 352 ff., AAA. The ellipses are in the original transcript.

works of art is due largely to the foibles of the collector abetted by the opportunism of dealer and artist. In paying the artist

32. Ibid. 33. See “Art Study through the Workshop,” in Negro Artists: An Il­

$12.50 a week to paint murals we have, indeed, gone ad ridicu­

lustrated Review of Their Achievements (New York: Harmon

lum and there is no contention that this is a proper state of af-

Foundation, 1935), 22–27.

fairs. But if, in the new economic era, the great collector who

34. In March 1930 the New York Amsterdam News estimated that

replaced the state and the church of ancient times as a patron

unemployed African Americans in New York City then totaled

of art is vanishing and if he in turn is to be replaced by the peo-

twenty-two thousand; see “Negro Unemployment Placed at

ple, art must be brought within their ken financially as well as

22,000,” New York Amsterdam News, March 26, 1930, 1.

emotionally and intellectually” (2).

35. See articles in the New York Amsterdam News, November 19,

40. See Audrey McMahon, “A General View of the WPA: Federal Art

1930, 3, December 3, 1930, and December 17, 1930, 11. Adam

Project in New York City and State,” in The New Deal Art Proj­

Clayton Powell Jr. took charge of the relief activities at the

ects: An Anthology of Memoirs, ed. Francis V. O’Connor (Wash-

church. For a brief overview of the role of black churches in the

ington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1972), 52: “Under the

community, see Greenberg, “Or Does It Explode?” 103–6.

supervision of Harry Knight, creative artists in various media

36. See New York Amsterdam News, August 24, 1932, 6.

were employed, as were craftsmen and allied workers, and a

37. According to the minutes of the board of the CAA, dated March

framework was developed on which the WPA/FAP in New York

2, 1931, a total of $57,000 had been received from the Carnegie

was later patterned.” Richard D. McKinzie, The New Deal for Art­

Corporation, which wanted to transfer art teaching equipment

ists (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973), 77, only

sets to the CAA. At a subsequent CAA board meeting in October

briefly discusses the involvement of the CAA in New Deal proj-

1931 it was reported that “the Carnegie Corporation was count-

ects. (McKinzie refers to McMahon as the president of CAA; she

ing on the College Art Association to carry on further activities in connection with the Art Teaching Equipment Sets.” See CAA

was actually the executive secretary.) 41. Constantine, interview by Phillips, October 15, 1965, www.aaa 

Archives, CAA headquarters, New York. During 1936 the CAA cir­

.si.edu/collections/oralhistories/transcripts/consta65.htm.

culated exhibitions to over three hundred venues, according to

42. The minutes of the annual CAA meeting held in June 1933 could

the American Art Annual, vol. 33 (Washington, DC: American Fed­

report: “Briefly 85 [number is blurred] artists were placed in

eration of Arts, 1936), 62.

positions where they were in contact with young boys and girls

38. Mildred Constantine, interview by Harlan Phillips, October 15, 1965, AAA, www.aaa.si.edu/collections/oralhistories/transcripts/­

in settlement work and [in] philanthropic institutions[,] and a number have been given jobs of restoring old paintings in churches while others are painting murals in public buildings.

consta65.htm. 39. Audrey McMahon, “May the Artist Live?” Parnassus 5 (October

This work will be continued by the College Art Association until

1933): 2. According to the October 15, 1965, Constantine inter-

the necessity for it disappears.” The CAA minutes of June 17,

view by Phillips, a wealthy woman, Mrs. Gibson, went to the

1933, CAA Archives, also announced a CAA artists’ ­cooperative,

mayor’s office, which put her in touch with the CAA. The funds

which had enrolled ——— [number is blurred] artists. A couple

from Mrs. Gibson allowed setting up the Emergency Work Bu-

of months later one hundred artists were employed, their sala-

reau of the Gibson Committee, which, according to Constantine,

ries drawn from the $20,000 that the Gibson Committee had

“took a more formal and a more civic kind of character. Pretty

given the CAA for that purpose; see McMahon, “May the Artist

soon there was an  .  .  . organized method of interviewing the

Live?” 2.

artists and finding out [what] their problems were aside from

McMahon and her colleagues were motivated by more than

money, what their capabilities were” (1). McMahon’s “May the

just finding jobs for artists. Swept up in the progressive spirit

Artist Live?” is the most detailed source on the accomplish-

of the time, they saw art as a force for creating a better society.

ments of the CAA’s mural program in the early 1930s. McMahon

The CAA minutes of June 1933 also reported: “This year, on an

and her team hired artists to teach art classes in neighborhood

experimental basis, we sent exhibitions into various neighbor­

houses and schools, to restore paintings and sculpture in

hoods and settlement houses in New York where a large number

282  notes to pages

15 – 17

of unemployed adolescents as well as children and adults were

Race, Nation, and the Critical Construction of the African Amer­

successfully reached. The result of this experiment has con-

ican Artist, 1920–40 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,

vinced us that this work can be undertaken in the same manner

2007), 75–95.

as we undertake traveling exhibitions and this we are now pre-

45. See Calo, Distinction and Denial, 75–77.

pared to do, in order to promote the cultural development of

46. See New York Amsterdam News, October 19, 1932, 3, for a con-

young people and aid them to take advantage of the museum

temporary article on Allen; for his studio portraits, see Camara

programs which are offered to them but of which they [now]

Dia Holloway, Portraiture and the Harlem Renaissance: The Pho­

take only limited advantage. . . . We cannot . . . feel unmoved

tographs of James L. Allen (New Haven, CT: Yale University Art

by the pitiful condition of the living artists of today even though

Gallery, 1999). Many of Allen’s installation and group photo-

this need may not technically be embraced in the activities of

graphs are in the Harmon Foundation Collection, NARA-MD. He

an academic Association.” Minutes of June 17, 1933, CAA Archives. The CAA had other schemes to bring cash to artists.

also taught at the Harlem Community Art Center. 47. For a sharp criticism of the Harmon Foundation, see Romare

One was a “Rent-a-Painting Plan,” with John Davis Hatch Jr. in

Bearden, “The Negro Artist and Modern Art,” Opportunity 12

charge of the CAA’s expanded exhibition program. As Constan-

(December 1934): 371–72. For a history of the Harmon Founda-

tine pointed out in her interview by Phillips, not all CAA board

tion, see Gary A. Reynolds and Beryl J. Wright, Against the

members were enthusiastic about the turn toward activism on

Odds: African-American Artists and the Harmon Foundation

the part of the staff.

(Newark, NJ: Newark Museum, 1989), and Bearden and Hender-

During 1933, however, the Emergency Work Bureau of the Gibson Committee found that it could not handle the increased demand for funds to pay the artists; see CAA minutes of June 17, 1933. At this point the Emergency Relief Administration, a state

son, History of African-American Artists, 250–59. 48. For the change in the address, see “Will Open Art Workshop Here,” New York Amsterdam News, June 28, 1933, 9. 49. According to Calo, Cloyd L. Boykin (1877–death unknown), an

agency, stepped in to pay salaries. By November 1933, McMahon

artist trained in engineering at Hampton Institute who later

and Pollak, who had been volunteering their time while juggling

studied at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School, was the

the normal business of CAA, were given additional funds by the

first African American to start an art school, in the late 1920s

newly created Civil Works Administration, a federal employment

in Greenwich Village. Drawing on Harmon Foundation archives

agency, which agreed to pay the teachers’ salaries; see McKinzie,

as well as Carnegie Corporation archives, Calo has presented an

New Deal for Artists, 77. McMahon, “General View,” 53, recalled

intriguing picture of the machinations behind the scenes of Brady,

that the program she had been running for the CAA “was trans-

who wanted to support the Harlem art workshops without the

ferred to these agencies and the employment of artists increased

presence of Boykin. See Calo, Distinction and Denial, 77–87,

as more funds became available. In New York City, Mayor La

216–20 nn. 27–58. Boykin is also mentioned in Bearden and

Guardia was the official sponsor, and employment quotas for

Henderson, History of African-American Artists, 116, 159, 160,

artists, models, and allied personnel were allocated by his office

495 n. 5.

to the CAA.” The Emergency Relief Administration evolved into

50. The Progressive Education Association circulated the work of

the New York State Temporary Emergency Relief Administration

Harlem artists in nationwide exhibitions. See Sophia Steinbach,

(TERA); when the Civil Works Administration was scuttled, TERA,

“Harlem Goes in for Art,” Opportunity 14 (April 1936): 116.

which was larger in scope and budget and also received funds

51. For Savage, see Bearden and Henderson, History of African-

from the federal government, picked up the tab for salaries of

American Artists, 168–80; Jessie Carney Smith, “Augusta Sav-

artists that the CAA had in its charge.

age,” in Notable Black American Women (Detroit, MI: Dale Re-

43. Frances V. O’Connor Papers, reel 1087, frames 453–54, AAA.

search, 1992), 979–83; Deirdre L. Bibby, Augusta Savage and

O’Connor’s useful records of selected government-employed art-

the Art Schools of Harlem, exh. cat. (New York: Schomburg Cen-

ists are based on the files for FAP artists in NARA-DC. On April 25, 1934, Alston was promoted to art teacher (still on TERA);

ter for Research in Black Culture, 1988). 52. Calo, Distinction and Denial, 91. Calo’s discussion of Savage’s

this would have been at the time he began teaching at 306 West

teaching activities at this time is most extensive. See also

141st Street. He and others were transferred to the FAP on Au-

­Theresa A. Leininger-Miller, New Negro Artists in Paris: African

gust 22, 1935.

American Painters and Sculptors in the City of Light, 1922–1934

44. I recall several conversations with Lawrence when he mentioned

(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001).

the CAA in this connection; see also Jacob Lawrence, draft tran-

53. “$1,500 Fund to Aid Struggling Artists,” New York Amsterdam

script of interview by Samella Lewis, January 10, 1981, tape 6, 7,

News, December 20, 1933, 3. In 1930 Frederick P. Keppel of the

Hampton University Archives. Mary Ann Calo, who has probed

Carnegie Corporation had endorsed Savage’s grant application

the archives of the Carnegie Corporation, discusses at length

to the Rosenwald Fund, which awarded her a fellowship to study

the CAA and the Harmon Foundation’s involvement in the Har-

in France. The Carnegie Corporation subsequently gave her an ad­

lem Art Workshop; see Mary Ann Calo, Distinction and Denial:

ditional grant to travel through Europe before returning home in

notes to page

17  

283

1931. Keppel also brokered a job for her to teach sculpture at the Boykin Art School. See Smith, “Augusta Savage,” 981–82, and Calo, Distinction and Denial, 91–94.

tion; the films have been transferred to VHS tapes and are available for viewing at NARA-MD. 65. Quoted in ibid. The YMCA housed classes on subjects other than

54. “Art Study,” 22.

art; for example, in February 1936 the Hunton School offered

55. Bearden and Henderson, History of African-American Artists,

courses to adults in photography, Russian, Negro history, practical psychology and applied social science, religion, romance

173. 56. See New York Amsterdam News, April 14, 1934, 3. “The exhibition was sponsored by the University of the State of New York, the State Education Department and the Board of Education of New

languages, stage dancing, and fine arts. See New York Amster­ dam News, February 8, 1936, 3. 66. References to Richard Lindsey and William E. Artis can be found

York City. . . . The work on exhibition is that of pupils of the Free

in Bearden and Henderson, History of African-American Art­

Adult Art Schools of New York City,” which included Savage’s

ists. 67. Ibid., 392.

pupils. 57. Wheat has noted the proximity of his home and her studio. See

68. Thelma Berlack-Boozer, “Growing Pains: Larger Quarters Needed

Ellen Harkins Wheat, “Jacob Lawrence” (PhD diss., University of

for 135th Street Public Library,” New York Amsterdam News,

Washington, 1987), 19.

April 18, 1936, 13. The Carnegie Foundation selected two sites

58. Juanita Marie Holland, “Augusta Christine Savage: A Chronology of Her Art and Life, 1892–1962,” in Bibby, Augusta Savage, 16.

for their largesse: the 135th Street Library and another library in Atlanta, Georgia.

59. Augusta Savage to Arthur Schomburg, January 16, 1935, Arthur

69. See, for example, A. M. Wendell Malliet, “Harlem Library, Crying

Alfonso Schomburg Papers, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare

for Larger Building, Cramped for Needed Space,” New York Am­

Books Division, SCRBC.

sterdam News, March 20, 1937, 4. Calo, Distinction and Denial,

60. “Exhibition of Negro Art at the Adult Education Project in Har­

88, after reviewing the correspondence among Alain Locke,

lem Y.W.C.A.,” New York Herald Tribune, February 15, 1935, 40;

Mary Brady of the Harmon Foundation, Frederick Keppel of the

also quoted in Jeff Richardson Donaldson, “Generation ‘306’—

Carnegie Corporation, and Ernestine Rose of the New York Pub-

Harlem, New York” (PhD diss., Northwestern University, 1974),

lic Library, concludes that the “Harmon Foundation . . . agreed to underwrite half of the rental cost at 136th Street and subsi-

106–7. 61. “Harlem Will See Self as Others See It at Novel Show,” New York

dize salaries and materials. Brady hoped that the center would

Amsterdam News, February 9, 1935, 9. Savage was often men-

eventually be self-sustaining and that it might catch the atten-

tioned in the New York Amsterdam News; perhaps it helped that

tion of a larger organization to make real the goal of establishing

her brother-in-law was Ted Poston, one of the lead writers for

a cultural center in Harlem built around the library.” 70. See “Art Study,” 26–27. The New York Amsterdam News, June

the paper. 62. Ibid. The exhibition was praised by the Harmon Foundation as

28, 1933, 9, announced that “Harlem life and Harlem scenery,

having “served once more to draw favorable attention to the

painted in natural colors, will be given preference on the pro-

workshop movement.” See “Art Study,” 23.

gram of the Art Workshop and Studio.” Note that Bearden and

63. By April 1936, in addition to teaching young people, Augusta

Henderson, History of African-American Artists, 392, incorrectly

Savage was also directing the Uptown Art Laboratory, a more

locate this workshop at 141st Street and Lexington Avenue. Lex-

in­formal workshop for adults, with Vaclav Vytlacil attending Sun­

ington Avenue does not extend up to 141st Street.

day afternoon critiques. Opportunity magazine ran a story on the art centers of Harlem and described the Uptown Art Labo-

71. Almost all the artists mentioned here can be found in Bearden and Henderson, History of African-American Artists.

ratory as “open to young Harlemites who have already demon-

72. See Harlem Adult Education Committee, press release, [Sep-

strated a particular aptitude [in the] arts. Like the school after

tember] 27, 1933, Harmon Foundation, box 1, MD, LOC. Calo,

which it is fashioned, the Federal Art Project Design laboratory,

Distinction and Denial, 88, has noted that both Brady of the

it embodies progressive trends and seeks to coordinate a thor-

Harmon Foundation and Rose of the 135th Street branch of the

ough training in the fine arts with applied design. . . . No rigid

New York Public Library worked together to make the exhibition

course of instruction is followed.  .  .  . Lively discussions take

a success; Rose “filed a grant report with the Carnegie Corpo-

place on Sunday afternoons when Vaclav Vyatlacil [sic], instruc-

ration in December 1933 in which she claimed that the art

tor in the fine arts department of the Design Laboratory, comes

program far exceeded their expectations of success; she noted

to help the students.” See Steinbach, “Harlem Goes in for Art,”

their hope to continue it the following year, possibly with the help of the Harmon Foundation.” Also see Calo, Distinction and

114. 64. “Art Study,” 25. CAA involvement probably meant the CAA had

Denial, 221 n. 64.

been getting the funds for salaries. The Harmon Foundation

73. “Art by Negroes of Harlem Put on Exhibition,” New York Herald

made several movies about African American artists and the art

Tribune, September 28, 1933, 40; also quoted in Donaldson,

workshops available to African Americans throughout the na-

“Generation ‘306,’ ” 108–9.

284  notes to pages

18 – 20

74. “Art Study,” 27.

terviewees. Hence, there are small errors in dating and inconsis-

75. It is not known for certain that Lawrence was enrolled in these

tencies with names of organizations. The reader is advised to

particular classes. Two years later, by January 1936, the Carnegie Corporation had withdrawn its support from the 135th Street Library operation; however, it was reported that “with the help of WPA workers and volunteers, certain of the courses

double-check such details. 85. “Negro Harlem Tops 204,000,” New York Amsterdam News, October 20, 1934, 1. 86. Up in the posh Sugar Hill area, poets, novelists, and the older

could still be carried on,” such as American and European his-

artists attended parties, which were written up in the society

tory, social casework, and baby care. See Berlack-Boozer,

columns of the New York Amsterdam News. Bessye Johnson

“Growing Pains,” 13. Classroom spaces in churches, social agen-

Bearden, a journalist, educator, and community activist (and

cies, and public schools were no doubt found for the govern-

Romare Bearden’s mother), had gatherings for civic and political

ment-supported art teachers.

leaders at her home. And Louise Thompson, a close friend of

76. Francis O’Connor Papers, reel 1089, AAA. 77. Bearden and Henderson, History of African-American Artists, 263. 78. Ibid., 234; Donaldson, “Generation ‘306,’ ” 110–11, based on an interview of Alston in New York on January 27, 1972. 79. See “Growing Pains,” 13. 80. Romare Bearden, taped interview by James V. Hatch, December

Langston Hughes and a Communist Party leader, held evenings of talk for artists and intellectuals at her large Convent Avenue apartment. Forums that focused on black history were also organized by Charles C. Seifert, J. A. Rogers, and Richard B. Moore. See Mark Naison, Communists in Harlem during the De­ pression (1983; repr., New York: Grove Press, 1984), 42–43. See also Fax, Seventeen Black Artists, 150–54.

6, 1972, Billops-Hatch Archives, MARBL, recalls that the stu-

87. Jacob Lawrence to Jeff Donaldson, January 8, 1972, quoted in

dents were Lawrence, Bob Blackburn, and Sara Murrell but that

Donaldson, “Generation ‘306,’ ” 143. The regulars at the 306 talk

in the evenings it was a hangout where artists, writers, and mu-

sessions in the late 1930s included not only the personalities

sicians congregated, such as Langston Hughes, Claude McKay,

Lawrence mentioned but also the dancer Addison Bates; the

musicians from the Duke Ellington band, the white actor Jack

dancer and drummer Asadata Dafora; the actors Rex Ingram

Carter, and the writer William Saroyan. Also useful in the Billops-

and Canada Lee; the composer Frank Fields; and the musicolo-

Hatch Archives are the oral interviews of Ernest Crichlow by An-

gist Josh Lee, to name a few. The artists included Alston, Ban-

nette Nichols on February 22, 1974, and of Bob Blackburn by

narn, Savage, and their students but also artists from downtown.

Camille Billops and James Hatch on December 1 and 19, 1972.

Interviewed artists mentioned other people who attended 306

Blackburn stated in the two-part December interview, “The

gatherings as including Selma Burke, Ernest Crichlow, Richard

workshop gave me . . . the awareness of what it means to be in-

Lindsey, O. Richard Reid, Frederick Perry, James Yeargans, Rob-

volved in art.”

ert Savon Pious, Bruce Nugent, Sollace J. Glenn, and Norman

81. A handwritten note from Jacob Lawrence to author, January 15,

Lewis. See Bearden and Henderson, History of African-American

1993, states the $2 fee. Blackburn, interview by Billops and

Artists, 234. The downtown white writers and artists who trav-

Hatch, December 1 and 19, 1972, describes Bannarn’s studio as

eled up to 306 included William Saroyan, the artist William Steig,

“the downstairs’ loft.”

and photographer Carl Van Vechten; see also Rocío ­Aranda-​

82. Lawrence spoke about the talks he would have with Ronald Jo-

­Alvarado and Sarah Kennel, “Romare Bearden: A Chronology,”

seph, whom he considered a very intellectual artist; Jacob Law-

in The Art of Romare Bearden, by Ruth Fine, exh. cat. (Washing-

rence, transcript of interview by author, July 1983. For Knight,

ton, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2003), 215.

see Sheryl Conkelton and Barbara Earl Thomas, Never Late for

88. Hughes returned to Harlem in the fall of 1935 after a three-year

Heaven: The Art of Gwen Knight, exh. cat. (Seattle: University of

tour of the world. See New York Amsterdam News, “Langston

Washington Press; Tacoma, WA: Tacoma Art Museum, 2003). 83. Wheat, Jacob Lawrence, 31, mentions Lawrence’s posing for

Hughes Ends 3-Year Tour of World,” October 5, 1935, 5. 89. Lawrence, interview by Buell and Driskell, February 4, 1982;

Joseph and Knight. Walter Christmas elaborated on these earlier

portions printed as “An Interview with Jacob Lawrence,” in Ja-

friendships in an interview I conducted on May 4, 1995; I also

cob Lawrence, The Toussaint L’Ouverture Series (New York:

interviewed Bob Blackburn on June 7, 1988. Both taped interviews are in my possession and are a promised gift to the AAA. 84. Bearden and Henderson, History of African-American Artists, 260, and Donaldson, “Generation ‘306.’ ” Donaldson, a painter and dynamic teacher at Howard University when he submitted

Church Board for Homeland Ministries, 1982). 90. See Chapter 5 regarding the antilynching exhibitions. 91. See Bearden and Henderson, History of African-American Artists, 249. 92. Quoted in Wheat, Jacob Lawrence, 35, citing a letter to Charles

his dissertation to Northwestern University, conducted inter-

Alan, December 29, 1972, in “Jacob Lawrence’s personal files.”

views during the 1970s with several Harlem artists, excerpts of

I have not been able to find the letter at the AAA, the repository

which he transcribed and which are very useful; the dissertation is flawed, unfortunately, by the usual memory lapses of his in-

of the Lawrence-Knight Papers. 93. Ibid., 36. Romare Bearden also went with Seifert. Bearden and

notes to pages

20 – 24  

285

Henderson, History of African-American Artists, 247, noted

African American Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsyl-

Bearden’s “fascination as Seifert demonstrated the resemblance

vania Press, 2007), 76, quoting Locke, “Legacy of the Ancestral

of an ax-carrying African war god to the Scandinavian god of

Arts,” 256. Jarrett points to the sentence in “Legacy of the An-

war, Thor.”

cestral Arts” where Locke speaks of blacks “as blood descen-

94. For a discussion of Locke’s influence among African American

dants, bound to [Africa] by a sense of direct cultural kinship, and

artists, see Calo, Distinction and Denial, ch. 1, “Alain Locke and

Jarrett concludes that “Locke’s utterance of both ‘blood’ and

the Invention of ‘Negro Art.’ ”

‘cultural kinship’ in the same sentence straddled the fine line

95. Locke’s “The Legacy of the Ancestral Arts,” in Locke, New Negro.

between biological and cultural constructions of race.” Harris

For reprints of Locke’s essays on art, including “A Note on African

and Molesworth, Alain L. Locke, 197, tackle the “blood descen-

Art,” Opportunity 2 (May 1924): 134–38, see The Critical Temper

dants” phrase, first quoting from Locke’s original version of the

of Alain Locke: A Selection of His Essays on Art and Culture, ed.

essay, “The Art of the Ancestors,” published in the March 1935

Jeffrey C. Stewart (New York: Garland, 1983).

Survey Graphic (“Surely this [African] art, once known and ap-

96. Locke, “Legacy of the Ancestral Arts,” 261. In his bibliography

preciated can scarcely have less influence upon the blood de-

for the 1926 printing of New Negro Locke included Marius De

scendants than upon those who inherit by tradition alone”), then

Zayas’s African Negro Art: Its Influence on Modern Art (New York:

acknowledging the criticism and explaining Locke’s position:

Modern Gallery, 1916) and Paul Guillaume and Munro T. Guil-

“Later readers would hear in this formulation an essentialism

laume’s Primitive Negro Sculpture (Merion, PA: Barnes Founda-

that had racialist overtones. But Locke was merely analogously applying his notion of race as a cultural construction rather than

tion, 1925). 97. Locke, “Legacy of the Ancestral Arts,” 256. 98. See Van Wyck Brooks, “On Creating a Usable Past,” Dial 64 (April

a scientific fact. Tradition was the word Locke used to establish a continuity of group experience and expression.” For other literary historians’ views on Locke, see Chielozona Eze, The Dilemma

11, 1918): 337–41. 99. Locke, “Legacy of the Ancestral Arts,” 254.

of Ethnic Identity: Alain Locke’s Vision of Transcultural Societies

100. Ibid., 256.

(Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2005), and Jane Duran and

101. See Meyer Schapiro, “Race, Nationality and Art,” Art Front 2

Earl L. Stewart, “Alain Locke, Essentialism, and the Notion of a

(March 1936): 10–12; and James A. Porter, “The Negro Artist and

Black Aesthetic,” in The Critical Pragmatism of Alain Locke: A

Racial Bias” (review of Locke’s Negro Art: Past and Present), Art

Reader on Value Theory, Aesthetics, Community, Culture, Race,

Front 3 (June–July 1937): 8–9. Schapiro clearly had Locke in mind

and Education, ed. Leonard Harris (Lanham, MD: Rowman and

when he wrote: “There are Negro liberals who teach that the

Littlefield, 1999).

American Negro artist should cultivate the old African styles, that his real racial genius has emerged most powerfully in those

103. Alain Locke, Negro Art: Past and Present (Washington, DC: Associates in Negro Folk Education, 1936), 5.

styles, and that he must give up his effort to paint and carve like

104. Melville J. Herskovits, “The Negro’s Americanism,” in Locke, New

a white man. This view is acceptable to white reactionaries, who

Negro, 359. The debates about “the Negro’s culture” flared up

desire . . . to keep the Negro from assimilating the highest forms

again when Nathan Glazer and Daniel Moynihan’s Beyond the

of culture of Europe and America. It is all the more dangerous

Melting Pot (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963)

because it appears on first thought to be an admission of the

was published.

greatness of African Negro art, and therefore favorable to the Ne-

105. Bearden, “Negro Artist,” 371.

gro. But observed more closely, it terminates in the segregation

106. For Bennett, see Gerri Bates, “Gwendolyn Bennett (1902–1981),”

of the Negro from modern culture” (“Race, Nationality,” 10). Por-

in Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, ed.

ter, who also taught at Howard University and did not get along

Darlene Clark Hine, Elsa Barkley Brown, and Rosalyn Terborg-

with Locke, opined that Locke’s book was “one of the greatest

Penn (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 1:106–9.

dangers to the Negro artist to arise in recent years. It contains a

107. Gwendolyn Bennett, “Toward an Art Center? Ancient and Modern

narrow racialist point of view, presented in seductive language. . . .

Negro Art Shown in Exhibition Here,” New York Amsterdam

Dr. Locke supports the defeatist philosophy of the ‘Segregation-

News, March 23, 1935, 9. Bennett singled out some of the art-

ist’ ” (“Negro Artist,” 8). Locke denied Porter’s charges in a letter

works for special praise: Henry Bannarn’s sculpted head of Rich-

to the editor, Art Front 3 (October 1937): 19–20. I presented this

ard B. Harrison, Charles Alston’s Girl in Red Dress, Romare

controversy over Locke’s ideas in “Alain Locke, James A. Porter,

Bearden’s Bread-Line, Augusta Savage’s Green Apples, and Aaron

and Meyer Schapiro: 1930s Debates on a ‘Racial Art’ in Art Front,”

Douglas’s crayon drawings of notables from African American

paper presented at the annual meeting of the CAA, February

history. She also mentioned in passing the young Georgette

2003, New York. For Schapiro’s ideas on race, also see Patricia

Seabrooke, William Artis, and Robert S. Pious.

Hills, “1936: Meyer Schapiro, Art Front, and the Popular Front,”

108. Ibid.

Oxford Art Journal 17, no. 1 (1994): 30–41.

109. According to Bennett, Erwin N. Horrock organized the sponsor-

102. Gene Andrew Jarrett, Deans and Truants: Race and Realism in

286  notes to pages

24 – 26

ing “committee of 100 Harlem citizens” and curated the show

“with the cooperation of Mrs. Frances M. Pollack [sic] of the Public Works Division art project.” Pollak was part of Audrey McMahon’s CAA team discussed above. 110. Bennett, “Toward an Art Center?” 9.

included in Jacob Lawrence Papers, SCRC. It is not clear if Lawrence was an actual member. 115. Bearden and Henderson, History of African-American Artists, 239, reproduce the holographic copy, as do Diana L. Linden and

111. Ibid.

Larry A. Greene, “Charles Alston’s Harlem Hospital Murals: Cul-

112. Bearden, “Negro Artist,” 371. Bearden’s issue was not the exhibi-

tural Politics in Depression Era Harlem,” Prospects: An Annual of

tion of amateurish and student work (there was a long tradition of combining professional and amateur artists in New York City exhibitions, going back to settlement house exhibitions) but

American Cultural Studies 26 (2002): 399. 116. Romare Bearden, interview by James V. Hatch, December 6, 1972, Billops-Hatch Archives, MARBL.

rather the awarding of prizes and the competency of the jurors

117. New York Amsterdam News, July 24, 1937, 4, reproduced a pho-

for the prizes. In 1936 the Harlem Artists Guild issued a state-

tograph of WPA artists from Harlem taking part in a demonstra-

ment objecting to the Harmon Foundation’s “effort to collect an

tion to protest dismissals. See also the undated photograph of

exhibition of art work done by Negroes to be shown at the Texas

Harlem Artists Guild members Norman Lewis, Gwendolyn Ben-

Centennial Exposition.” The guild again accused the foundation

nett, and Frederick Perry at a WPA picket line reproduced in

of having a “coddling rather than professional attitude toward

Bearden and Henderson, History of African-American Artists,

the Negro as an artist” and presenting Negro art “from the so-

226.

ciological standpoint rather than from the aesthetic.” See state-

118. In a letter to Holger Cahill, July 21, 1937, Audrey McMahon sum-

ment of the Harlem Artists Guild, n.d., forwarded as an attach-

marized protests the guild had presented to her as a result of

ment to a letter by Audrey McMahon to Holger Cahill, May 21,

dismissals from the FAP that the guild felt showed discrimina-

1936, NARA-DC, RG 69, entry 564, box 39. 113. The Artists’ Union, which held meetings downtown, had grown

tion. See NARA-DC, entry 564, box 39. 119. Francis O’Connor Papers, reel 1089, AAA. Alston’s salary went

out of the Artists’ Committee for Action, an ad hoc group that

from $103.40 per month to $130 per month. See p. 290, n. 25.

had protested the destruction of Diego Rivera’s Rockefeller Cen-

1 20. Bearden and Henderson, History of African-American Artists, 264;

ter mural in 1933. The union grew in strength when the federal

see also “Creative Negroes: Harlem Has Its Artists Working under

government placed artists on its payroll, as happened with the

Difficult Conditions,” Literary Digest 122 (August 1, 1936): 22.

formation of the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) in Decem-

121. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s message to the 73rd Congress on

ber 1933. Artists’ Union members knew the effectiveness of a

March 21, 1933. I want to thank Joan Sharpe, president of CCC

united position when dealing with federal agencies, and their

Legacy, for providing the source for this citation and Rob Ribera

journal, Art Front, edited by Stuart Davis and later Joe Solmon,

for tracking it down. For the full message, see “21—Message to

carried articles relentless in their attacks against federal poli-

Congress on Unemployment Relief, March 21, 1933,” www.pres-

cies demeaning or damaging to artists. Issues of racism in the art world were occasionally addressed in Art Front, and in those

idency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=14596&st=&st1=. 1 22. John A. Salmond, “The Civilian Conservation Corps and the

instances the editors took the leftist position that what was nec-

Negro,” Journal of American History 52 (January 1966): 75,

essary was “a fighting alliance of Negro and white artists, work-

quoted in Maren Stange, “Publicity, Husbandry, and Technoc-

ers, professionals, and others who feel the sting of capitalist

racy: Fact and Symbol in Civilian Conservation Corps Photogra-

oppression”; quoted in “Editor’s Note” appended to “Harlem Art-

phy,” in Official Images: New Deal Photography, by Pete Daniel,

ists’ Guild,” Art Front 2 (July–August 1936): 5. During the 1930s

Merry A. Foresta, Maren Stange, and Sally Stein (Washington,

African Americans realized that workers had to take collective

DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1987), 66.

action in dealing with their employers and that struggles against

1 23. New York Amsterdam News, October 26, 1935, 2.

racism and segregation were more effective when conducted as

124. Wheat, Jacob Lawrence, 31, in a July 24, 1984, interview of Law-

multiracial actions. Counteracting the oppression of African

rence, quotes his memories of his mother: “We always had prob-

Americans did not mean black nationalism; it meant securing a

lems and frictions. We couldn’t communicate, and because of

place for African Americans at the common table.

that we weren’t very close.”

114. Membership figures and the guild exhibition planned for the

125. “1,400 CCC Youths Enrolled in Large Breeze Hill Camp,” New

American Artists School are noted in Gwendolyn Bennett, “The

York Amsterdam News, February 8, 1936, 2. The article pointed

Harlem Artists Guild,” Art Front 3 (April–May 1937): 20. Pencil

out that the Breeze Hill Camp had the largest CCC concentra-

drawings by Lawrence were included in the guild exhibition,

tion of Negro youth in the country.

held at the 115th Street New York Public Library from April 14 to

1 26. The New York Amsterdam News knew of problems in the CCC

May 15, 1937. Other artists were Frederick Coleman, Athelina

camps; see the June 8, 1935, article, “Racial Hatred Is Studied

Hubbard, Charles Alston, Henry Bannarn, Ronald Joseph, Louis

in CCC Deaths,” which reported that the bodies of young blacks

Vaughn, Vertis Hayes, John Atkinson, Aaron Douglas, Gwen Ben-

had been found on the Trenton Turnpike in New Jersey.

nett, Norman Lewis, and Gwendolyn Knight. The catalogue is

127. “Harlem Boy Slain at Upstate Camp; Cops Nab Suspect . . . CCC

notes to pages

26 – 27  

287

Money Ring Seen in Slaying,” New York Amsterdam News, Feb-

293; for a response, see Alain Locke, “Art or Propaganda?” Harlem 1 (November 1928): 12. See my p. 292, n. 48.

ruary 8, 1936, 1–2. 1 28. “400 CCC Boys Desert Camp,” New York Amsterdam News, February 22, 1936, 1, 16. 1 29. “2 Companies Walk Out in Food Protest,” New York Amsterdam News, February 29, 1936, 1–2. See also an editorial on the CCC

141. See Alyse Abrams, “Harlem Community Art Center,” November 27, 1939, Writers’ Program (New York, N.Y.) Collection, 1936– 1941, Art in New York Section, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, SCRBC.

camp in the February 29 issue. In subsequent issues the News

142. See Ann Craton, assistant to Holger Cahill, to Charlotte E. Carr,

praised the efforts of the CCC. See “CCC Helped 150,000 Negro

director of the Emergency Relief Bureau, September 10, 1935,

Boys,” October 24, 1936, 13; “CCC Youth Given Civil Service

describing McMahon’s position. NARA-DC, RG69, Records of the

Jobs,” March 20, 1937, 2.

Works Progress Administration Office of the National Director,

1 30. Lawrence’s FBI file, dated September 26, 1977, noted that he attended the High School of Commerce, Sixty-fifth and Colum-

Correspondence with State and Regional Offices, NYC 1935 to 1936, entry 564, box 28.

bus (155 West Sixty-fifth Street) “from February 30 [sic], 1935,

143. See Marchal E. Landgren, “A Memoir of the New York City Mu-

and was discharged on February, 1936. Stated appointee dis-

nicipal Art Galleries, 1936–1939,” in O’Connor, New Deal Art

missed because he failed all subjects he was taking. Stated re-

Projects, 269–301. Called the Temporary Galleries at their first

cords indicated appointee completed ninth grade, but dropped

location, four floors in a remodeled brownstone at 62 West Fifty-

out of school during his tenth grade year.”

third Street, they then moved to a second location, an elegant

131. New York Amsterdam News, February 22, 1936, 16, mentions the

townhouse at 3 East Sixty-seventh Street, where they were now

$25 paycheck; Stange, “Publicity, Husbandry,” states that CCC

called the Municipal Art Galleries. Although the exhibition pro-

men “were required to send a substantial percentage of the $30

gram was meant to be democratic, with various artists’ groups

per month wages” to their families. Perhaps the wages fluctu-

applying to schedule exhibitions, it seems that few, if any, Har-

ated, much like FAP wages.

lem artists participated. Of the ninety-five artists shown in 1936,

132. Quoted in Aline B. Louchheim [Saarinen], “An Artist Reports on the Troubled Mind,” New York Times Magazine, October 15,

the first year that Landgren mentions, I do not recognize any as African American. 144. Mrs. E. P. Roberts to Holger Cahill, December 10, 1935, Holger

1950, 36. 1 33. Dates of Lawrence’s service in the CCC were provided by the

Cahill Papers (not filmed), AAA, quoted in A. Joan Saab, For the

“Transcript/Statement of Federal Service,” mailed to author on

Millions: American Art and Culture between the Wars (Philadel-

January 20, 2006, from the Reference Service Branch, National

phia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 58. I am grateful

Personnel Records Center, St. Louis, MO. Three drawings of his

to Joan Saab for sending me a photocopy of the letter.

CCC experience, in the collection of Spelman College, Atlanta,

145. Holger Cahill to Mrs. E. P. Roberts, December 13, 1935, NARA-

are reproduced in Nesbett and DuBois, Catalogue Raisonné,

DC, RG69, Records of the Works Progress Administration Office

218.

of the National Director, Correspondence with State and Re-

1 34. See Francis O’Connor Papers, reel 1089, AAA. Bannarn is listed

gional Offices, NYC 1935 to 1936, entry 564, box 28. FAP ad-

as an “Artist” in the WPA from August 9, 1937, to August 17, 1939.

opted the formula of employing 90 percent of its artists from

Because of cutbacks, his pay went from $95.44 per month to

the relief rolls. To qualify for relief was an arduous and humili-

$9l.10 per month to $90 per month.

ating process that included taking a poverty oath. In Boston,

1 35. “Young Artist Gives Harlemites Chance to See Oils, Sculpture,”

the artist Allan Rohan Crite refused to take the oath, even though

New York Amsterdam News, December 5, 1936, 6. During De-

he and his mother were impoverished. McMahon, “General View,”

cember 1936 Bannarn’s sculpture, oil paintings, and etchings

57, has described the process of becoming qualified for relief.

were on view at the 115th Street branch of the New York Public

146. Federal Works Agency, “Methodology,” 53, WPA P.P. 65–1-97-2063

Library. He later made another sculpture, one of the Arctic ex-

W.P.O., operated from 7/1/40 to 8/2/42, NARA-DC: “The Art

plorer Matt Henson, commissioned by the Theta Chapter of Phi

Teaching Division operates Community Art Centers at which in-

Delta Kappa Sorority for Howard University; see New York Am­

struction is given and which are also used for project activities,

sterdam News, May 28, 1938, 6.

such as exhibitions. Typical of this is the Harlem Community Art

1 36. Elton Fax to Jeff Donaldson, February 10, 1972, quoted in Donaldson, “Generation ‘306,’ ” 112. 137. Blackburn, interview by Billops and Hatch, December 1 and 19,

Center, which is sponsored by a Citizen’s Sponsoring Committee composed of prominent local personages. This group for a considerable period of time paid the rent for the Center’s space, until free space was obtained from the City of New York. This commit-

1972. 1 38. Quoted in Marvel Cooke, “Carving for Posterity,” New York Am­ sterdam News, November 12, 1937, 12.

tee contributes equipment and other items of value from time to time and generally within the limits of its abilities furnishes finan-

139. Ibid.

cial assistance to the center. Similar centers are maintained in

140. W. E. B. Du Bois, “Criteria of Negro Art,” Crisis, October 1926,

Brooklyn and midtown Manhattan.”

288  notes to pages

28 – 30

The midtown center, called the Contemporary Art Center, was

154. See Gwendolyn Bennett, “The Harlem Community Art Center,” in O’Connor, Art for the Millions, 213–15.

housed in the Young Men’s Hebrew Association building at Ninety-second Street and Lexington Avenue, and the Brooklyn

155. The exhibition was Paintings and Sculpture by 21 New York City Negro Artists, held from February 4 to March 4, 1938.

Community Art Center used a building donated by the Ethical Culture Society of Brooklyn. See the pamphlet Federal Art Centers of New York, NARA-DC, RG 69, Correspondence with State and Regional Offices, 1935–40; 1935 to 1936, entry 564, Woodward Avenue in Ridgewood, Queens. John Franklin White,

patrons and the making of a professional artist

ed., Art in Action: American Art Centers and the New Deal (Me­

The epigraphs are from Charles Alston, brochure for Jacob Lawrence

box 28. The Queensboro Community Art Center was located on

2.

tuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1987), 170–75, lists in an appen-

exhibition, 1938, Jacob Lawrence Papers, SCRC; Alain Locke, recom-

dix the WPA community art centers and extension art galleries

mendation of Jacob Lawrence for a Julius Rosenwald Fund grant, 1940,

across the country and their addresses. O’Connor, Art for the

JRFA; Mary Beattie Brady to Charles H. Alston, March 31, 1941, Charles

Millions, 306–7, also lists the WPA/FAP community art centers

Henry Alston Papers, reel N70-23, frame 52, AAA; Jay Leyda to Rich-

across the nation. Both books include essays on individual art

ard Wright, April 18, 1941, Leyda Papers, box 5, folder 21.

centers. 147. “Plan Center for Culture at Y.W.C.A.,” New York Amsterdam News, January 23, 1937, 1. 148. “New WPA Center Opens in Harlem,” New York Amsterdam News,



1. See Greta Berman, “The Walls of Harlem,” Arts Magazine 52 (October 1977): 122–26, and The Lost Years: Mural Painting in New York City under the Works Progress Administration’s Fed­

March 6, 1937, 23, lists the art teachers as Frederick Perry,

eral Art Project, 1935–1943 (New York: Garland, 1978); Diana L.

Charles Smith, Elton Fax, Louise Jefferson, Harold Tishler, Sarah

Linden and Larry A. Greene, “Charles Alston’s Harlem Hospital

West, and Leora Shaw.

Murals: Cultural Politics in Depression Era Harlem,” Prospects:

149. New York Amsterdam News, May 20, 1937, 4. Perhaps by May it

An Annual of American Cultural Studies 26 (2002): 391–421.

was referred to as the Harlem Community Arts Center. The ar-

Romare Bearden and Harry Henderson’s History of African-

ticle said it was “jointly operated by the WPA Federal Art Project

American Artists: From 1792 to the Present (New York: Pantheon

and a sponsoring committee of Harlem citizens.” 150. “Harlem Art Center Ready for Opening,” New York Amsterdam News, December 4, 1937, 15.

Books, 1993), 262–63, briefly discusses the murals. 2. It is not clear whether Lawrence worked on Alston’s murals before or after his employment with the CCC.

151. Simon Williamson, “The Harlem Art Center Opens,” Writers’

3. The protest letter was originally quoted in “Harlem Hospital

Program (New York, N.Y.) Collection, 1936–1941, Art in New

Rejects Murals by Negro WPA Artists,” Daily Worker, February

York Section, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Book Division,

24, 1936, and later quoted in Art Front 2 (April 1936): 3; it is also

SCRBC. According to Charles C. Seifert, The Negro’s or Ethio­

quoted in Linden and Greene, “Charles Alston’s Harlem Hospital

pian’s Contribution to Art (New York: Ethiopian Historical Publish-

Murals,” 414. Dermody’s four objections were paraphrased by

ing, 1938), 13, the other speakers were Joel E. Spingarn, the

the protesters. When told of the controversy by Audrey McMa-

donor of the Spingarn Medal; his brother Arthur Spingarn;

hon, FAP director Holger Cahill replied in a letter of February 4,

Mrs. Mary Simkhovitch; and Rev. L. King. Seifert was on the

1936: “It seems to me that the reasoning of the Commissioner

Citizens’ Sponsoring Committee. See also “Mrs. Roosevelt Fea-

of Hospitals and the superintendent of the Hospital is rather

ture Guest at Art Center,” New York Amsterdam News, December

far-fetching when they assume that the murals painted by negro

25, 1937, 2; [picture spread], New York Amsterdam News, Febru-

artists in a hospital that cares for ninety-five per cent negro per­

ary 26, 1938, 11; “Art Center for Harlem,” New York Age, Decem-

sonnel gives undue emphasis to policies of segregation. . . . I do

ber 4, 1937; James H. Baker Jr., “Art Comes to the People of

believe they should be carried out as originally planned.” NARA-

Harlem,” Crisis 46 (March 1939): 78–80. The opening was also

DC, RG69, Records of the Works Progress Administration Office

covered by the New York Times, December 19, 21, and 22,

of the National Director, Correspondence with State and Regional

1937. For a recent discussion of the circumstances building up to the December 1937 opening, see Calo, Distinction and Denial, 95–104. 152. Seifert, Negro’s or Ethiopian’s Contribution, 13. Coincidentally, the Municipal Art Galleries, 3 East Sixty-seventh Street, opened on December 15, 1937.

Offices, entry 564, box 29. 4. See Patricia Hills, “Philip Evergood’s American Tragedy: The Poetics of Ugliness, the Politics of Anger,” Arts Magazine 54 (February 1980): 138–42. 5. New York Amsterdam News, December 19, 1936, 24, M. and M. Smith photograph.

153. Vivian Morris, “History of Harlem Art Center,” Writers’ Program

6. See Helen A. Harrison, “John Reed Club Artists and the New Deal:

(New York, N.Y.) Collection, 1936–1941, Art in New York Section,

Radical Responses to Roosevelt’s ‘Peaceful Revolution,’ ” Pros­

Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Book Division, SCRBC.

pects 5 (1980): 240–68.

notes to pages

30 – 35  

289

7. The Popular Front policy of the Communist Party (CPUSA), in conformity with the new line the USSR developed at the Seventh

11. See Mark Naison, Communists in Harlem during the Depres­sion (1983; repr., New York: Grove Press, 1984), 214.

Congress of the Communist International held in Moscow in

12. Philip Evergood exemplifies an artist who continued painting

1935, urged an end to radical sectarianism and encouraged

revolutionary themes even during the Popular Front period; see

communists to make alliances with a broad spectrum of liberal

Patricia Hills, “Art and Politics in the Popular Front: The Union

groups, including socialists and New Deal Democrats, in the fight

Work and Social Realism of Philip Evergood,” in The Social and

against war and fascism; see Malcolm Sylvers, “Popular Front,”

the Real: Political Art of the 1930s in the Western Hemisphere,

in Encyclopedia of the American Left, ed. Mari Jo Buhle, Paul

ed. Alejandro Anreus, Diana L. Linden, and Jonathan Weinberg

Buhle, and Dan Georgakas (New York: Garland, 1990), 591–95.

(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006),

For the American Artists School, see Philip Evergood, “Building a New Art School,” Art Front 3 (April–May 1937): 21; and

181–200, 329–33. 13. Louis Lozowick, “Towards a Revolutionary Art,” Art Front 2 (July–

Virginia Hagelstein Marquardt, “The American Artists School:

August 1936): 12. For Lozowick, see Virginia Hagelstein Mar­

Radical Heritage and Social Content Art,” Archives of American

quardt, ed., Survivor from a Dead Age: The Memoirs of Louis Lozo-

Art Journal 26, no. 4 (1986): 17–23. The school closed about

­wick (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997) and

1941.

“Louis Lozowick: Development from Machine Aesthetic to Social

8. See p. 287, n. 114, regarding the Harlem Artists Guild’s exhibition

Realism, 1922–1936” (PhD diss., University of Maryland, 1983).

held at the 115th Street Library from April 14 to May 15, 1937,

14. Harry Gottlieb to Jacob Lawrence, October 4, 1937, Jacob Law-

which showed thirteen artists, including Lawrence. 9. A letter from Sol Wilson, August 26, 1937, awarding Lawrence the scholarship is in the Jacob Lawrence Papers, SCRC. The

rence Papers, SCRC. 15. Jacob Lawrence, transcript of interview by author, July 25, 1983. 16. See Marquardt, “American Artists School.”

American Artists School catalogue of courses for September 21,

17. “American Artists School” [Art Front], 19.

1936, to June 12, 1937, can be found in the Francis O’Connor

18. Another of Lawrence’s works shown was Back Room. The exhibi-

Papers, reel 1090, frames 923–27. Among the twenty-seven

tion also included Ernest Crichlow, William Johnson, Norman

faculty and board of control members were Francis Criss, Hilda

Lewis, Henry Bannarn, Ronald Joseph, and Georgette Sea-

Deutsch, Philip Evergood, Ruth Gikow, Maurice Glickman, Harry

brooke, as well as two works by Gwendolyn Knight. See cata-

Gottlieb, Abraham Harriton, Louis Lozowick, Elizabeth Olds, Wal-

logue, SCRC, reel 4572, AAA.

ter Quirt, Anton Refregier, Philip Reisman, Moses Soyer, Raphael Soyer, and Sol Wilson. The advisory board included well-known

19. “Guild Presents 16 Art Pieces by Lad,” New York Amsterdam News, March 5, 1938, 13.

artists Margaret Bourke-White, Stuart Davis, William Gropper,

20. Jacob Lawrence Papers, SCRC.

and Max Weber, and among the nonartists the critic Lewis Mum-

21. To his interviewers Lawrence frequently recalled Savage’s action

ford, the dealer J. B. Neuman, the print curator Carl Zigrosser,

as a major event of his career.

and the art historians Walter Pach and Meyer Schapiro. Max

22. “Transcript of Employment, General Services Administration,”

Weber wrote a statement, which said in part: “This era calls for

Francis O’Connor Papers, box 16, Jacob Lawrence file (not

a new aggressive and independent art which should serve as a

filmed as of February 2006), AAA. Note that most of the re-

dominant educational and social force. We must have an art that

turned questionnaires sent out by Francis O’Connor are filmed

will cope and interlock with the rapidly changing philosophy of

and located on reels 1087–89. Because of his new status and his

life, an art that will express the new vision, reality and hope, an

new responsibilities, it is doubtful that Lawrence continued at

art that will extricate itself slowly from squander, abuse and

the American Artists School; he admitted to Michelle DuBois

academic servility.” According to a notice, “American Artists

that he did not much spend much time there (Michelle DuBois

School,” Art Front 3 (October 1937): 19, the faculty teaching

to author, e-mail, February 24, 2009).

classes in the fall of 1937 included Alexander Alland, Emilio Am-

23. “Questions for Artists Employed on the WPA Federal Art Project

ero, Francis Criss, Robert M. Cronbach, Hilda Deutsch, Tully

in New York City and State,” prepared by Francis O’Connor,

Filmus, Ruth Gikow, Harry Glassgold, Chaim Gross, John Groth,

completed by Jacob Lawrence, and received by O’Connor on

Charles Hanke, Carl R. Holty, Julian E. Levi, Hugh Miller, Eugene

March 9, 1968, Francis V. O’Connor Papers, box 16, Jacob Law-

Morley, Anton Refregier, Miron Sokole, Moses Soyer, Nahum Tschacbasov, Lynd Ward, and Sol Wilson. See also Marquardt, “American Artists School,” 17. The school, in an attempt to attract

rence file (not filmed), AAA. 24. Quoted in Mort Cooper, “Portrait of a Negro Painter,” Chicago Defender, May 18, 1963, 9.

Harlem youths for the 1938–39 year, announced its program of

25. The eighteen-month rule was a bone of contention with artists.

five scholarships; see New York Amsterdam News, August 6,

Many, such as Charles Alston, managed to requalify; Alston was

1938, sec. 1, 2.

off the projects for about eight weeks in the late summer of

10. Ellen Harkins Wheat, Jacob Lawrence: American Painter, exh. cat. (Seattle: Seattle Art Museum, 1986), 32.

290  notes to pages

35 – 38

1939, and when he rejoined his salary had been reduced. Alston’s salary reached a peak of $130 per month when he was

promoted to supervisor in January 1936; in July 1937, it dropped

de Porres (1579–1639), was the son of a Spanish soldier and a

to $106.16; in September 1938, it went to $91.90; and after

free person of color from Panama, who grew up in Peru and de-

September 1939 it was $87.60. See Francis V. O’Connor Papers,

voted himself to the sick and homeless. He allegedly performed

reel 1089, frames 453–54, AAA. 26. Lawrence’s participation in these exhibitions is noted in Peter T.

miracles and was canonized in 1962. 37. “An Artist of Merit: Pictorial History of Haiti Set on Canvas,” New

Nesbett and Michelle DuBois, “Chronology,” in Over the Line:

York Amsterdam News, June 3, 1939, 11. According to Nesbett

The Art and Life of Jacob Lawrence, ed. Peter T. Nesbett and

and DuBois, “Chronology,” 29, the exhibition came about

Michelle DuBois (Seattle: University of Washington Press/Jacob

through the efforts of Claude McKay, but Brady’s correspon-

Lawrence Catalogue Raisonné Project, 2000), 29. Mary Beattie Brady of the Harmon Foundation was probably involved in cir-

dence indicates she played a major role. 38. Alain Locke, “Advance on the Art Front,” Opportunity 17 (May

culating these exhibitions; a photograph of the New Orleans

1939): 133, reprinted in The Critical Temper of Alain Locke: A

exhibition can be found in the Harmon Foundation file, NARA-

Selection of His Essays on Art and Culture, ed. Jeffrey C. Stew-

MD.

art (New York: Garland, 1983). Locke wrote, “It would be hard to

27. See “To Show Negro Artists’ Work,” New York Amsterdam News,

decide which cause owed the greater debt to Jacob Lawrence’s

April 23, 1938, 20. Other artists in the Brooklyn show were Con-

talents, Haitian national history, Negro historical pride, expres-

rad A. Albrixie and Will Henry Stevens.

sionism as an appropriate idiom for interpreting tropical atmo-

28. Catalogue is in the SCRC, reel 4572, frames 421–22, AAA. The

sphere and peasant action and emotion, or contemporary Negro

works exhibited were (1) Lady with Veil; (2) Bar and Grill; (3) Ice

art. As a matter of fact, all scored simultaneously when this bril-

Peddlers; (4) Bed Time; (5) Shell Shocked, FAP; (6) Shoe Shine

liant series of sketches was exhibited in a special gallery at the

Girl, FAP; (7) Beggar No. 1, FAP; (8) Rain, No. 1, FAP; (9) Rain,

Baltimore Museum of Art’s recent showing of Negro artists.”

No. 2, FAP; (10) Beggar No. 2, FAP; (11) Halloween Sand Bags;

39. See Wheat, Jacob Lawrence, 43.

(12) Back Room; (13) Theatre; (14) Dorrence Brook Square; (15)

40. Quoted in ibid., 44, citing an undated letter in the Jacob Lawrence

Dust to Dust; (16) Peddlers; (17) Christmas; (18) Moving Day [a.k.a. The Eviction]; (19) Subway; (20) Street Orator’s Audience; (21) Interior; (22) Library; (23) Shrimps and Potatoes. 29. J. L., “The Negro Sympathetically Rendered by Lawrence,” Art News 37 (February 18, 1939): 15. Regarding the appellation primitive as applied to Lawrence, see above, p. 279, n. 25.

Papers, SCRC. 41. Lawrence to Locke, n.d., Locke Papers, box 164-44, folder 26. Lawrence refers to having just seen an exhibition of Richmond Barthé’s sculpture at the Arden Gallery, an exhibition that took place during March 1939. 42. Ibid. There are actually thirty-two panels today; see Peter T.

30. Lawrence was in yet another exhibition that February: the Harlem

Nesbett and Michelle DuBois, Jacob Lawrence: Paintings, Draw­

Community Art Center held the Exhibition of Negro Cultural

ings, and Murals (1935–1999), a Catalogue Raisonné (Seattle:

Work, from February 10 to 24, 1939, which included Lawrence

University of Washington Press/Jacob Lawrence Catalogue Rai-

along with other FAP painters Henry Holmes, Palmer Hayden,

sonné Project, 2000) (hereafter cited as Catalogue Raisonné),

John Glenn, Sara Murrell, Selma Day, Vertis Hayes, and Geor-

37–41.

gette Seabrooke, as well as FAP sculptors Francisco Lord, Bab-

43. Lawrence to Locke, September 1939, Locke Papers, box 164-44,

bette New, Helene Gaulois, Elizabeth Mangor, Salvatore Reina,

folder 26. Lawrence states he is replying to Locke’s letter of

Angelo Racioppi, Cesare Stea, Richmond Barthé, Alonzo Hauser,

September 5. Gwendolyn Knight, who was spending time with

and Henry Bannarn. The mimeographed catalogue is at

him, suggested he apply to the Julius Rosenwald Fund to secure

NARA-DC, RG 69, Records of the Works Progress Administra-

a grant for living expenses for a year; see Jacob Lawrence, tran-

tion, Office of the National Director, entry 565.

script of radio interview by Randy Goodman, May 23, 1943, New

31. For information on Allen, see Camara Dia Holloway, Portraiture

York, Downtown Gallery Records, reel 5549, frames 352 ff.,

and the Harlem Renaissance: The Photographs of James L. Al­

AAA. Alain Locke and Jay Leyda obviously concurred with that

len, exh. cat. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Art Gallery, 1999).

plan, since both were instrumental in getting together recom-

Another photograph shows Lawrence with the sculptor Rich-

mendations on his behalf; see Diane Tepfer, “Edith Gregor Halp-

mond Barthé.

ert: Impresario of Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series,” in Jacob

32. See “First Generation of Artists,” Survey Graphic 28 (March 1939): 225. 33. A. D. Emmart, “Modern Negro Art Is Shown,” Baltimore Sun, February 5, 1939, sec. 2, 6. 34. Mary Beattie Brady to Alain Locke, May 10, 1939, Harmon Foundation Papers, box 1, MD, LOC.

Lawrence: The Migration Series, ed. Elizabeth Hutton Turner, exh. cat. (Washington, DC: Rappahanock Press/Phillips Collection, 1993), 131, 138 n. 8. 44. Jacob Lawrence, transcript of interview by James Buell and David Driskell, February 4, 1982, 29, Amistad Research Center, Museum Services Files, Tulane University. It is unclear when

35. Ibid.

Brady gave him the $100; before October 1939 any sale would

36. According to The Columbia Encyclopedia, 3rd ed. (1963), Martin

have jeopardized Lawrence’s eligibility for a WPA/FAP paycheck.

notes to pages

38 – 43  

291

On the basis of her research, Margaret Rose Vendryes, “Art in

51. Lincoln Kirstein, “Confidential Report on Candidate . . . ,” JRFA.

the Archives: The Origins of the Art Representing the Core of the

52. The letters were directed toward the fellowship program of the

Aaron Douglas Collection from the Amistad Research Center”

Julius Rosenwald Fund, an organization founded specifically to

(MA thesis, Tulane University, 1992), 148, surmises that Brady

support the advancement of African Americans. Helen Steel

purchased the Toussaint series for the Harmon Foundation

Grayson, a New York designer, wrote the other recommenda-

“sometime after its exhibition at the Chicago Negro Exposition in 1940.” Brady may not have paid him more than the original $100 “loan.” Lawrence told Buell and Driskell that what was im-

tion. 53. Brady to Locke, April 4, 1940, Locke Papers, box 164-15, folder 34.

portant to him was that the series “remained together.” The ac-

54. Wheat, Jacob Lawrence, 59.

quisition of the works by the foundation tallies with Locke’s be-

55. Jacob Lawrence to Warren Karlenzig, August 7, 1985, Lawrence-

lief, which he had earlier conveyed to Lawrence, that an

Knight Papers (not filmed as of 2006), box 3 of 10 “Misc. K,”

institution would be likely to transfer the works to a museum. The series is now owned by the Amistad Foundation, Tulane Uni-

AAA. 56. For Claude McKay, see Wayne F. Cooper, Claude McKay: Rebel Sojourner in the Harlem Renaissance (New York: Schocken,

versity, New Orleans. 45. Locke Papers, box 154-15, folders 30–36.

1987), and Gary Edward Holcomb, Claude McKay, Code Name

46. Lawrence to Locke, n.d., Locke Papers, box 164-44, folder 26.

Sasha: Queer Black Marxism and the Harlem Renaissance

47. Alain Locke, recommendation of Jacob Lawrence for Julius Rosenwald Fund grant, 1940, JRFA.

(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2007). 57. Regarding Lawrence and Knight as a couple, see Barbara Earl

48. Ibid. The issue of “propaganda” engaged writers in the African

Thomas, “Never Late for Heaven,” in Never Late for Heaven: The

American community. W. E. B. Du Bois argued in his famous ar-

Art of Gwen Knight, by Sheryl Conkelton and Barbara Earl

ticle “Criteria of Negro Art,” 293: “The apostle of Beauty thus

Thomas, exh. cat. (Seattle: University of Washington Press; Ta-

becomes the apostle of Truth and Right not by choice but by in-

coma, WA: Tacoma Art Museum, 2003), 13–14.

ner and outer compulsion. Free he is but his freedom is ever

58. George M. Reynolds, Director of Fellowships, Julius Rosenwald

bounded by Truth and Justice; and slavery only dogs him when

Fund, postcard to Jay Leyda, n.d., Leyda Papers, box 5, folder

he is denied the right to tell the Truth or recognize an ideal of

21. 59. Alain Locke to Jay Leyda, March 5, 1940, Leyda Papers, box 5,

Justice. “Thus all Art is propaganda and ever must be, despite the

folder 21.

wailing of the purists. I stand in utter shamelessness and say

60. Jacob Lawrence to Jay Leyda, envelope postmarked July 15, 1942,

that whatever art I have for writing has been used always for

Leyda Papers, box 5, folder 21. Lawrence’s address was then 72

propaganda for gaining the right of black folk to love and enjoy.

Hamilton Terrace. Perhaps at this time Lawrence gave or sold to

I do not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda.

Leyda Two Men in a Bar, 1941, a painting Leyda later gave to the

But I do care when propaganda is confined to one side while the

Brooklyn Museum. See Nesbett and DuBois, Catalogue Rai­

other is stripped and silent.”

sonné, 56.

Locke replied to Du Bois in his essay “Art or Propaganda?”

61. For a discussion of the murals, see Alejandro Anreus, Orozco in

Harlem 1 (November 1928): 12. “My chief objection to propa-

Gringoland: The Years in New York (Albuquerque: University of

ganda, apart from its besetting sin of monotony and disproportion, is that it perpetuates the position of group inferiority even

New Mexico Press, 2001). 62. Lawrence, interview by Goodman, May 23, 1943. In 1943 he re-

in crying out against it. For it believes and speaks under the

called that he had met Orozco in 1941, that Orozco had seen his

shadow of a dominant majority whom it harangues, cajoles,

work in MoMA’s offices, and that the older artist had asked to

threatens or supplicates. It is too extroverted for balance or

see him. However, Orozco was painting Dive Bomber in 1940,

poise or inner dignity and self-respect. Art in the best sense is rooted in self-expression and whether naive or sophisticated is self-contained. In our spiritual growth genius and talent must

not 1941. 63. “Orozco Completes Fresco at Museum,” New York Times, July 4, 1940, sec. 1; quoted also in Anreus, Orozco in Gringoland, 133.

more and more choose the role of group expression, or even at

64. Elizabeth McCausland, “Jacob Lawrence,” Magazine of Art 38

times the role of free individualistic expression,—in a word must

(November 1945): 254. See also Wheat, Jacob Lawrence, 61,

choose art and put aside propaganda.”

based on her interview of Jacob Lawrence, July 24, 1984, in

49. Edwin R. Embree to Alain Locke, October 10, 1939, Locke Papers, box 164-27, folder 30. Locke and Embree carried on a correspondence from the 1930s to the 1940s. 50. Charles Rogers, “Confidential Report on Candidate for Fellowship (Mr. Jacob Armstead Lawrence),” JRFA. I thank Diane Tepfer for providing me with copies of the recommendations in the JRFA.

292  notes to pages

43 – 46

which he recalled how impressed he was with Orozco “because his work has a certain power.” 65. Jay Leyda to Richard Wright, April 18, 1941, Leyda Papers, box 5, folder 21. 66. Richard Wright to Jay Leyda, May 21, 1941, Leyda Papers, box 5, folder 21.

67. See Jacob Lawrence and Gwendolyn Knight, typed transcript of interview by Paul J. Karlstrom, November 18, 1998, 66, Lawrence-Knight Papers (not filmed), AAA, provided to me by Paul J. Karlstrom. 68. Nesbett and DuBois, “Chronology,” 29. Brady to Locke, Novem-

83. Locke to Halpert, June 16, 1941, Locke Papers, box 164-33, folder 37. 84. See Tepfer, “Edith Gregor Halpert and the Downtown Gallery,” 131 and 139 nn. 10 and 11. Tepfer quotes a Halpert telegram to Locke, Locke Papers: “please phone mrs calkins fortune at once

ber 9, 1940, Locke Papers, box 164-15, folder 34: “Nechau [sic]

can you join me wednesday afternoon at art center .”

at Columbia University School of Architecture, Drawing, Painting

was not dated, but the context suggests that the date for the

The telegram

and Sculpture Department, is putting on an exhibition of the

meeting would be Wednesday, June 25, 1941. Farah Jasmine

Toussaint L’Ouverture series opening about the fifteenth of No-

Griffin, “Who Set You Flowin’?”: The African-American Migration

vember.” Wheat, Jacob Lawrence, 196 n. 9, mentions this and

Narrative (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 14, notes

refers to a letter from Franck Mechare, School of Architecture,

that the “Migration series was exhibited at the Harlem Com-

Drawing, Painting, and Sculpture, Columbia University, to Law-

munity Art Center in June 1941,” but she does not cite the source

rence, April 24, 1949, Jacob Lawrence Papers, SCRC.

of the information; my e-mail query to her did not turn up any

69. See Locke to Pollack, n.d., Locke Papers, box 164-78, folder 4.

concrete information. In conversation with Tepfer during March

Elizabeth Galbreath, “Typovision,” Chicago Defender, October

2008, we concluded there is not enough evidence to assert that

18, 1941, 16, noted that the Tubman panels, “on exhibition at the

Calkins joined Halpert and Locke. I want to thank Diane Tepfer

South Side Community Center in June, drew much favorable

for providing me with a photocopy of the telegram from the

comment.”

Locke Papers. According to Samella Lewis, “Jacob Lawrence,”

70. Brady to Locke, January 23, 1941, Locke Papers, box 164-15, fol­der 35. 71. Brady to Locke, March 18, 1941, Locke Papers, box 164-15, fol­ der 35. 72. Brady to Charles H. Alston, March 31, 1941, Charles Henry Alston Papers, reel N70-23, frame 52, AAA. 73. Brady to Peter Pollack, June 3, 1941, carbon copy, Locke Papers, box 164-15, folder 35. Brady sent the copy to Locke. 74. Peter Pollack to Alain Locke, June 3, 1941, Locke Papers, box 164-78, folder 6. 75. Pollack’s first letter to Locke, May 28, 1939, Locke Papers, box 164-78, folder 5, was written on Chicago Artists Group stationery, which advertised “Original, Signed, Limited Prints.” Pollack was a Jewish American photographer devoted to the cause of helping African American artists succeed. 76. Locke to Pollack, June 6, 1941, Locke Papers, box 164-78, folder 6. 77. Locke to Pollack, July 6, 1941, Locke Papers, box 164-78, folder 6. 78. Pollack to Locke, July 9, 1941, Locke Papers, box 164-78, folder 6. 79. See the Toussaint L’Ouverture prints reproduced in Peter T. Nesbett, Jacob Lawrence: The Complete Prints (1963–2000) (Seattle: Francine Seders Gallery/University of Washington Press, 2001). 80. Brady to Locke, March 11, 1941, Locke Papers, box 164-15, folder 35. 81. For Edith Halpert, see Diane Tepfer, “Edith Gregor Halpert and the Downtown Gallery, 1926–1940: A Study in American Art Pa-

Black Art: An International Quarterly 5, no. 3 (1982): 16, it was Charles Alston, then working on a commission for Fortune, who brought the panels to the attention of the art editor (see also p. 304, n. 60). 85. Halpert to Locke, July 1, 1941, Locke Papers, box 164-33, folder 37. Also on July 1, 1941, Deborah Calkins wrote to Lawrence saying that Fortune had the paintings, and she invited him to For­ tune’s office so that they could have his “explanation” of the first thirty panels; photocopy of letter supplied to me by Diane ­Tepfer. 86. Brady to Locke, July 16, 1941, Locke Papers, box 164-15, folder 35. 87. Lawrence to Halpert, n.d., Downtown Gallery Records, reel 5549, frame 377, AAA. 88. Halpert to Lawrence, July 23, 1941, Downtown Gallery Records, reel 5549, frame 378, AAA. 89. Lawrence to Halpert, n.d., Downtown Gallery Records, reel 5549, frame 379, AAA. 90. Brady to Locke, September 4, 1941, Locke Papers, box 164-15, folder 35. 91. Alston was then working at Fortune, and he helped them make the selection; see p. 304, n. 60. 92. Halpert to Lawrence, August 13, 1941, Downtown Gallery Records, reel 5549, frame 382, AAA. 93. Nesbett and Du Bois, “Chronology,” 30, gives the date as July 24; Lawrence told the radio show host Randy Goodman that they were married on the Fourth of July. Lawrence, interview by Goodman, May 23, 1943.

tronage” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1989); Lindsay Pol-

94. Carl Van Vechten’s photographs, many of which have been

lock, The Girl with the Gallery: Edith Gregor Halpert and the

reproduced in recent books, are housed with the Van Vechten

Making of the Modern Art Market (New York: Public Affairs, 2006); and Tepfer, “Edith Gregor Halpert: Impresario.” 82. Halpert to Locke, June 9, 1941, Locke Papers, box 164-33, folder 37.

Papers. 95. Van Vechten took nine photographs, which he dated July 31, 1941; in seven of them Lawrence wears an ill-fitting jacket. See Van Vechten Papers, box 35. One of the frontal shots in which he

notes to pages

46 – 50  

293

wears the jacket was made into a postcard. See Hughes Papers,

102. Downtown Gallery, press release, December 2, 1941, Downtown Gallery Records, AAA, a photocopy of which was provided to me

box 469, folder 11573.

by the Phillips Collection.

96. Brady to Locke, September 4, 1941, Locke Papers, box 164-15, folder 35, mentions that she “telephoned Mrs. Lawrence at Mrs.

103. SCRC, reel 4572, frame 460, AAA.

Halpert’s office” when she heard from Mrs. Calkins on Tuesday

104. American Negro Art: 19th and 20th Centuries, exh. cat. (New

(September 2, 1941). This provides evidence that Knight did not

York: Downtown Gallery, 1941), Harmon Foundation Papers,

join Lawrence in New Orleans until sometime after September 2,

NARA-MD. The catalogue included a statement from Edith Halp-

unless Brady was referring to Lawrence’s mother, which is highly

ert that the Downtown Gallery “is to inaugurate a special

unlikely. Lawrence, in an interview by Ellen Harkins Wheat, July

art fund

2, 1984, stated that he found the Bienville Avenue place through

by contemporary American Negro artists, such works to be

the Urban League and that Mrs. Jones was the landlady; see

presented to museums and other public institutions. You can

negro

for the purchase of paintings, sculpture, and graphics

Wheat, “Jacob Lawrence” (PhD diss., University of Washington,

help by either making a direct donation, or by purchasing works

1987), 82, 243 n. 23.

of art on exhibition. The Gallery is contributing the entire sales commissions, as well as all its facilities.”

97. See Locke to Pollack, September 5, 1941, Pollack to Chicago artists, October 10, 1941, copy, and Pollack to Halpert, October

105. See Brady to Locke, February 18, 1942, and October 9, 1942, Locke Papers, box 164-15, folder 36.

28, 1941, all in Locke Papers, box 164-78, folder 6. Rich later hired Pollack as a curator of photography, when the latter re-

106. See Halpert to Duncan Phillips, February 5, 1942, Downtown Gallery Records, AAA; and Halpert to Mrs. David M. Levy, Janu-

turned after World War II from serving in the U.S. Army.

ary 17, 1942, Downtown Gallery Records, AAA. Photocopies of

98. Pollack to Locke, August 4, 1941, Locke Papers, box 164-78, folder

both letters provided to me by the Phillips Collection.

6. At meetings Pollack attended of Chicago artists, he attempted to persuade them that it was in their interests to show at the

107. He continued to correspond with Locke during the war when he

Downtown Gallery rather than at McMillen. The artists, however,

was stationed with a Red Cross unit in Africa; see Locke Papers, box 164-78, folder 7.

naturally wanted any kind of exposure they could get as well as sales. Also see Pollock, Girl with the Gallery, 238–39.

108. See “Protest WPA Cuts on Art Project Here,” New York Amster­ dam News, June 24, 1939, 19. The center always had to struggle

99. Locke to Pollack, July 25, 1941, Locke Papers, box 164-78, folder 6. On the same date Pollack wrote to Locke, July 25, 1941, Pol-

to raise money for the rent. The Daily Worker, August 1, 1938,

lack reported to Locke that Sebree was sabotaging the plans.

noted that the students helped to raise $800, since the FAP “pays only for the salaries of the teachers, not for materials or rent.”

“Sebree told John Carlis and others that Miss Halpert exploits young artists as top prices she demands for any contemporary

109. Bennett to Locke, January 31, 1940, Locke Papers, box 164-13, folder 30.

work is $50.00 of which she takes one-third commission. On the other hand, says Sebree, Miss Carroll gets a much greater price,

110. Bennett to Locke, January 24, 1941, Locke Papers, box 164-13, folder 30.

and will pay express charges both ways plus insurance, and also that Miss Carroll has Helena Rubinstein, Frank Crowninshield

111. See her letters of January 24, 1941, and November 30, 1941, Locke Papers, box 164-13, folder 30. Another letter of August

and others as her steady customers.”

23, 1943, tells Locke that she was then at the George Washing-

100. Brady to Locke, September 4, 1941, Locke Papers, box 164-15,

ton Carver School; see Locke Papers, box 164-13, folder 30. A.

folder 35. 101. The McMillen exhibition did open in October. Under “Art Notes,”

Philip Randolph, international president of the Brotherhood of

the New York Times announced: “Canvases by a group of Negro

Sleeping Car Porters, did write a letter to Howard O. Hunter,

artists, most of whom have earned their living as janitors, eleva-

commissioner of the WPA, dated April 28, 1941, to defend Ben-

tor operators and domestics, though several have college de-

nett against charges of communism; see Gwendolyn Bennett

grees, will be shown at the McMillen Gallery, 148 East Fifty-fifth

Papers, SCRBH. The New York Amsterdam News reported her

Street, from Oct. 16 to Nov. 7. Among the artists to be repre-

suspension on its front page on April 26, 1941.

sented are [Beauford] and Joseph Delaney, Charles Sebree,

112. Lawrence to Leyda, July 15, 1942, Leyda Papers, informs Leyda that his new address is 72 Hamilton Terrace.

[Romare] Beardon [sic], John Carlis, Edzier [sic] Cortor, William Carter and Frank Neal. Part of the Frank Crowninshield collec-  tion of African sculpture will be shown at the same time”; clip­ ping, n.d., marked “N.Y. Times,” Locke Papers, box 164-78, folder

3.

african american storytelling

6. Art News had a longer article; see James W. Lane, “Afro-

The epigraphs are from Arthur A. Schomburg, “The Negro Digs Up

American Art on Both Continents,” Art News 40 (October 15– 

His Past,” in The New Negro: An Interpretation, ed. Alain Locke (New

31, 1941): 25. Locke would not have appreciated Lane’s remark

York: Albert and Charles Boni, 1925), 231; and James A. Porter, Mod­

that “he [Locke] has helped in the installation of a most instruc-

ern Negro Art (1943; repr., Washington, DC: Howard University Press,

tive show . . . which has been put up by McMillen, Inc.”

1992), 142. Parts of this chapter were first developed for my essays

294  notes to pages

50 – 57

“Jacob Lawrence’s Expressive Cubism,” in Jacob Lawrence: American

Achievements,” New York Amsterdam News, November 11, 1931,

Painter, by Ellen Harkins Wheat, exh. cat. (Seattle: Seattle Art Mu-

24. Woodson frequently wrote columns for the New York Am­

seum, 1986), and “Jacob Lawrence as Pictorial Griot: The Harriet Tubman Series,” American Art 7 (Winter 1993): 40–59.

sterdam News. 9. William Archibald Dunning, an influential American historian who taught at Columbia University in the late nineteenth century,



1. Quoted in Marvel Cooke, “Carving for Posterity,” New York Am­

popularized the thesis that the South had been ruined by greedy

sterdam News, November 12, 1937, 12; see Chapter 1 for the full

northern carpetbaggers exploiting the vulnerability of white

quotation. 2. During the Popular Front period, communists toned down their advocacy for revolution; see pp. 289–90, n. 7. 3. See Lawrence, transcript of interview by James Buell and David

southerners following the Civil War. 10. Schomburg, “Negro Digs Up His Past,” 231. St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton, Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City (New York: Harcourt, 1945), 394, provide one

Driskell, February 4, 1982, 6, Amistad Research Center, Museum

definition of a “Race Man” as one “who has a reputation as an

Services Files, Tulane University.

uncompromising fighter against attempts to subordinate Ne-

4. Jacob Lawrence, quoted in a Harmon Foundation press release, November 12, 1940, Downtown Gallery Records, reel ND5, AAA. A copy is also in the Harmon Foundation Collection, NARA-MD. 5. Alice Citron, a white teacher who headed Communist Party teacher clubs in Harlem, introduced black history to her pupils,

groes.” I am grateful to Richard Courage for bringing this definition to my attention. 11. Ibid., 236. 12. Lawrence, quoted in Harmon Foundation press release, November 12, 1940, quoted in Wheat, Jacob Lawrence, 39–40.

wrote plays to dramatize black history for her students to per-

13. Karl Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach,” in Karl Marx and Frederick

form, and distributed bibliographies to other Harlem public

Engels: Selected Works in Two Volumes (Moscow: Foreign Lan-

school teachers. She helped spearhead the celebration in the schools of Negro History Week, inaugurated by Carter Woodson; see Mark Naison, Communists in Harlem during the Depression (1983; repr., New York: Grove Press, 1984), 214–17.

guages Publishing House, 1955), 2:404. 14. Harmon Foundation press release, November 12, 1940, quoted in Wheat, Jacob Lawrence, 40. 15. Histories of twentieth-century relations between Haiti and the

6. See Deborah Willis, “The Schomburg Collection: A Rich Resource

United States include Brenda Gayle Plummer, Haiti and the

for Jacob Lawrence,” in Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series,

United States: The Psychological Moment (Athens: University of

ed. Elizabeth Hutton Turner, exh. cat. (Washington, DC: Rappa-

Georgia Press, 1992), and Mary A. Renda, Taking Haiti: Military

hannock Press/Phillips Collection, 1993), 35. Willis draws on

Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism, 1915–1940

Celeste Tibbets, Ernestine Rose and the Origins of the Schom­ burg Center, Schomburg Center Occasional Papers series, no. 2 (New York: New York Public Library, 1989), 21, for this quote from Ernestine Rose, the head librarian: “It occurred to us that if



(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001). 16. See “Hoover Ignores Negroes in Naming Haiti Commission,” New York Amsterdam News, February 12, 1930. 17. Harmon Foundation press release, November 12, 1940, quoted

people will listen to politics and patent medicines they will listen

in Wheat, Jacob Lawrence, 39–40. Although Lawrence said

to education, too, provided it is well presented to them. So we

“Charles” Beard, the famous historian, who with his wife wrote

employed one of the most eloquent and the most popular of these

America at Mid-Passage, he really meant John Reilly Beard, a

speakers and paid him to address large crowds at strategic

mid-nineteenth-century minister who wrote The Life of Tous­

corners on the streets of Harlem. Once a week these people were

saint L’Ouverture, the Negro Patriot of Hayti: Comprising an

urged to come to a meeting at the library. This was one of our

Account of the Struggle for Liberty in the Island, and a Sketch

most successful attempts to reach the ‘common man.’ ” Rose

of Its History to the Present Period (London: Ingram, Cooke,

was originally quoted in Margaret E. Monroe, Library Adult Edu­

1853). James Redpath reissued Beard’s Life of Toussaint

cation: The Biography of an Idea (New York: Scarecrow Press,

L’Ouverture and added a translation of Mémoires de la vie de

1963), 311–12.

Toussaint L’Ouverture, edited by M. Saint Remy; see [John Reilly

7. For Lawrence’s reference to “Mr. Allen,” see Harmon Foundation

Beard,] Toussaint L’Ouverture: A Biography and Autobiography

press release, November 12, 1940, Downtown Gallery Records,

(Boston: James Redpath, 1863). Lawrence probably drew on

reel ND5, AAA, quoted in Wheat, Jacob Lawrence, 39. The press

both books for his captions, as both were in the Schomburg

release can also be found in Harmon Foundation Collection,

Collection.

NARA-MD. As to the identity of Mr. Allen, see Naison, Communists

During January 1934 the 135th Street branch loaned its col-

in Harlem, 123; also New York Amsterdam News, December 15,

lection of Negro history and literature to the Forty-second Street

1934. Another possibility is James S. Allen, who published The

main branch of the New York Public Library, which included two

Negro Question in the United States (New York: International

display cases focused on Toussaint L’Ouverture and Haiti. The

Publishers, 1936), which defined regional nationalisms.

materials, however, were frequently on view at the Harlem

8. “Carter G. Woodson Calls for History Study to Reveal Group

branch; see New York Amsterdam News, January 10, 1934, 15.

notes to pages

57 – 59  

295

In the spring of 1938 the Haitian materials were featured there

be “brilliantly staged, excellently acted and enthusiastically re-

in a special exhibition. Other books that Lawrence may have

ceived.” The play “depicts the attempt of the French to deprive the

studied were James Redpath, A Guide to Hayti (1861; repr., West­

Haitians of their newly found freedom, only to be repulsed by the

port, CT: Negro Universities Press, 1970), originally published by

militant General Christophe and the daughter of a former slave.

the Haytian Bureau of Migration; H. P. Davis, Black Democracy:

That the play departs from the bounds of actual history is of little

The Story of Haiti, rev. ed. (New York: Dodge, 1936); and J. N.

moment. The result is as stupendous as any production ground

Leger, Haiti: Her History and Her Detractors (1907; repr., West-

out by Hollywood cameras and upholds the WPA federal theatre

port, CT: Negro Universities Press, 1970).

tradition of prodigious accomplishment.” See also “Brilliance

18. See John O’Connor and Lorraine Brown, eds., Free, Adult, Un­ censored: The Living History of the Federal Theatre Project (Washington, DC: New Republic Books, 1978). Eugene O’Neil’s play Emperor Jones, about a fictional African

Reigns at ‘Haiti’ Opening,” New York Amsterdam News, March 12, 1938, 16.

Opening night viewers included Rev. and Mrs. Adam Clayton

Powell Jr. and Walter White of the NAACP. Louis Sharp played

American, Brutus Jones, a murderer and con man who travels to

Toussaint; Rex Ingram played Christophe, to be replaced by Ca­

Haiti to declare himself emperor, initiated a series of theatrical

nada Lee when the play moved downtown. Elena Karam, a white

productions. The acclaimed actor Charles Sidney Gilpin played

actress, played Odette, and Alvin Childress played her fa­ther,

the lead role when the play opened in 1920 in New York; Paul Robeson played Emperor Jones in the 1924 London revival and its

Jacques. The play ran for 180 performances. 21. Dessalines did not have the education of Toussaint, but he

movie adaptation of 1933. In London in 1936 Robeson played

was fierce in battle and decisive, with the motto “Koupe tèt,

Toussaint L’Ouverture in the play Dessalines, written by C. L. R.

boule kay” (“Cut off heads and burn everything”). After Tous-

James, whose seminal and much-acclaimed book The Black Ja­

saint’s capture, he led the revolution and defeated the French

cobins was published in 1938. James’s play included a romantic,

in 1803. He was chosen governor-general by his generals and

but fictionalized, relationship between Toussaint and his French

in 1804 proclaimed himself Jacques I, emperor of Haiti. I am

mistress, played by Fredi Washington. See New York Amsterdam

grateful to Lesly René for sharing his knowledge of Haiti

News, February 22, 1936, 8, and March 21, 1936, 8.

with me.

The Federal Theatre Project (FTP) of the Works Progress

22. See pp. 295–96, n. 17. James Redpath, an American, was hired

Administration produced three plays set in Haiti; see O’Connor

by Haitian president Fabre Geffrard in 1859 to encourage migra-

and Brown, Free, Adult, Uncensored. The FTP’s Christophe:

tion of African Americans and African Canadians to Haiti (see

Black Empire, by Christine Ames and Clarke Painter, opened in

Renda, Taking Haiti, 29). The version of Beard’s Toussaint L’Ou­

Los Angeles in March 1936 and later traveled to Seattle. Black

verture that he published (Toussaint L’Ouverture: A Biography

Empire focused on the politics of Haiti at a time when Henri

and Autobiography, 1863) both adds and eliminates sections of

Christophe’s ambitions for empire were being sabotaged. Also,

Beard’s original account: for example, Redpath cuts the section

in November 1936, Langston Hughes’s play Troubled Island (not

devoted to Toussaint’s scriptural studies and the fourth section

an FTP production) opened at the Karamu Theatre in Cleveland

that recounts the period from the evacuation of Haiti by the

by the Gilpin Players. As noted by the Amsterdam News, No-

French to 1853. Instead, Redpath’s fourth section (he calls the

vember 28, 1936, 10, Hughes’s play on Dessalines focused on

sections “books”) consists of the “Memoir of the Life of General

the class struggle between the uneducated blacks and the

Toussaint L’Ouverture, Written by Himself” plus two accounts by

mulattoes who had insinuated themselves into Dessalines’s

Harriet Martineau and John Bigelow of their visits to the Chateau

inner circle, only to betray him and the revolution.

de Joux, where Toussaint was imprisoned and died, as well as

19. John Houseman was in charge of the ambitious production. See

poems written by Wordsworth and John Greenleaf Whittier and

Errol G. Hill and James V. Hatch, A History of African American

excerpts of a speech by Wendell Phillips. The publication, com-

Theatre (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 316–19.

ing in 1863, reinforced the idea that African Americans made

See also Simon Callow, “Voodoo Macbeth,” in Rhapsodies in

good Union soldiers. One assumes that Redpath’s version was

Black: Art of the Harlem Renaissance, ed. Richard J. Powell and

conceived of as a propaganda tool for the Haitian government’s

David A. Bailey, exh. cat. (Berkeley: University of California

project to increase immigration. 23. When the artist William E. Scott visited Haiti in the early 1930s,

Press, 1997), 35–42. 20. For the text of the play, see Pierre De Rohan, ed., Federal Theatre

he painted at least one scene, Toussaint Leads the Slaves to Vic­

Plays: Prologue to Glory, One-Third of a Nation, Haiti (New York:

tory, that refers to the revolution but preferred to paint land-

Random House, 1938).

scapes and genre scenes of present-day Haitians; see Krista A.

The New York Amsterdam News carried several stories on Haiti

Thompson, “Preoccupied with Haiti: The Dream of Diaspora in

during the weeks leading up to its gala opening on March 2, 1938.

African American Art, 1915–1942,” American Art 21 (Fall 2007):

Attending the first performance, the reviewer declared Haiti to

75–97. By 1938 Lawrence certainly would have known the nine-



296  notes to pages

59 – 60

teenth-century paintings of the generals of the American Revo-

24. In 1943 he admitted to radio host Randy Goodman that Gwen-

lution. He would also have known that murals of people living

dolyn Knight had helped him with the texts of his series, but

through historical change had recently been painted by Thomas

the extent to which this occurred is not known; see Lawrence,

Hart Benton and Diego Rivera. Aaron Douglas had done two

transcript of radio interview with Randy Goodman, May 23,

woodcuts representing Eugene O’Neill’s “Emperor Jones” that

1943, New York, Downtown Gallery Records, reel 5549, frames

were reproduced in Theatre Arts Monthly (February 1926) to accompany Alain Locke’s article “The Negro and the American

352 ff., AAA. 25. Cf. Beard, Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture, 27: “he heard the twang

Stage,” Theatre Arts Monthly 10 (February 1926): 112–20, which

of the driver’s whip, and saw the blood streaming from the negro’s

Lawrence may or may not have seen. More likely he saw Doug-

body.” Also quoted in [Beard,] Toussaint L’Ouverture, 38.

las’s portrait of King Christophe, shown in the March 1935 exhi-

26. He made some mistakes in his captions: for example, he mis-

bition Ancient and Modern Negro Art and reproduced in the New

spelled the name of Abbé Raynal (Panel 9), and he stated, in the

York Amsterdam News, March 23, 1935, 9. He may have also

caption for Panel 23, that General L’Ouverture left with five

known of the collaboration of Earle W. Richardson and Malvin

hundred men, whereas Beard, in Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture,

Gray Johnson to produce a set of murals called Negro Achieve­ ment, sponsored by the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) and

88, states the more accurate number of five thousand. 27. My discussion about Lawrence’s cubism was first developed in

slated for the reading room of the West 135th Street branch of

“Jacob Lawrence’s Expressive Cubism,” my foreword to Wheat,

the New York Public Library. The PWAP folded before the murals

Jacob Lawrence, 15–19.

were undertaken, but a study for Toussaint L’Ouverture (1934)

28. Jacob Lawrence, “The African Idiom in Modern Art,” 12, Jacob

survives in the collection of SCRBC; see Jacqueline Francis,

Lawrence Papers, SCRC; subsequently microfilmed for the AAA.

“Making History: Malvin Gray Johnson’s and Earle W. Richard-

The manuscript is most likely a lecture he gave when he visited

son’s Studies for Negro Achievement,” in The Social and the

Nigeria in 1962.

Real: Political Art of the 1930s in the Western Hemisphere, ed.

29. Ibid., 9.

Alejandro Anreus, Diana L. Linden, and Jonathan Weinberg (Uni-

30. Among scholars of epic, particularly Greek epic, the word

versity Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006),

parataxis is used to describe the characteristic of the additive,

135–53.

nonsubordinating style. See references in Erich Auerbach, Mi­

There were, of course, precedents in European art for series paintings of religious figures. Lawrence would have seen in

mesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1957).

books the early fourteenth-century scenes of the life of Christ

White abolitionists such as Ephraim Peabody considered

and of the Virgin Mary that Giotto painted on the walls of the

slave narratives to be modern versions of epic. William Andrews,

Arena Chapel in Padua, Italy. Giotto’s panels had, in fact, been

To Tell a Free Story: The First Century of Afro-American Autobi­

the specific inspiration for Ben Shahn’s series on the trials of

ography, 1760–1865 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986),

Sacco and Vanzetti, exhibited at the Downtown Gallery in 1932.

98, quotes from Peabody’s “Narratives of Fugitive Slaves,”

In conversation with Ellen Harkins Wheat, February 4, 1983,

Christian Examiner 47 (July 1849): 64: “We know not where one

Lawrence maintained, however, that he had never seen Shahn’s

who wished to write a modern Odyssey could find a better sub-

work before he began his own; see Wheat, Jacob Lawrence, 42,

ject than in the adventures of a fugitive slave.”

who corrects Milton W. Brown’s assertion in One Hundred Mas­

31. Lawrence confirmed his method, including lining up the panels

terpieces of American Painting from Public Collections in Wash­

from left to right, in a telephone conversation with me on Janu-

ington, D.C. (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press,

ary 29, 1992.

1983), 170. Lawrence was, however, certainly familiar with the genre of fourteenth-century predella panels—small panels painted on the lives of saints located below large painted altarpieces; such small

32. Quoted in Beard, Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture, 35–36, and Tous­ saint L’Ouverture, 41. Beard quotes extensively from Raynal. 33. These are the people mentioned by Beard in Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture, 54.

works could be seen in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum

34. Margaret Rose Vendryes, “Art in the Archives: The Origins of the

of Art. And even in New York, paintings or sculptural reliefs of

Art Representing the Core of the Aaron Douglas Collection from

the fourteen “Stations of the Cross”—scenes of Jesus carrying

the Amistad Research Center” (MA thesis, Tulane University,

the cross in the hours before his crucifixion—often lined the aisles

1992), 148, has noted the resemblance of Lawrence’s faces, for

of Roman Catholic churches. Moreover, he would have been fa-

example, in Panel 12, to Dahomey appliqué cloth panels pub-

miliar with the photo essays that appeared in Life magazine and

lished in Melville Herskovits. See Melville J. Herskovits, Da­

the photographic books of the late 1930s—in fact, the combina-

homey: An Ancient West African Kingdom, vol. 1 (New York: J. J.

tion of image and long caption was at the heart of the photographic documentary mode (see Chapter 4).

Augustin, 1938), plates 7, 15, 39, and 42. 35. Richard Courage noted on an earlier draft of this chapter that

notes to pages

60 – 70  

297

this was a crucial plot element of Arna Bontemps’s novel about Haiti, Drums at Dusk (1939). 36. For a reproduction of the Maurin lithograph, see Richard J. Pow-

47. Vansina maintains that “ ‘Ancient things are today.’ Yes, oral traditions are documents of the present, because they are told in the present. Yet they also embody a message from the past,

ell, Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture (Chicago: Uni-

so they are expressions of the past at the same time. They are

versity of Chicago Press, 2008), 60. The details of uniform de-

the representation of the past in the present. One cannot deny

picted in the Maurin lithograph, not the details of the engraved

either the past or the present in them. To attribute their whole

frontispiece, are replicated by Lawrence.

content to the evanescent present as some sociologists do, is to

37. In 1797 Toussaint commanded all the French colonial forces in

mutilate tradition; it is reductionist. To ignore the impact of the

Haiti. In 1801 Toussaint invaded the eastern half of the island of

present as some historians have done, is equally reductionist.

Hispaniola, captured Santa Domingo, and declared all slaves on

Traditions must always be understood as reflecting both past

the island free, events not covered in Lawrence’s narrative. It was

and present in a single breath.” Vansina, Oral Tradition as His­

then that the constitution was written. 38. The complex history Lawrence does not tell is the constitutionally stormy period after 1805. Dessalines would be assassinated in 1806, when Henri Christophe and Alexandre Pétion led a coup

tory, xii. 48. Jacob Lawrence, interview by Carroll Greene, October 26, 1968, AAA, www.aaa.si.edu/collections/oralhistories/transcripts/  lawren68.htm.

against him. Christophe then ruled northern Haiti as president

49. Parent-Teacher Bulletin: P.S. 89—Manhattan, December 1930,

until 1811, when he crowned himself King Henri I, a position he

3, Sc371.105P, General Research and Reference Division,

maintained until his suicide in 1820. Pétion governed in the south

SCRBC, noted in Willis, “Schomburg Collection.” I am grateful to

as president. Eventually, after Christophe’s suicide, the northern and southern sections were reunited. 39. Wheat, Jacob Lawrence, 33, also suggests the aesthetics of comic

Chris McKay for tracking down this reference. 50. Aaron Douglas, quoted in the Crisis 39 (January 1932): 449, continues: “Behind her and stretching back symbolically to Africa are the black men and women who toiled and prayed

books as an influence. 40. Sugar is still an issue; see the documentary film The Price of

through three hundred years of servitude, gaining their freedom

Sugar, directed by Bill Haney (Uncommon Productions, 2007).

with the successful termination of the Civil War. A dismounted

41. See Ellen Harkins Wheat, Jacob Lawrence: The Frederick Doug­

cannon with smoking muzzle is beneath the feet of Harriet Tub-

lass and Harriet Tubman Series of 1938–40, exh. cat. (Hampton,

man. The group of figures to the right of the center symbolizes

VA: Hampton University Museum; Seattle: University of Wash-

the newly liberated people as laborers and heads of families.

ington Press, 1991), hereafter cited as Frederick Douglass and

The last figure symbolizes the dreamer who looks out towards

Harriet Tubman Series. Wheat’s text on the two series is an ex-

higher and nobler vistas, the modern city, for his race. He rep-

cellent introduction.

resents the preachers, teachers, artists, and musicians of the

42. Jan Vansina, Oral Tradition as History (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 37, defines griot as a “professional . . .

group. The beam of light that cuts through the center of the picture symbolizes divine inspiration.”

praise singer and teller of accounts.” The term is used in West

51. Douglas’s talk “The Negro in American Culture,” delivered at the

African states. While it is doubtful that the word had a wide cur-

First American Artists’ Congress, February 14–16, 1936, was

rency among nonanthropologists in the United States in the 1930s,

printed in the published proceedings, First American Artists’

it has recently come into street use.

Congress, ed. Stuart Davis (New York: American Artists’ Con-

At the end of the Studio Museum interview a member of the

gress, 1936), 12–16, and reprinted in Artists against War and

audience asked the artist if the oral tradition had any influence

Fascism: Papers of the First American Artists’ Congress, ed.

in the development of his narrative. Lawrence responded by

Matthew Baigell and Julia Williams (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers



saying that while he recognizes that the panels in the Harriet

University Press, 1986).

Tubman and Frederick Douglass series have a “visual rhythm,”

52. During the 1940s, the best account of Tubman was Earl Conrad,

he was “not consciously” constructing them with the oral tradi-

Harriet Tubman (Washington, DC: Associated Publishers, 1943).

tion in mind. In my interpretations here, I attempt to tease out

Since Conrad’s book was first published by International Pub-

the preconscious, or intuitive, narrative strategies of the pictorial

lishers in 1942, his politics would be close to Lawrence’s out-

structure.

look. Conrad’s papers (in SCRBC) reveal his difficulty in getting

43. Lawrence W. Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness:

his manuscript published.

Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom (New

53. Lawrence, telephone interview by author, January 29, 1992.

York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 89.

54. Sarah Bradford, Harriet, the Moses of Her People, expanded ed.

44. Ibid.

(1886; repr., Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1974). Editions avail-

45. Ibid., 51.

able to Lawrence at the Schomburg included those of 1869,

46. Ibid., 134.

1886, and 1901.

298  notes to pages

70 – 76

55. See Raymond Hedin, “Strategies of Form in the American Slave

66. A refrain in Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Narrative,” in The Art of Slave Narrative: Original Essays in Crit­

(1859) makes a similar equation: “Hot weather brings out snakes

icism and Theory, ed. John Sekora and Darwin T. Turner (Ma-

and slaveholders and I like one class of the venomous crea­

comb: Western Illinois University, 1982), 25. Other useful studies

tures as little as I do the other.” Gates, Classic Slave Narratives,

of slave narratives include Andrews, To Tell a Free Story, and Robert B. Stepto, “I Rose and Found My Voice: Narration, Authentication, and Authorial Control in Four Slave Narratives,” ch.

489–90. 67. Lawrence uses a caption found in neither Bradford’s Harriet nor Swift’s Railroad to Freedom.

1 in From Behind the Veil: A Study of Afro-American Narrative,

68. Genesis 30:22–24, 37–50.

2nd ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991).

69. See Erskine Caldwell and Margaret Bourke-White, You Have

56. Hildegarde Hoyt Swift, The Railroad to Freedom: A Story of the Civil War (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1932). The illustrations, by James Daugherty, are done in a naturalistic style, very unlike the style of Lawrence; moreover, Lawrence selects very different moments to represent.

Seen Their Faces (New York: Modern Age Books, 1937), following p. 32. 70. A photocopy of this catalogue is in my archives; source unknown. 71. As noted by Romare Bearden and Harry Henderson, A History

57. Robert W. Taylor, Harriet Tubman: The Heroine in Ebony, introd.

of African-American Artists: From 1792 to the Present (New

Booker T. Washington (Boston: George H. Ellis, 1909). The fron-

York: Pantheon Books, 1993), 192, “While awaiting WPA employ-

tispiece is a redrawn copy of Bradford’s frontispiece.

ment, Johnson began developing a new style for the portrayal of

58. Recent books on Tubman include Jean M. Humez, Harriet Tub­

his people. Impressed by the work of Pippin and Lawrence, he

man: The Life and the Life Stories (Madison: University of Wis-

began painting in what he called his ‘primitive’ style,’ which dif-

consin Press, 2003), and Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman:

fered from the ‘full brush’ style he had developed under Haw-

The Road to Freedom (New York: Little, Brown, 2004).

thorne and extended with his Soutine studies.”

59. See Michael Worton and Judith Still, eds., Intertextuality: Theories

72. The caption of Panel 10 comes from Bradford (Harriet, 29); the

and Practices (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990).

reward notice accompanying Panel 11 is quoted in Swift (Rail­

60. In a letter to Alice Breckler, not dated but received by her on

road to Freedom, 121); the generalized statement for the caption

October 20, 1940, Earl Conrad states he does not want to give

of Panel 12 is found in neither Bradford nor Swift and could be

in to the publishers who want him to emphasize Tubman’s visions. Earl Conrad/Harriet Tubman Research Material; Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Division; SCRBC. 61. Andrews, To Tell a Free Story, 5–6. However, there are many mov­ ing passages of personal experiences in the slave ­narratives. 62. See Henry Louis Gates Jr., introduction to The Classic Slave Narra­ tives, ed. Henry Louis Gates Jr. (New York: Signet Classic, 1987). 63. Bradford, Harriet, 13, with parts of the caption from p. 108. Lawrence was creative in his appropriations—editing, shorten-

Lawrence’s own. 73. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an African Slave (1845), in Gates, Classic Slave Narratives, 320. 74. Whereas Panel 15 was probably Lawrence’s synthesis of many accounts, Panel 16 is drawn from Swift (Railroad to Freedom, 211–12). 75. Aaron Douglas, quoted in the Crisis 39 (January 1932): 449. 76. The captions for both Panels 17 and 18 come from neither Bradford, Harriet, nor Swift, Railroad to Freedom.

ing, and adding his own words. Page numbers are given to Swift,

77. Both captions are drawn from Bradford (Harriet, 33, 39).

Railroad to Freedom, and Bradford, Harriet, only when the cap-

78. The song began: “I’m on the way to Canada, / That cold and dreary

tion comes close to its source. 64. At the end of Bradford, Harriet, is a memoir “cut from the Boston

land, / De sad effects of slavery, / I can’t no longer stand.” It was sung to the tune of “Oh, Susanna.”

Commonwealth of 1863,” which explains Bradford’s version of

79. The caption, found in neither Swift’s Railroad to Freedom nor

the head injury (109): Tubman was hit by a two-pound weight

Bradford’s Harriet, may have its source in the Douglass or John

when she tried to prevent an enraged overseer from pursuing a fugitive slave. 65. Compare such epiphanic moments with the revelation that came to W. E. B. Du Bois when, as a child in Great Barrington, he was

Brown literature. 80. Ellen Harkins Wheat interprets the bird, which also occurs in Panel 30, as a bird of peace. Wheat, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman Series, 37.

snubbed by a girl and realized he was different from the other

81. The Augustus St. Gaudens sculpture relief for the Shaw Memorial,

children: “Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness

Boston Common, also comes to mind as a source. Although

that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and

Lawrence would not have seen the original, he might have seen

life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil.” See

a reproduction.

his essay “Of Our Spiritual Strivings,” in The Souls of Black Folk:

82. The caption comes from Swift (Railroad to Freedom, 346).

Essays and Sketches, ed. Henry Louis Gates Jr. (1903; repr.,

83. Lawrence, interview by Greene, October 26, 1968, www.aaa 

New York: Bantam Books, 1989), 2.

.si.edu/collections/oralhistories/transcripts/lawren68.htm.

notes to pages

76 – 93  

299

84. John Canaday, “The Quiet Anger of Jacob Lawrence,” New York Times, January 6, 1968, 25. 85. Once slaves had made the commitment to flee with Tubman, she

essay “Between Image and Word, Color and Time: Jacob Lawrence’s The Migration Series,” African American Review 40 (Fall 2006): 572, offers a nuanced reading of the series as a “perfor-

would not allow them to turn back for fear of jeopardizing the

mative textual practice”: “The Migration Series is not a series of

whole group.

‘history paintings,’ then, but a textual performance brimming with personal stories about the momentous experience of mi-

4.

the great migration in memory, pictures, and text

The epigraphs are from Alain Locke, “The New Negro,” in The New

gration; differently put, it is a text of remembrance.” 9. I am grateful to Jeffrey Stewart for bringing this aspect of rural unemployment to my attention. See Pete Daniel, “Command Performances: Photography from the United States Department

Negro: An Interpretation, ed. Alain Locke (New York: Albert and

of Agriculture,” in Official Images: New Deal Photography, ed.

Charles Boni, 1925), 6; Richard Wright, with photo-direction by Edwin

Pete Daniel, Merry A. Foresta, Maren Stange, and Sally Stein

Rosskam, 12 Million Black Voices: A Folk History of the Negro in the

(Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1987), 36. The

United States (New York: Viking Press, 1941), 146. Parts of this chap-

act, administrated by the Agricultural Adjustment Administra-

ter were first developed for my essay “Jacob Lawrence’s Migration

tion, encouraged the reduction of crops in order to raise market

Series: Weavings of Pictures and Texts,” in Jacob Lawrence: The Mi­

demand and hence prices for the owners of acreage. Once the

gration Series, ed. Elizabeth Hutton Turner, exh. cat. (Washington,

farmers signed up for the allotment plan, they were policed by

DC: Rappahannock Press/Phillips Collection, 1993).

the Agricultural Adjustment Administration. White and black



Many of the FSA photographs reproduced within Daniel’s essay

sharecroppers (who did not own land) were put out of work. 1. See p. 298, n. 42, for the definition of griot in Jan Vansina, Oral Tradition as History (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 37.

focus on the allotment plans. 10. For example, Benny Andrews’s father, a sharecropper, went to

2. Articles for Art Front, the magazine for the Artists’ Union,

work digging ditches for the WPA.

throughout its years of publication, 1934–37, had urged artists

11. See Carter G. Woodson, A Century of Negro Migration (Washing-

to cope with the underlying causes of economic and social prob-

ton, DC: Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, 1918),

lems. See, for example, Grace Clements, “New Content—New

and Emmett J. Scott, Negro Migration during the War (New York:

Form,” Art Front 2 (March 1936): 8–9. Hugo Gellert illustrated

Oxford University Press, 1920). These books have, of course been

Marx’s Capital in a series of lithographs.

updated by such studies as Campbell and Johnson, Black Migra­

3. Jacob Lawrence, “Plan of Work,” JRFA. I am grateful to Diane

tion; Spencer Crew, Field to Factory: Afro-American Migration,

Tepfer for making available her photocopies of Lawrence’s

1915–1940 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press,

Rosenwald applications to the staff of the Phillips Collection and

1987); James R. Grossman, Land of Hope: Chicago, Black South­

to the authors included in Turner, Jacob Lawrence. 4. Lawrence, “Plan of Work,” 2.

erners, and the Great Migration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989); Florette Henri, Black Migration: Movement North,

5. Other artists of the 1930s made a point to include a variety of

1900–1920: The Road from Myth to Man (New York: Anchor Press,

skin tones in their pictures; see the works of Archibald Motley

1976); Nicholas Lemann, The Promised Land: The Great Black

Jr., William H. Johnson, Isaac Soyer, Philip Evergood, and Diego

Migration and How It Changed America (New York: Alfred A.

Rivera, among others.

Knopf, 1991); Alferdteen Harrison, ed., The Black Exodus: The

6. Daniel M. Johnson and Rex R. Campbell, Black Migration in

Great Migration from the American South (Jackson: University

America: A Social Demographic History (Durham, NC: Duke Uni-

Press of Mississippi, 1991); and Howard Dodson and Sylviane A.

versity Press, 1981), 9, give the figure of fifteen million, based on

Diouf, In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience

Phillip Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade (Madison: University of

(Washington, DC: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Cul-

Wisconsin Press, 1969), 11. However, Johnson and Campbell ac-

ture/National Geographic, 2004). For an excellent study of the

knowledge that estimates vary from 3.5 million to 50 million.

impact of the migration on music, literature, and art, see Farah

7. In the general culture, the most popular migration narrative of the 1930s was John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and the movie (1940), in which the Joads, a white farm family, pick up stakes from Oklahoma and move west to California.

Jasmine Griffin, “Who Set You Flowin’?”: The African-American Migration Narrative (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). 12. See Woodson, A Century of Negro Migration, and Scott, Negro Migration during the War. For the Rosenwald applica-

8. Jane Van Cleve, “The Human Views of Jacob Lawrence,” Stepping

tion, six of Lawrence’s sections are exact quotations from the

Out Northwest 12 (Winter 1982): 34, quoted in Ellen Harkins

chapter headings of Scott. Moreover, in his listing of subhead-

Wheat, Jacob Lawrence: American Painter, exh. cat. (Seattle:

ings, Lawrence followed the development of Scott’s analysis,

Seattle Art Museum, 1986), 60. Jutta Lorensen, in her excellent

except that the artist tended to put a positive spin on his

300  notes to pages

93 – 99

topics. For example, Lawrence lists “the prevalence of mob vio-

Photography in America, 1890–1950 (New York: Cambridge Uni-

lence” as a cause of the migration, but he does not mention

versity Press), xiv, for a useful definition of the documentary

lynching specifically, as Scott does. Lawrence no doubt wished

mode, which includes the photograph, “a written caption, an as-

not to worry his liberal supporters at the Julius Rosenwald Fund

sociated text, and a presenting agency.”

that his series might be inflammatory. Alain Locke, in his recom-

18. See Diane Tepfer, “Edith Gregor Halpert: Impresario of Jacob

mendation to the Rosenwald Fund, had assured them that “there

Lawrence’s Migration Series,” in Turner, Jacob Lawrence, 131.

is little or no hint of social propaganda in his pictures” (Alain

Tepfer’s source for Leyda’s relationship with Lawrence is the

Locke, recommendation for Jacob Lawrence, 1940, JRFA). Other

conversations that the authors of the Migration catalogue es-

examples of Lawrence’s positive outlook came in the section “The

says had during meetings with Lawrence held at the Phillips Col-

Effects of the Migration on the South.” He mentioned that wages

lection, Washington, DC, on June 3, 1992, and January 15, 1993.

for Negroes in some southern cities had increased by 150 per-

On The River, see William Alexander, Film on the Left: American

cent, but Scott stated a more conservative 100 percent. While

Documentary Film from 1931 to 1942 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton

Lawrence declared that “Labor Unions opened their doors to

University Press, 1981).

Negroes,” Scott had said, “The trade unions have been compelled

19. William Stott, in Documentary Expression and Thirties America

to yield, although complete economic freedom of the Negro in

(New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 212, credits the doc-

the South is still a matter of prospect.” Lawrence made another

umentary film as a major precedent for the documentary book

point—“Business decreases to such an extent as to cause the

and quotes Alfred Kazin, “who thought Pare Lorentz had devel-

closing of shops”—not discussed by Scott. Lawrence felt free to

oped this ‘new genre’ in The River[1937], the words and images

appropriate facts from other sources but felt no compunction to

of which ‘were not only mutually indispensable, a kind of com-

follow these sources doggedly. Migrants in the Harlem commu-

mentary upon each other, but curiously interchangeable.’ ” Stott

nity might have told him about the “closing of shops.”

then reminds the reader that earlier books, such as the Pitts­

13. Lawrence, transcript of radio interview by Randy Goodman, May 23, 1943, New York, Downtown Gallery Records, reel 5549,

burgh Survey (1909–14) were also sources for the documentary photo/text book.

frames 352 ff., AAA. Captions here are the original 1940–41

Lawrence worked on conservation projects in the CCC for

captions reproduced in Peter T. Nesbett and Michelle DuBois,

four and a half months in 1936 and may well have seen the film

Jacob Lawrence: Paintings, Drawings, and Murals (1935–1999),

after it premiered in 1937. He knew people in film circles, for in

a Catalogue Raisonné (Seattle: University of Washington

1940 Jay Leyda, then working in the film library of MoMA, intro-

Press/Jacob Lawrence Catalogue Raisonné Project, 2000),

duced Lawrence to Orozco (Lawrence in conversation with the

49–55. Lawrence updated the captions for the 1993 exhibition

Phillips team of exhibition authors, January 15, 1993); see Chap-

at the Phillips ­C ollection, but they were only included as an appendix. 14. According to Maren Stange, “ ‘The Record Itself’: Farm Security

ter 2. 20. As indicated on p. 297, n. 31, Lawrence intended that they should be read from left to right.

Administration Photography and the Transformation of Rural

21. For color reproductions of all sixty panels, see the Web site of

Life,” in Daniel, Foresta, Stange, and Stein, Official Images, 1,

the Jacob and Gwen Knight Lawrence Virtual Resource Center,

“The FSA began in 1935 as the Resettlement Administration

www.jacobandgwenlawrence.org/, or Turner, Jacob Lawrence.

(RA), an independent coordinating agency that inherited rural

22. Regarding the three specific cities: Lawrence might have re-

relief activities and land-use administration from the Depart-

ferred to Scott’s Negro Migration, which had chapters on St.

ment of the Interior, the Federal Emergency Relief Administra-

Louis and Chicago; Lawrence himself was from New York. Gwen-

tion, and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration.” Stange

dolyn Knight’s adopted family took her to St. Louis from Barba-

adds that the RA lost its status in 1937 and then was renamed

dos before she went east; the families of both Langston Hughes

the Farm Security Administration under the Department of Ag-

and Richard Wright had moved from the South to Chicago.

riculture (2). She also notes that Roy Stryker, in charge of pro-

23. Montaged images of crowds of people moving left, right, back

ducing and distributing photographs, “saw to it that, by 1938,

and toward the front were common in the films of the 1920s; one

FSA photographs had appeared in Time, Fortune, Today, Look, and Life” (1). The photographs were also included in exhibitions, such as one at MoMA in 1936. 15. See Carl Fleischhauer and Beverly W. Brannan, eds., Document­ ing America, 1935–1943 (Berkeley: University of California Press; Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1988).

thinks of Sergei Eisenstein’s Potemkin (USSR, 1920). 24. Scott, Negro Migration, 53, made the point that when northern white workers moved to higher-paid jobs in munitions plants they left a gap in the ranks of the common laborers. 25. Lawrence recalled, during his conversation with the curator and authors of the Migration exhibition catalogue in June 1992, that

16. Stange, “ ‘The Record Itself,’ ” 1.

this scene was intended to represent the view from the window.

17. See Maren Stange, Symbols of Ideal Life: Social Documentary

The panel has an uncanny resemblance to Arthur Dove’s Fields

notes to pages

99 – 101  

301

of Grain as Seen from a Train (1931, Albright-Knox Art Gallery,

addition to Frazier’s Negro Family, Charles W. Taussig’s Rum,

Buffalo, NY). See Lorensen, “Between Image and Word,” 577–81,

Romance and Rebellion, Arthur Raper and Ira De A. Reid’s

for an analysis of the colors and imagery of Panels 6 and 7.

Sharecroppers All, Elizabeth Lawson’s History of the American

26. Woodson, Century of Negro Migration, 168. Woodson cites the

Negro People, 1619–1918, Louis Wirth’s “Urbanism as a Way of

Crisis, July 1917, as a source. 27. A provocative analogy would be to the Kuba cloth of Africa, which seems to show a fixed repetition of forms, when in fact it confounds expectations of pattern regularity.

Life” (American Journal of Sociology 44[July 1938]), and Horace R. Cayton and George S. Mitchell’s Black Workers and the New Unions. Recent scholars have focused on the Chicago School of So-

28. Milton W. Brown, in the essay for the first major retrospective

ciology, rather than Marxism, as Wright’s influence, as did

exhibition of Lawrence’s work, was the first to point out that

Wright himself after he had rejected the Communist Party. In a

these captions must be thought of as texts “for which the pic-

lengthy introduction to St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton,

ture is a visual equivalent or symbol, rather than a literal illus-

Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City (New

tration.” See Milton W. Brown, Jacob Lawrence, exh. cat. (New

York: Harcourt, Brace, 1945), xviii, Wright wrote that he had en-

York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1974), 11. Panel 13 can

countered “the work of men who were studying the Negro com-

also be seen as a triplet with Panels 14 and 15; the point is that

munity, amassing facts about urban Negro life, and I found that

viewers can get involved in the rhythm of the whole.

sincere art and honest science were not far apart, that each

29. For Eisenstein’s concept of “ideational size,” see Sergei Eisen-

could enrich the other. The huge mountains of fact piled up by

stein, Film Form: Essays in Film Theory, ed. and trans. Jay Leyda

the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago gave

(1949; repr., New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977).

me my first concrete vision of the forces that molded the urban

30. Lawrence did not know it at the time, but his sister Geraldine was to die of tuberculosis in 1944.

Negro’s body and soul.” He then cited the influence on him of Robert E. Park, Robert Redfield, and Louis Wirth. For discus-

31. Locke, “New Negro,” 7.

sions of the Chicago School’s influence on Wright’s thought, see

32. I had the good fortune to look at these panels with Jeffrey Stew-

John M. Reilly, “Richard Wright Preaches the Nation: 12 Million

art as they hung at the Phillips in June 1992; I am grateful to him

Black Voices,” Black American Literature Forum 16 (Autumn

for pointing out the policeman’s baton.

1982): 116–19; Maren Stange, “ ‘Not What We Seem’: Image and

33. Relevant to Lawrence’s series is Mary Douglas, Thinking in Cir­

Text in 12 Million Black Voices,” in Iconographies of Power: The

cles: An Essay on Ring Composition (New Haven, CT: Yale Uni-

Politics and Poetics of Visual Representation, ed. Ulla Hasel-

versity Press, 2007).

stein, Berndt Ostendorf, and Peter Schneck (Heidelberg: Univer-

34. J. Hillis Miller, “Narrative,” in Critical Terms for Literary Study, ed.

sitätsverlag, 2003), 177; and Robert Bone and Richard Courage,

Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin (Chicago: University of

“ ‘Sincere Art and Honest Science’: Bronzeville and the Docu-

Chicago Press, 1990), 70, has observed: “If we need stories to

mentary Spirit,” ch. 7 of The Muse in Bronzeville: African Amer­

make sense of our experience, we need the same stories over and

ican Creative Expression in Chicago, 1928–1950 (New Bruns-

over to reinforce that sense making. Such repetition perhaps reassures by the reencounter with the form that the narrative gives to life. . . . The repetitions within the pattern are pleasurable in themselves, and they give pleasure when they are repeated.”

wick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, forthcoming). 38. Wright, 12 Million Black Voices, 149, and Hazel Rowley, Richard Wright: The Life and Times (New York: Henry Holt, 2001), 236–37. 39. See Rowley, Richard Wright, 189–90, 249–51; see also Stange,

35. Locke, New Negro, 6.

“ ‘Not What We Seem,’ ” 174, 175. As to the advice about photo-

36. Rosskam had successfully done earlier books using FSA photo-

graphs, see Wright Papers, box 62, folder 730.

graphs, such as Washington, Nerve Center (New York: Alliance

40. The figure of 1,500 photographs comes from Horace R. Cayton,

Book Corp., 1939) and San Francisco, West Coast Metropolis

“Wright’s New Book More Than a Study of Social Status,” Pitts­

(New York: Alliance Book Corp., 1939).

burgh Courier, November 15, 1941, reprinted in Richard Wright:

37. In a late draft, Wright listed in his foreword thirteen sources that

The Critical Reception, ed. John M. Reilly (New York: Burt Frank-

he “relied on most heavily.” But in the “setting typescript,” and

lin, 1978), 104–5. For other accounts of this project, see Nicho-

consequently the book (see p. 6), seven sources had been elim-

las Natanson, The Black Image in the New Deal: The Politics of

inated: E. Franklin Frazier’s The Negro Family in Chicago (al-

FSA Photography (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press,

though the published book included Frazier’s The Negro Family

1992), 244–55; Stange, “ ‘Not What We Seem,’ ” 173–86; and

in the United States); Joseph Stalin’s Marxism and the National

Bone and Courage, “ ‘Sincere Art and Honest Science.’ ”

and Colonial Question; Hortense Powdermaker’s After Freedom;

41. Other than the two letters in the Leyda Papers (from Leyda to

John Dollard’s Caste and Class in a Southern Town; Karl Mann­

Wright, and Wright’s reply), no further letters have surfaced in

heim’s Ideology and Utopia; Scott Nearing’s Black America; and

the Wright Papers at Yale.

Peter F. Drucker’s The End of Economic Man. See Wright Papers,

42. I want to thank Kim Sichel and Richard Courage for suggesting

box 62, folders 730 and 732. The published version listed, in

a few pithy phrases that I have incorporated into this section.

302  notes to pages

101 – 121

Note that the reprint does not include the subtitle “A Folk His-

of those forces that tended to reshape our folk consciousness,

tory of the Negro in the United States.”

and a few of us stepped forth and accepted within the confines

43. Wright, 12 Million Black Voices, xix.

of our personalities the death of our old folk lives, an acceptance

44. This section also contains a photo spread of six photographs,

of a death that enabled us to cross class and racial lines, a death

the captions of which were culled by Rosskam from Wright’s text to describe late 1930s types: “The black maid,” “The black in-

that made us free.” 51. Lawrence admired Wright’s Native Son and found the portrayal

dustrial worker,” The black stevedore,” “The black dancer,” “The

of Bigger Thomas very powerful; see Jacob Lawrence and Gwen-

black waiter,” and “The black sharecropper.”

dolyn Knight, typed transcript of interview by Paul J. Karlstrom,

45. The contemporary artist Whitfield Lovell deals with imagery of ancestral portraits. 46. The actual authorship of the captions was a sensitive issue to

November 18, 1998, 66, Lawrence-Knight Papers (not filmed), AAA, provided to me by Paul J. Karlstrom. 52. Lorensen, “Between Image and Word,” 582–84, interprets the

Rosskam, who criticized Leonard Lyons for his review of the

frontal poses in Panel 60 as an assertion of the migrants’ “ar-

book in the New York Post. Rosskam insisted that Wright wrote

ticulated subject position,” one that fosters a we/you relationship

“much more than captions” as his contribution to the book. See

between the artist and the viewer. On June 3, 1992, when Henry

Rosskam to Lyons, September 26, 1941, copy, Wright Papers,

Louis Gates Jr. interviewed Jacob Lawrence at the Phillips Col-

box 105, folder 1585. Probably the very short page captions were

lection, Gates remarked, “There is no American culture without

drawn from Wright, but maybe edited by Rosskam.

black American culture,” and Lawrence replied, “You can’t say . . .

47. Reilly, “Richard Wright Preaches,” 117. See also John M. Reilly,

they did it: We did it. We did it together.” See Jacob Lawrence,

“Reconstruction of Genre as Entry into Conscious History,” Black

transcript of interview by Henry Louis Gates Jr., June 3, 1992, 7,

American Literature Forum 13 (Spring 1979): 3–6, and Jack B.

Phillips Collection, portions of which are published in Elsa South-

Moore, “The Voice in 12 Million Black Voices,” Mississippi Quar­

gall, ed., Jacob Lawrence and the Migration Series (Washington,

terly 42 (Fall 1989): 415–24. Moore, while acknowledging Reilly’s insights, focuses on the parallels with 1930s documentary film, not only Pare Lorentz’s The Plow That Broke the Plains and The

DC: Phillips Collection, 2007). 53. In an afterword, “About the Photographs,” 149, Rosskam reckoned some sixty-five thousand pictures were in the FSA files.

River, but also the March of Time movie shorts shown in movie

54. Rothstein did several FSA photographs of evicted sharecroppers

houses along with feature films. Natanson, Black Image, 250, is

along U.S. Highway 60, reproduced in Natanson, Black Image,

critical of Wright’s single-minded focus on fundamentalist religion, which “contrasted notably with the original Easter Sunday

120–28; not all of them are black. 55. See Natanson, Black Image, 247. The image of Lint Shaw, lynched

survey by Lee and Rosskam” in Chicago’s churches. The quota-

on April 28, 1936, near Royston, Georgia, was reproduced in the

tion from Wright in the text uses ellipses to both open and end the

Crisis 43 (June 1936).

paragraph. Only the internal ellipsis is mine. 48. Unlike Lawrence’s narrative, Wright’s text acknowledges that the

56. The first major traveling exhibition of lynching photography was Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America. A book of

migration consisted of “thousands of the poor whites also pack-

the same name with essays by James Allen, Hilton Als, Congress­

ing up to move to the city” (12 Million Black Voices, 93). The

man John Lewis, and Leon F. Litwack was published in Santa Fe,

white sharecroppers, although not the victims per se of Jim

NM, by Twin Palms Publishers in 2000.

Crow, nonetheless were evicted from their homes when farm

57. Another photographic version of the lynched Shaw is in the 1988

owners contracted with the government to decrease their pro-

reissue of 12 Million Black Voices: same victim, with the photog-

ductive acreage. Both races are the subjects of Arthur Roth-

rapher moving to capture a more frontal shot, but in this instance

stein’s photographs of New Madrid County, Missouri. Neither

another group of white men is shown. The unknown photographer

Lawrence nor Wright discusses the evictions that occurred be-

obviously intended the photographs as mementos for more than

cause of the Agricultural Adjustment Act; see my p. 300, n. 11.

one group of white men.

49. Lawrence did not paint pictures of emotional congregants raising

58. Griffin, “Who Set You Flowin’?,” begins her first chapter with a

their arms and praising the Lord. Gwendolyn Knight was an

meditation on this painting and other works by Lawrence; see

Episcopalian from Barbados and did not go for the kind of emo-

13 ff. The art historian Alona Wilson recalls Lawrence discussing

tionalism seen in photographs of southern Baptists. 50. Wright’s views are not surprising, given his involvement with the

the work at the St. Louis Art Museum in 1994, when the Migra­ tion series was on view: “He spoke in front of Panel No. 15 about

Communist Party. He pointed out that “many unemployed white

the subject of the panel, lynching. To paraphrase his words, he

workers joined with us on a national scale to urge relief mea-

spoke about why he painted the back of a seated person with

sures and adequate housing” (12 Million Black Voices, 144) and

head downward and an empty noose hanging from a barren tree.

that black workers had become friends with their white com-

He said that he chose not to paint the violence of the act of

rades. To Wright such integration had a positive effect: “In this

lynching but instead wanted to show the loss. The seated person

way we encountered for the first time in our lives the full effect

was alone. He wanted to depict the loss and loneliness that

notes to pages

121 – 129  

303

­followed the lynching. For this loss could be a friend, a brother,

is down South, he does not find much hospitality and recreation

a cousin, a sister, or a father leaving the seated person alone.”

in the civilian communities outside. This, rather than experi-

E-mail to author, April 6, 2007.

ences of their actual army life, is what Negro soldiers complain

59. One would expect critical acclaim for Richard Wright upon pub-

about. Every army’s petty enemy, the boredom of repeated eve-

lication of 12 Million Black Voices that November 1941. Ralph

nings spent inside the barracks, strikes the Negro soldier as just

Thompson, writing in the New York Times, said: “A more elo-

another liability of segregation.”

quent and belligerent statement of its kind could hardly have

69. Lawrence did not want the series split up; however, he was per-

been devised. Mr. Wright’s text is neither ‘impartial’ nor does it

suaded to do so when he was told that the two museums were

attempt to show ‘all sides’; it is a stinging indictment of Ameri-

vying for them. See Lawrence, interview by Gates, June 3, 1992,

can attitudes toward the Negro over a period of 300 years.” The

24. MoMA took the even numbers because the actual purchaser

New York Sunday Worker called it “perhaps the first realistic,

for MoMA, Mrs. Adele Rosenwald Levy (daughter of Julius

class-conscious narrative of the Negro people in the United

Rosenwald), liked Panel 46; the Phillips Collection took the odd

States ever to be gotten together.” Samuel Sillen, writing for New Masses, declared that Wright “has depicted the basic pat-

numbers. 70. The rental fee was $50 for a three-week exhibition; it traveled to

terns of that complex experience[of the Negro people in America]

Vassar College (New York); the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts

in its movement from the debased forms of feudalism toward the

(Michigan); the Currier Gallery of Art (New Hampshire); the Ad-

industrial and urban society of the twentieth century.” Such re-

dison Gallery of American Art (Massachusetts); Wheaton Col-

views were just more notches in his rifle of social commentary—

lege (Massachusetts); the California Palace of the Legion of

whether fiction or nonfiction. All three are reprinted in Reilly,

Honor; the Portland Art Museum (Oregon); the E. B. Crocker Art

Richard Wright.

Gallery (California); Mr. William Hill of Los Angeles; the Principia,

60. Charles Alston informed Romare Bearden and Harry Henderson

St. Louis (Missouri); Indiana University; West Virginia State Col-

that behind the scenes at Fortune Alston had helped Deborah

lege; Lyman Allen Museum (Connecticut); and Harvard Univer-

Calkins, assistant to the art director, select the Lawrence paint-

sity (Massachusetts). See MoMA Archives, Queens.

ings; see Romare Bearden and Harry Henderson, A History of African-American Artists: From 1792 to the Present (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993), 264. See my Chapter 2 for the negotiations over payment finessed by Edith Halpert. 61. Locke to Peter Pollack, “Tues” (sometime in October 1941), Locke Papers, box 164-78, folder 4. See also Chapter 2.

71. Emay Twining to Roy Stryker, September 17, 1942, MoMA Archives, Queens. 72. The titles Twining cited in her request were almost the verbatim titles listed in the back pages of 12 Million Black Voices to identify the photographs. 73. Monroe Wheeler, director of exhibitions at MoMA, wrote a memo

62. The twenty-six pictures chosen to be reproduced in “ ‘. . . And the

to Elodie Courter, August 1, 1944, saying he was in favor of keep-

Migrants Kept Coming’: A Negro Artist Paints the Story of the

ing the panels for a MoMA showing and wanted to include five of

Great American Minority,” Fortune, November 1941, 102–9, were

the Coast Guard paintings. Eventually eight Coast Guard paint-

Nos. 1, 4, 8, 9, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 22, 24, 28, 40, 42, 45, 48, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, and 60. This includes the scenes of the lynching noose (Panel 16), the race riot (Panel 52), the firebombed building (Panel 51), and the southern policeman arrest-

ings were shown. See MoMA Archives. 74. Lawrence was on active duty in the Coast Guard but was given leave to attend the opening; see Chapter 5, Fig. 102. 75. Clipping included in Exhibition Scrapbook, No. 61, MoMA Ar-

ing the migrants (Panel 42). The editors of Fortune abbreviated

chives, Queens. It was typical for critics at the time to use words

many of Lawrence’s captions but did not essentially censor his

such as primitive when discussing the art of African Americans.

words, except for Panel 42, where the caption states that the

See p. 279, n. 25.

migrants “were held in the railroad station” rather than using

76. Art Digest 19 (November 1, 1944): 7.

Lawrence’s words, “They . . . arrested the Negroes wholesale.”

77. Art News, October 15, 1944, 15. Louchheim wrote under the name

63. Henry R. Luce, “The American Century,” Life, February 17, 1941,

Aline Saarinen after she married Eero Saarinen. 78. Catlett’s article was titled “Artist with a Message,” People’s Voice,

63. 64. “ ‘ . . . And the Migrants Kept Coming,’ ” 102.

clipping dated October 21, 1944, Exhibitions Scrapbook, No. 61, MoMA Archives, Queens.

65. Ibid., 108. 66. See “The Negro’s War,” Fortune, June 1942, 77–80, 157–58, 160,

79. Ibid. 80. Jacob Lawrence to Jane Lang of the Sprenger-Lang Foundation,

162, 164. 67. Ibid., 77–78.

Washington, DC, May 12, 2000, Lawrence-Knight Papers, Estate

68. Ibid., 80. The caption reads in part: “In his military camp the

of Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence, Seattle, 2006, promised gift

Negro soldier gets training and food of the same quality, and in the same quantities, as his white fellow soldier. But if the camp

304  notes to pages

129 – 133

to AAA. 81. Lawrence, “Plan of Work,” 2.

5.

confrontations with the jim crow south in the 1940 s

The epigraphs are from Langston Hughes, “Here to Yonder,” Chi­

News, January 8, 1930, for a review of Walter White, Rope and Faggot: A Biography of Judge Lynch (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1929). 9. For recent studies on lynching, see W. Fitzhugh Brundage, Under

cago Defender, February 13, 1943, 14; and Dora Apel, Imagery of

Sentence of Death: Lynching in the South (Chapel Hill: Univer-

Lynching: Black Men, White Women, and the Mob (New Brunswick,

sity of North Carolina Press, 1997); Orlando Patterson, Rituals

NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004), 81. Parts of this chapter were

of Blood: Consequences of Slavery in Two American Centuries

first developed for “ ‘In the Heart of the Black Belt’: Jacob Lawrence’s

(New York: Basic Books, 1998), ch. 2; James Allen, Hilton Als,

Commission from Fortune to Paint the South,” International Review

Congressman John Lewis, and Leon F. Litwack, Without Sanctu­

of African American Art 19, no. 1 (2003): 28–36.

ary: Lynching Photography in America (Santa Fe, NM: Twin



The Lynching of Black America (New York: Random House,

Palms, 2000); Philip Dray, At the Hands of Persons Unknown: 1. Quoted in Bennett Schiff, “The Artist as Man in the Street,” New York Post Sunday Magazine, March 26, 1961, 2.

2002); Apel, Imagery of Lynching; Jonathan Markovitz, Legacies

2. According to Cheryl Lynn Greenberg, “Or Does It Explode?”: Black

of Lynching: Racial Violence and Memory (Minneapolis: Univer-

Harlem in the Great Depression (New York: Oxford University

sity of Minnesota Press, 2004); Jacqueline Goldsby, A Spec­

Press, 1991), 250 n. 11, “Of 224,670 blacks in Manhattan in

tacular Secret: Lynching in American Life and Literature (Chi-

1930, 47,642 were born in New York State, 124,087 others were

cago: University of Chicago Press, 2006); and Dora Apel and

native-born non-New Yorkers, and 39,833 were foreign-born

Shawn Michelle Smith, Lynching Photographs (Berkeley: Univer-

blacks.” She cites the U.S. Bureau of the Census publication Ne­

sity of California Press, 2007).

groes in the United States, 1920–1932 (Washington, DC: U.S.

10. Annual Reports of the NAACP, 1930–1935, quoted in Raymond

Department of Commerce, 1935), 32. See also Gilbert Osofsky,

Wolters, Negroes and the Great Depression: The Problem of

Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto, Negro New York, 1890–1930

­Economic Recovery (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1970), 116. The

(1963; repr., New York: Harper and Row, 1966). The foreign born

NAACP reports drew on statistics from Tuskegee Institute.

were mainly from the Caribbean. The point is that there was

11. See, for example, October 25, 1933—editorial cartoon referring

never one homogeneous “black community”; there were many. 3. George S. Schuyler, “What the Negro Thinks of the South,” Negro Digest 3 (May 1943): 53.

to George Armwood lynched by a Maryland mob; March 9, 1935—photo of Abraham Smith and Thomas Shipp lynched in Indiana; September 21, 1935—editorial cartoon referring to

4. Langston Hughes, “He’d Leave Him Dying,” Chicago Defender,

­Edward Higginbotham lynched in Mississippi; July 18, 1936—­-

December 19, 1942, 14. A selection of Hughes’s columns can be

editorial cartoon contrasting the South and the North; October

found in Christopher C. De Santis, Langston Hughes and the

22, 1938—W. C. Williams lynched in Louisiana (five thousand

Chicago Defender (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995). In

came to view the body). John Wilson, a Boston African American

many of these columns, Langston Hughes discussed his atti-

artist born in 1922, told me in a 1995 interview that he had

tudes about the South and his experiences of riding in segre-

grown up in a family that subscribed to black newspapers. The

gated trains. 5. Jane Van Cleve, “The Human Views of Jacob Lawrence,” Stepping

weekly references to lynchings in the newspapers made a strong impression on Wilson and affected his subsequent artwork; see

Out Northwest 12 (Winter 1982): 34, quoted in Ellen Harkins

Patricia Hills, “A Portrait of the Artist as an African-American: 

Wheat, Jacob Lawrence: American Painter, exh. cat. (Seattle:

A Conversation with John Wilson,” in Dialogue: John Wilson/

Seattle Art Museum, 1986), 60.

Joseph Norman, introd. Edmund Barry Gaither and Shelley R.

6. For a history of black newspapers in the 1930s, particularly the New York Amsterdam News, by one of its reporters, see Roi ­O ttley, “New World A-Coming”: Inside Black America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1943), 268–88. 7. Whenever I visited Lawrence in Seattle during the 1990s to

Langdale, exh. cat. (Boston: Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists/Museum of Fine Arts, 1995), 31. 12. For a synopsis of events, see Douglas O. Linder, “The Trials of ‘The Scottsboro Boys,’ ” 2008, www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/  projects/fTrials/scottsboro/scottsb.htm.

conduct interviews, he would begin by pointing to the New York

13. On labor organizers in the South, see Robin D. G. Kelley, Hammer

Times and asking me what I thought of the then current news

and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression

events. He avidly read newspapers. In 1992 Lawrence recalled

(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990).

Kelly Miller, a Howard University professor and a regular colum-

14. The editors of the New York Amsterdam News, vexed by President

nist for the Amsterdam News, who “was quoted quite a bit at

Roosevelt’s failure to comment on lynchings, published a large

that time”; see Lawrence, transcript of interview by Henry Louis

two-column blank space on the front page of the January 12,

Gates Jr., June 3, 1992, 2, Phillips Collection.

1935, issue, with the headline “Here’s Mr. Roosevelt’s Message

8. See J. A. Rogers, “Rambling Ruminations,” New York Amsterdam

on Lynching,” to dramatize Roosevelt’s failure to comment.

notes to pages

135 – 137  

305

15. On the lynching exhibitions, see Marlene Park, “Lynching and

23. Langston Hughes devoted most of his Chicago Defender column

Antilynching: Art and Politics in the 1930s,” Prospects 18 (1993):

of May 10, 1947, to the nonadmittance of blacks to whites-only

311–65; Helen Langa, “Two Antilynching Art Exhibitions: Politi-

hospitals. The story that Smith was refused admittance to a

cized Viewpoints, Racial Perspectives, Gendered Constraints,”

whites-only hospital and subsequently died en route to a hos-

American Art 13, no. 1 (1999): 10–39; Margaret Rose Vendryes,

pital for blacks, reported in the November 1937 issue of Down

“Hanging on Their Walls: An Art Commentary on Lynching, the

Beat magazine, has since been discredited; she apparently died

Forgotten 1935 Art Exhibition,” in Race Consciousness: African-

after she arrived in the local black hospital, although the delay

American Studies for the New Century, ed. Judith Jackson Fos-

was a factor. However, hospitals were also segregated in the

sett and Jeffrey A. Tucker (New York: New York University Press,

North. The New York Amsterdam News reported in its March

1997); Andrew Hemingway, Artists on the Left: American Artists

20, 1937, issue, p. 1, that the sick wife of W. C. Handy was not

and the Communist Movement, 1926–1956 (New Haven, CT: Yale

admitted to Knickerbocker Hospital in Manhattan and died in

University Press, 2002), 64–67; Apel, Imagery of Lynching,

the ambulance, which had waited an hour. 24. “Escaped Twice from Prison Farms in South,” New York Amster­

83–131. 16. See[NAACP,] An Art Commentary on Lynching (New York: Ar-

dam News, December 25, 1937, 24. The New York Amsterdam

thur U. Newton Galleries, 1935), an eight-page catalogue listing

News, January 1, 1938, 20, reported that he had been given a

the artists, reproducing six artworks, and printing short essays

reprieve. However, on January 22, 1938, p. 2, the New York Am­

by Sherwood Anderson and Erskine Caldwell. The list of over

sterdam News reported that another man, nineteen-year-old

two hundred patrons is a who’s who of progressive liberals. I want to thank Matthew Baigell for sending me a photocopy of

Fleming Mix, was returned to the chain gang. 25. “Fears Dixie Mob, Says Southern Mob Waiting,” New York Am­ sterdam News, January 8, 1938, 6. The article shows a smiling

the catalogue. 17. J. T., “Lynching Art Show Lauded,” New York Amsterdam News,

Jones wearing a white shirt and tie. Figures in news photos in

February 23, 1935, 5. The reviewer listed the names of the black

the black press often wore business attire to convey their re-

artists and singled out for praise Bannarn’s etching Claiming

spectability.

Their Dead and Campbell’s drawing I Passed along the Way

26. “New Yorkers, Stranded in Dixie, Walk 778 Miles Fleeing Peon-

(later reproduced as the cover for the April 1935 issue of the

age,” New York Amsterdam News, May 17, 1933, 1. In another

Crisis). Of the latter, the reviewer said: “It depicts a figure of

instance, Jadie W. Lewis, a longtime abused field hand, drove

Christ shouldering a huge cross, while walking beside him is a

with his white boss in a truck filled with potatoes from Alabama.

Negro who is being pulled along by a rope around his neck.” The

(Greedy for the land owned by Lewis’s parents, the white boss

reviewer then added: “Incidentally, one artist’s work was re-

had previously burned down their house, killing the parents.)

jected because it was considered a bit too daring. It showed a

When kicked by the boss, Lewis fought back, and New York City

figure of a degenerated lyncher proudly exhibiting the genital

police intervened. When brought to the station, a sympathetic

organs which he had cut off the prostrate figure of a Negro.”

police lieutenant released Lewis with carfare to Harlem and ad-

Apel, Imagery of Lynching, 134–35 and fig. 59, has identified this

monished him “to stay away from Alabama”; see New York Am­

shockingly explicit drawing as Alston’s work. Alston’s work was also rejected by the ACA Gallery. 18. See T. R. Poston, “Judge Lynch Presides. Mary Turner and 18 Men Died in 5 Days of Georgia Terror,” New York Amsterdam News,

sterdam News, October 2, 1937, 1, 19. 27. Ruth Fine, ed., The Art of Romare Bearden, exh. cat. (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2003), 214. 28. See Romare Bearden and Harry Henderson, A History of AfricanAmerican Artists: From 1792 to the Present (New York: Pantheon

February 23, 1935, 9. 19. A third installment of Poston’s series appeared on March 9, but the New York Amsterdam News did not cover the ACA Gallery’s

Books, 1993), 264. 29. I am grateful to Barbara Earl Thomas for allowing me to review

exhibition. Throughout the late 1930s the Amsterdam News,

the Lawrences’ book collection in Seattle in 2006 before the

like the black press in general, never relented on reporting in-

books were packed and shipped to various libraries. 30. Peter Wellington Clark, Delta Shadows: A Pageant of Negro

stances of lynchings. 20. Hemingway, Artists on the Left, 65, states that he cannot identify any of the ACA Gallery exhibitors as African American; nor can I.

Progress in New Orleans ([New Orleans]: Graphic Arts Studios, 1942), 15.

See the catalogue, ACA Gallery, Struggle for Negro Rights (New

31. Ibid.

York: ACA Gallery, 1935).

32. Clark believed that the New Orleans black universities—Xavier

21. Stephen Alexander, “Art,” New Masses 14 (March 19, 1935): 29,

and Dillard—would produce young men and women who would

quoted in Hemingway, Artists on the Left, 65. The New York Am­

move the race forward; and he reminded his readers that jazz

sterdam News tended to be antagonistic toward activities spon-

greats Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Henry “Red” Allen, Barney

sored by front groups of the Communist Party.

Bigard, and “Zuddie” Singleton, all hometown boys, had created

22. See ACA Gallery, Struggle for Negro Rights.

306  notes to pages

137 – 141

some of the greatest music of America (Delta Shadows, 101).

33. See Sheryl Conkelton and Barbara Earl Thomas, Never Late for

the twenty-two John Brown panels and has also “been doing

Heaven: The Art of Gwen Knight, exh. cat. (Seattle: University of

research and paintings concerning the urban life of the southern

Washington Press; Tacoma, WA: Tacoma Art Museum, 2003).

Negro.” He plans to do additional paintings “about the life of

34. Edith Halpert to Jacob Lawrence, November 24, 1941, and De-

Negroes in the rural community.” He then appeals for a renewal

cember 15, 1951, Downtown Gallery Records, reel 5549, frames

of his Rosenwald Fellowship so that he can undertake to do a set

396 and 399, AAA.

of paintings on Harlem: “After having lived in the South I find

35. Lawrence mentions the four paintings in an undated letter re-

some things in Harlem clearer. The added experience in the South

sponding to Halpert’s November 8, 1941, letter, Downtown Gal-

has made me better qualified to do a deeper study of Harlem.” I

lery Records, reel 5549, frames 394–95, AAA. Peter T. Nesbett

want to thank Diane Tepfer for giving me photocopies of docu-

and Michelle DuBois, Jacob Lawrence: Paintings, Drawings, and

ments from JRFA. For the John Brown series, see Ellen Sharp,

Murals (1935–1999), a Catalogue Raisonné (Seattle: University

ed., The Legend of John Brown (Detroit, MI: Detroit Institute of

of Washington Press/Jacob Lawrence Catalogue Raisonné Project, 2000) (hereafter cited as Catalogue Raisonné), 56, incorrectly call Rampart Street a Harlem scene.

Arts, 1978). 44. Louisiana was also getting unpleasant. In January 1942 a riot erupted in the town of Alexandria, between Baton Rouge and

36. Clark, Delta Shadows, 99.

Shreveport, with thousands of black servicemen from the three

37. Lawrence does not name Bus and The Wall in his letters to

military bases and three airfields nearby, along with civilians,

Halpert; Nesbett and DuBois’s Catalogue Raisonné, 56 and 

caught in a melee of “brawling, cursing, shattering glass, ex-

57, does not include the Downtown Gallery as part of the paint-

ploding tear gas, and the report of firearms.” See Fairclough,

ings’ provenance. It is likely that he kept these two paintings for

Race and Democracy, 74–75. He refers to Harvard Sitkoff, “Ra-

a time. 38. Charles S. Johnson and associates, To Stem This Tide: A Survey

cial Militancy and Interracial Violence in the Second World War,” Journal of American History 58 (December 1971): 668–69.

of Racial Tension Areas in the United States (Boston: Pilgrim

45. Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence, telephone conversation with author,

Press, 1943), discusses the consequences when African Ameri-

February 19, 2001. Knight also added: “We also left New Orleans

cans did not follow this custom (32–37); it also discusses train

before we had planned to leave. Because of the war there was

problems (37–38). This painting would precede Robert Frank’s

no Mardi Gras.”

famous scene of a segregated bus, published in The Americans: Photographs (New York: Grove Press, 1959). 39. There were even different areas where the light-skinned Creoles,

46. See, for example, Carter Godwin Woodson, The Rural Negro (Washington, DC: Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, 1930).

descended from free persons of color, lived apart from the darker

47. Jacob Lawrence and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence, transcript of

African Americans; see Adam Fairclough, Race and Democracy:

tape-recorded interviews by Avis Berman, June 30 and August

The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915–1972 (Athens: Univer-

4, 1982, 44, AAA, quoted in Elizabeth Hutton Turner, “The Edu-

sity of Georgia Press, 1995), ch. 1, “Creole Louisiana.”

cation of Jacob Lawrence,” in Over the Line: The Art and Life of

40. In her letter of December 15, 1941, Halpert informs Lawrence

Jacob Lawrence, ed. Peter T. Nesbett and Michelle DuBois (Se-

that Sheeler purchased it for $35; Downtown Gallery Records,

attle: University of Washington Press/Jacob Lawrence Catalogue

reel 5549, frame 399, AAA.

Raisonné Project, 2000), 99.

41. A letter of January 19, 1942, from Halpert informed Lawrence of

48. Lawrence to Mr. Haywood of the Rosenwald Fund[received April

Duncan Phillips’s request; Downtown Gallery Records, reel 5549,

25, 1942], thanking him for the renewal, JRFA. Lawrence left Vir-

frame 404, AAA.

ginia on May 24; see Jacob Lawrence to Arna Bontemps, n.d.,

42. Not much is known of the Lawrences’ stay in New Orleans. It

Arna Bontemps Archives, box 17, SCRC. Lawrence was writing

seems likely that they got together with Charles White and Eliza-

from 1851 Seventh Avenue, New York, where the couple had

beth Catlett, since the latter was then teaching at Dillard Univer-

moved. Bontemps’s previous letter to Lawrence of May 21, 1942,

sity. When the Les Cenelles Society of Arts and Letters held an

was addressed to General Delivery, Richmond, VA. I am grateful

exhibition at the YWCA on Canal Street in New Orleans in June

to Richard Courage for sending me photocopies of Lawrence’s

1942, Lawrence’s spread of Migration pictures in Fortune was

letter. It is not clear whether Lawrence and Knight moved to

included. Studying the catalogue, I would surmise that Catlett

Richmond; they did use their relatives’ post office box in Lenexa.

organized the artworks in the exhibition, for she included

Lenexa is still a small blip on Route 60 from Richmond to Hamp-

Charles White and Dillard University students among the “guest

ton, Virginia, now an area in New Kent County.

exhibitors.” 43. Lawrence to Halpert, n.d. [December 1941], Downtown Gallery

49. Locke to Mary Beattie Brady, September 7, 1942, Locke Papers, box 164-15, folder 36.

Records, reel 5549, frames 400–401, AAA. In a typed docu-

50. “How We Live in South and North: Paintings by Jacob Lawrence,”

ment, “Progress Made under Present Grant,” n.d., to the Julius

Survey Graphic 31 (November 1942): 478–79. This special issue,

Rosenwald Fund, JRFA, Lawrence reports that he has completed

edited by Locke, was called “Color: Unfinished Business of De-

notes to pages

141 – 145  

307

mocracy” and focused on “The Negro and the War,” “The Negro in American Life,” and “The Challenge of Color” in both the New

54. See U.S. Army, “African Americans in the U.S. Army,” January 31, 2007, www.army.mil/africanamericans/. 55. Johnson and associates, To Stem This Tide, 1. The survey was

and the Old Worlds. 51. Jacob Lawrence, taped interview by Elton C. Fax, September 7,

underwritten by the Julius Rosenwald Fund.

1970, Elton C. Fax Collection, box 5, Howard Gotlieb Archival Re-

56. Ibid., 92.

search Center, Boston University. Lawrence told Fax that the head

57. A. Philip Randolph, “The March on Washington Movement Pre­

of the draft board, Judge Tellisford (the enunciation of this name

sents Program for the Negro,” in What the Negro Wants, ed.

is not clear on the tape), was a godfather of Gwendolyn Knight

Rayford W. Logan (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,

and had arranged for the deferments. Lawrence wrote to Halpert

1944), 135.

in an undated letter, probably from early August 1942: “I received

58. See Roy L. Brooks, Gilbert Paul Carrasco, and Gordon A. Martin,

your letter of July 30, and was very glad to hear that you were

Civil Rights Litigation: Cases and Perspectives (Durham, NC:

impressed with the ‘John Brown’ series[;] you may have them for

Carolina Academic Press, 1995), 398–99.

an exhibition. I have been painting a great deal and will have some

59. Alston worked for the Office of War Information (OWI) in the early

paintings for you when you arrive back in the city” (Downtown

1940s, where he drew illustrations on the theme of “Negro

Gallery Records, reel 5549, frame 376, AAA). Lawrence had given

Achievement” that were sent on a weekly basis to African Amer-

his John Brown panels to the Harmon Foundation, which had

ican newspapers; see Bearden and Henderson, History of Afri­

turned them over to Halpert. Nesbett and DuBois, “Chronology,”

can-American Artists, 265; and Corinne Jennings, “Charles Al-

32, state that during the summer of 1942 Knight and Lawrence

ston: Biographical Chronology,” in Charles Alston: Artist and

were teachers at Camp Wo-Chi-Ca (Workers’ Children’s Camp) in

Teacher (New York: Kenkeleba Gallery, 1990), 22–23. The OWI

Port Murray, New Jersey. But the evidence from Lawrence’s cor-

was created in June 1942 and functioned until September 1945.

respondence suggests instead that they were at the camp in the

In 1942 the army drafted the thirty-six-year-old Alston, who held

summer of 1943. In another undated letter to Edith Halpert (“July

a desk job making cartoons and posters that promoted the war

1943” is written on the letter, presumably by Halpert), Downtown

effort. NARA-MD holds many of Alston’s OWI drawings.

Gallery Records, reel 5549, frames 422–23, AAA, Lawrence re-

60. Rocío Aranda-Alvarado and Sarah Kennel, “Romare Bearden: A

ports on the backdrops he and Knight have been painting for the

Chronology,” in Fine, Art of Romare Bearden, 218. As a soldier

theater department at Camp Wo-Chi-Ca but reassures her that

Bearden spent time in North Carolina, Alaska, Kentucky, Ari-

he has painted at least one picture. They probably got their jobs

zona, and Massachusetts before his honorable discharge in

through Gwendolyn Bennett, whose husband, Richard Crosscup,

May 1945.

a teacher, was involved with the organization; see Paul C. Mishler,

61. Lawrence, transcript of radio interview by Randy Goodman, May

Raising Reds: The Young Pioneers, Radical Summer Camps, and

23, 1943, New York, Downtown Gallery Records, reel 5549,

Communist Political Culture in the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 97, 153 n. 45. 52. James A. Porter, Modern Negro Art (1943; repr., Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1992), 142.

frames 352 ff., AAA. 62. FBI file, dated September 23, 1977, reporting on review of records at National Personnel Records Center, Military Branch, St. Louis, MO. The file provides these dates but adds “discrepancy noted

53. Adam Clayton Powell Jr., “Is This a ‘White Man’s War’?” Common

in date of enlistment.” The report also states: “There was no re­­c­

Sense 11 (April 1942): 112; J. Saunders Redding, “A Negro Looks

­ord of court-martial or unauthorized absence, however, it was

at This War,” American Mercury, November 1942, 585, 589;

indicated he was issued non-judicial punishment aboard the ship

George S. Schuyler, “A Long War Will Aid the Negro,” Crisis 50

Sea Cloud during August, 1944, of ‘Warning’, for having soiled

(November 1943): 328, 329. Harvard Sitkoff, “African American

linen on his bunk (no further). Performance was rated as rang-

Militancy in the World War II South,” in Remaking Dixie: The

ing from ‘good’ to ‘excellent.’ ” In a letter to Marie J. Demery,

Impact of World War II on the American South, ed. Neil R. McMil­

May 10, 1973, Lawrence insisted that he had been drafted: “I did

len (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1997), 70–92,

not enlist.” Lawrence-Knight Papers (not filmed as of 1999), box

argues that organizations such as the NAACP stepped back

1 of 8, Correspondence 1968–August 1975, AAA.

from mil­itant and aggressive antiracism during the war years.

63. Nesbett and DuBois’s “Chronology,” 32, notes that the boot camp

At that time, “Few Americans, black or white, dissented from

was at Curtis Bay, Maryland. I have been unable to obtain infor-

the war spirit, intensified by media publicity and government-­

mation regarding the length of time Lawrence spent in boot camp;

orchestrated campaigns to rally ’round the flag. Support for the

apparently coastguardsmen’s experiences varied.

war effort placed a premium on loyalty and unity. . . . The angry

64. At this time Lawrence was also garnering notice as a celebrated

demonstrations by African Americans against racial discrimina-

artist. The Shield, January 15, 1944, published by the U.S. Coast

tion in the defense industry and in the armed services, the flurry

Guard Training Station in St. Augustine, ran an article, “Jacob

of petitions and protests, so common in 1940 and 1941, dimin-

Lawrence, Nationally Known Negro Artist, Here,” that praised

ished after the United States entered the war.”

him and his art; see SCRC, reel 4572, frames 901–2, AAA.

308  notes to pages

146 – 150

65. Lawrence to Halpert, n.d., Downtown Gallery Records, reel 5549, frames 373–75, AAA. The letter was probably written in midJanuary, since he speaks of being in St. Augustine for one month

no record of photographs taken of the exhibition or its contents; I am grateful to Ilene Forte for checking this for me. 75. “Jacob Lawrence,” in Current Biography Yearbook, ed. Charles

and says Knight was still with him. Also, Halpert responded to

Monitz (New York: H. W. Wilson, 1965), 253.

his letter on January 20, and she was usually prompt in answer-

76. Johnson and associates, To Stem This Tide, 89.

ing correspondence. Rosenthal was a photographer and a non-

77. Lawrence to Halpert, n.d. (February 1944), with return address

career officer, predisposed toward someone like Lawrence; see

“U.S.C.G. Receiving Station, Hotel Brunswick, 520 Boylston

Lawrence, interview by Fax, September 17, 1970.

Street/Boston, Mass.,” Downtown Gallery Records, reel 5549,

66. See Johnson and associates, To Stem This Tide, 81–105, for an

frames 430–31, AAA. Halpert’s letter responding to the news of

assessment of Negro soldiers in the armed services. According

his transfer is dated March 1, 1944, Downtown Gallery Records,

to David R. Colburn, Racial Change and Community Crisis: St.

reel 5549, frame 432, AAA.

Augustine, Florida, 1877–1980 (New York: Columbia University

78. Regarding the USS Sea Cloud, see Commander Carlton Skinner,

Press, 1985), St. Augustine was not particularly worse than

USCGR (Ret.), “USS Sea Cloud, IX 99, Racial Integration for Na-

other segregated southern cities; during the 1930s “race rela-

val Efficiency,” July 21, 2008, www.uscg.mil/history/articles/

tions did not noticeably worsen in St. Augustine” as they did in

Carlton_Skinner.asp; and Mike Tidwell, “The Best Democracy

the Florida Panhandle, where racial violence and lynchings increased significantly (21). The white leadership, however, upheld Jim Crow laws and unspoken customs: “Although race relations

I’ve Ever Known,” American Legacy 6 (Summer 2000): 31–40. 79. Lawrence to Halpert, postmarked May 21, 1944, Downtown Gallery Records, reel 5549, frame 434, AAA.

remained calm during this period [1930s], blacks were careful

80. Lawrence to Halpert, [early September 1944], Downtown Gallery

not to challenge the segregation barriers. Those who contem-

Records, reel 5549, frame 436, AAA. He also noted that he had

plated such action could expect an immediate response from

heard (probably from Knight) that Fortune was interested in

local police as well as discouragement from leaders in the black

showing some of the works; and he reported that the navy had

community” (21–22). 67. Gwendolyn Knight, telephone conversation with author, February 19, 2001.

sent a filmmaker to take “200 feet of film of me painting,” to be made into a movie entitled New Faces in Art. At this point his rank was “St.M.1/C” (Steward’s Mate First Class). Many of the

68. Aline B. Louchheim [Saarinen], “An Artist Reports on the Trou-

Coast Guard paintings, which could not legally be sold, are un-

bled Mind,” New York Times Magazine, October 15, 1950; also

located; some reproductions are included in Nesbett and

quoted in Wheat, Jacob Lawrence, 69.

DuBois, Catalogue Raisonné. The film was produced as Profile

69. Quoted in Mort Cooper, “Portrait of a Negro Painter,” Chicago Defender, May 18, 1963, 9. 70. Lawrence to Halpert, n.d. (letterhead “U.S. Coast Guard Training Station/St. Augustine, Florida”), Downtown Gallery Records, reel 5549, frames 426–29, AAA.

of Artist Jacob Lawrence and is in TV Satellite File No. 300, 1989, at NARA-MD. I am grateful to Kenneth Hartvigsen for tracking this down for me. 81. Halpert continued to be busy on Lawrence’s behalf. She also arranged for his works to be exhibited at the Newark Museum’s

71. Aaron Douglas, “The Negro in American Culture,” delivered at

exhibition American Negro Art: Contemporary Painting and

the First American Artists’ Congress, February 14–16, 1936, in

Sculpture; MoMA’s Twelve Contemporary Painters, a traveling

Artists against War and Fascism: Papers of the First American

show commencing in late 1944; the Albany Institute of History

Artists’ Congress, ed. Matthew Baigell and Julia Williams (1936;

and Art’s exhibition The Negro Artist Comes of Age, held in

repr., New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986), 84.

January 1945, the catalogue of which contained a foreword by

72. See Nesbett and DuBois, Catalogue Raisonné, 219.

Alain Locke; and Four Modern American Painters: Peter Blume,

73. In letters to Halpert, he expressed his commitment to the war

Stuart Davis, Marsden Hartley, Jacob Lawrence, held in March

effort, yet he yearned to continue painting. Halpert’s letters are

1945 at the Institute for Modern Art, Boston (renamed the Insti-

filled with encouragement and offers to send him art supplies.

tute of Contemporary Art). He was also included in annuals or

74. As of March 1, 1944, when Lawrence had already been trans-

biennials at the Art Institute of Chicago, Atlanta University, the

ferred, Halpert had not yet received the drawings; see Halpert to

University of Nebraska, the City Art Museum, Saint Louis, the

Lawrence, March 1, 1944, Downtown Gallery Records, reel 5549,

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the California

frame 432, AAA. It is tempting to speculate that three large

Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, the Brooklyn Mu-

drawings that Halpert sent to the Los Angeles County Museum

seum, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. See Nesbett

of Art for the First Biennial Exhibition of Drawings by American Artists, held February 18 to April 22, 1945, may have been part of this group of drawings. They are listed in the catalogue as

and DuBois, “Chronology,” 33, 35. 82. Lawrence to Halpert, n.d. (probably October or early November 1945), Downtown Gallery Papers, reel 5549, frame 444, AAA.

Born to Fear, ink, 161⁄2 x 22 inches; Trapped, ink, 22 x 18; and

83. As of May 2006, the Jacob Lawrence estate had his duffel bag,

From Life unto Death, ink, 17 1⁄2 x 22 1⁄2 inches. The museum has

on which he dutifully inscribed these ports of call. I want to

notes to pages

150 – 152  

309

thank Barbara Earl Thomas for showing me the bag. Drawings

94. Gwendolyn Knight recalled that there had been two black stu-

from his Coast Guard travels are reproduced in Nesbett and

dents at Black Mountain who also did not leave the campus;

DuBois, Catalogue Raisonné. Milton W. Brown, Jacob Lawrence,

telephone interview by author, February 19, 2001.

exh. cat. (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1974),

95. See Laura Wexler, Fire in a Canebrake: The Last Mass Lynching

states that Lawrence did forty-eight Coast Guard paintings; only

in America (New York: Scribner’s, 2003). For an overview of the

twenty-three are listed in the catalogue raisonné, of which fif-

situation for blacks in the South, see Leon F. Litwack, Trouble in

teen are unlocated.

Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow (New York: Knopf,

84. See Nesbett and DuBois, Catalogue Raisonné, 220–21. It is surprising that not more drawings survive.

1998). 96. Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and

85. The people who recommended him were his dealer Edith Halpert;

Modern Democracy (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1944), lxix.

the artist Charles Sheeler; Robert Tyler Davis, director of the

97. See Alain Locke, “Reason and Race: A Review of the Literature

Portland Art Museum; Francis H. Taylor, director of the Metro-

of the Negro for 1946,” Phylon 8, no. 1 (1947): 17–27, “A Critical

politan Museum of Art; and Alfred Barr Jr. of MoMA. He received

Retrospect of the Literature of the Negro for 1947,” Phylon 9, no.

notification of his fellowship in October 1945, with a grant of

1 (1948): 3–12, and “Dawn Patrol: The Literature of the Negro for

$2,000. Halpert, one of his recommenders, emphasized in her

1948, Part II,” Phylon 10, no. 2 (1949): 167–72.

letter that he had already achieved fame through the Fortune reproductions of his work, the MoMA show, and the success of

98. Alain Locke, “Wisdom de Profundis: The Literature of the Negro, 1949: Part II—The Social Literature,” Phylon 11, no. 2 (1950): 172.

his Harlem series. “Lawrence makes no artistic compromise, but

99. Ibid., 173.

naturally combines the aesthetic and sociological elements.” I

100. See Steven F. Lawson, “Introduction: Setting the Agenda of the

want to thank Mary Kiffer of the Guggenheim Foundation for

Civil Rights Movement,” in To Secure These Rights: The Report

sending me the file on Lawrence.

of President Harry S. Truman’s Committee on Civil Rights, ed.

86. Jacob Lawrence, “ ‘ WAR’—A Series of Fourteen Paintings in Tempera,” typewritten statement, Downtown Gallery Records, reel 5577, frame 456, AAA.

Steven F. Lawson (Boston: Bedford, 2004). 101. Will Burtin, to “Whom It May Concern,” June 6, 1947, SCRC, reel 4571, AAA. Fortune 38 (August 1948): 22. See Nesbett and

87. Lawrence to Halpert, n.d. (probably October or early November

DuBois, “Chronology,” 147, for places Lawrence traveled. He must

1945), Downtown Gallery Records, reel 5549, frames 444–45,

have conveyed some of his impressions to Evans and Deborah

AAA.

Calkins, then an assistant art director, but little is known of the

88. The artist Charles White was not so lucky. He was assigned to a

specifics of his trip. He told DuBois that Evans drove him; how-

camp in Kansas, where he contracted tuberculosis, and was in

ever, I have been unable to confirm Evans’s movements in the

poor health for the rest of his life.

summer of 1947. Gwendolyn Knight maintained that Lawrence

89. The Chicago Defender reported, in its February 8, 1947, issue,

went by bus; telephone interview by author, February 19, 2001.

that colleges across the country were hiring African Americans

102. Lawrence’s handwritten statements on each, with an introduc-

to teach. Besides Lawrence, other African Americans hired by

tion, are included in the Downtown Gallery Records, AAA; they

Black Mountain included Mark Ashland Fax, Roland Hayes, Carol

are also published in Nesbett and DuBois, Catalogue Raisonné,

Brice, and Percy A. Baker. 90. Nesbett and DuBois, “Chronology,” 34. 91. Sheryl Conkelton, “Gwendolyn Knight: A Life in Art,” in Never Late for Heaven: The Art of Gwen Knight, by Sheryl Conkelton and Barbara Earl Thomas, exh. cat. (Seattle: University of Washington Press; Tacoma, WA: Tacoma Art Museum, 2003), 28,

104–7. 103. Walker Evans, “In the Heart of the Black Belt,” Fortune, August 1, 1948, 88. 104. Nesbett and DuBois, Catalogue Raisonné, 104. Lawrence numbered the works. 105. Walker Evans wrote to Ralph Delahaye Paine, Fortune’s managing

which cites Lea Silverman, “Portrait of an Era,” Mountain Xpress

editor, at this time, about July 1948, stating his thoughts on

7 (May 9–15, 2001): n.p.

what made a good picture spread: “pictures . . . that made you

92. Quoted in Mary Emma Harris, The Arts at Black Mountain Col­

look.” He also added about writing: “You need from writers a

lege (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987), 140, which cites Black

professional ability to produce readable copy. If you don’t al-

Mountain College Papers, III, 4, North Carolina State Archives,

ways get it—under this and that pressure, you re-write and re-

Raleigh.

arrange.” No doubt Evans preferred the rewritten copy to the

93. Lawrence told Michael Harris that Albers did not influence his

quotations that Lawrence had provided. See Walker Evans Ar-

art but did influence his teaching: “His lectures enabled me to

chives, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; also published,

formulate and communicate to students what I had been do-

with slight variations (perhaps a later draft) in Jerry L. Thomp-

ing.” See Jacob Lawrence, transcript of interview by Michael

son, Walker Evans at Work (1982; repr., New York: Icon Editions,

Harris, November 22, 1988, 10, Lawrence-Knight Papers (not

1994), 180–81. 106. Nesbett and DuBois, Catalogue Raisonné, 106.

filmed), AAA.

310  notes to pages

152 – 159

107. I want to thank Mary Bendolph for giving me a tour in March

121. Henry Wallace, “Violence and Hope in the South,” New Republic,

2006 of her Gee’s Bend FSA home and its subsequent additions.

December 8, 1947, 15. In 1945 Alfred Hitchcock released Spell­

Gee’s Bend has become famous as a quilt-making center

bound, starring Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck. Salvador Dali

through the efforts of the collectors William and Paul Arnett and

designed the tilting surrealist sets for one dream sequence in

their publishing company, Tinwood Books, Atlanta.

which Peck attempts to run in a zigzag fashion from his own ­inner demons.

108. Nesbett and DuBois, Catalogue Raisonné, 107, where the painting is reproduced. I have been unable to find the original Quarles

1 22. Floyd Coleman informed me in a conversation in March 2008 that where he grew up, men would simply “disappear,” and no

quotation.

one would ask why or where they had gone. There was a code of

109. Ibid., 104. W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America,

silence.

1860–1880 (1935; repr., New York: Atheneum, 1992), 728. The two sentences Du Bois writes before these words and not

1 23. Richard Watts Jr., “Books in Review: A Liberal View of the South,” New Republic, January 19, 1948, 26.

quoted by Lawrence are as follows: “One reads the truer deeper facts of Reconstruction with a great despair. It is at once so

124. Perhaps a coincidence and perhaps not, but in 1950 J. Saunders

simple and human, and yet so futile.” The sentence following

Redding published They Came in Chains: Americans from Africa

the quotation reads: “Yet the rich world is wide enough for all,

(Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott), the title of which suggests one of

wants all, needs all.”

Lawrence’s Masses and Mainstream drawings. For reproductions of the drawings mentioned here, see Nesbett and DuBois, Cata­

110. See editors’ note in Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison

logue Raisonné, 228–29.

Notebooks, ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971): 175 n. 75: “Romain Rolland’s maxim ‘Pessimism of the intelligence, optimism of the will’ was made by Gramsci into something of a program-

6.

matic slogan as early as 1919 in the pages of Ordine Nuovo.”

The epigraphs are from Irwin Granich [Michael Gold], “Towards Pro-

111. Nesbett and DuBois, Catalogue Raisonné, 105 and 106. Subsequent captions quoted here are from idem. 112. Another comparison with Robert Frank is in order; compare his

home in harlem

letarian Art,” Liberator, February 1921, quoted in Michael Denning, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twenti­ eth Century (London: Verso, 1997), 230; Roi Ottley, “New World A-­

famous photograph of a black woman holding a white baby, pub-

Coming”: Inside Black America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1943), 2;

lished in The Americans, with Lawrence’s painting.

and Claude McKay, inscription in Jacob Lawrence’s copy of McKay’s

113. I was not able to obtain access to the Fortune archives.

A Long Way from Home (New York: F. Furman, 1937), Lawrence-Knight

114. Ralph Ellison, “Twentieth-Century Fiction and the Black Mask of

Papers, Estate of Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence, Seattle, 2006,

Humanity” (1946), in Shadow and Act (1964; repr., New York:

promised gift to AAA.

Vintage International, 1995), 25. 115. Lawrence to Halpert, n.d., Downtown Gallery Records, reel 5549, frames 427–28, AAA. 116. In the first chapter of his book, Redding introduces himself as a



1. Langston Hughes to Blanche Knopf, September 18, 1947, Hughes Papers, box 93, folder 1166, quoted in Martha Jane Nadell, Enter the New Negroes: Images of Race in American Culture (Cam-

person who was brought up in a middle-class “mulatto” culture

bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 141. Nadell’s book

and whose mother deplored the “black tide of migration” be-

is an excellent study of the text-image relationships in some of

cause she thought it would affect the property values of the

the major midcentury books by African American writers that

Redding home in Wilmington, Delaware. Like his brother before

included illustrations, and she focuses on the Hughes-Lawrence

him, Redding went to college—first to Lincoln University and then

collaboration in One-Way Ticket.

Brown. He became a literary critic, author, and academic, teach-

2. Jacob Lawrence to Langston Hughes, September 28, 1947,

ing at Hampton, George Washington, and finally Cornell. Although

Hughes Papers, box 101, folder 1894; parts also quoted in Na-

Lawrence was raised working class, by 1947 he, like other artists married to middle-class women, was firmly in the middle class, but he always identified with his working-class roots. 117. J. Saunders Redding, No Day of Triumph (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1942), 180. 118. J. Saunders Redding, On Being Negro in America (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1951), 122. 119. “Hey, Doc! I Got Jim Crow Shock!” Chicago Defender, February 26, 1944, 12. Hughes wrote on this issue many times for the Chi­ cago Defender. 1 20. Elizabeth Hutton Turner, e-mail to author, February 20, 2009.

dell, Enter the New Negroes, 191 n. 5. 3. Weinstock to Lawrence, December 15, 1947, Lawrence-Knight Papers, AAA. At the time Weinstock wrote the letter, the book was tentatively titled To Me It’s Here. 4. Lawrence to Hughes,[December 23, 1947], Hughes Papers, box 101, folder 1894; Hughes to Lawrence, January 22, 1948, ­L awrence-Knight Papers, AAA. 5. See Lawrence to Hughes, January 26, 1948, and Hughes to Lawrence, February 2, 1948, Hughes Papers, box 101, folder 1894. 6. Lawrence to Hughes, May 5, 1948, Hughes Papers, box 101, folder 1894.

notes to pages

159 – 170  

311

7. Lawrence presented eight drawings for Hughes’s poetry book, of

15. “Streets of Harlem Form Artist’s Subjects, as He Sketches

which six were published: Silhouette and One-Way Ticket (both

Scenes,” New York Amsterdam News, December 19, 1936, 19.

discussed in Chapter 5), The Ballad of Margie Polite (discussed

Unfortunately, little is known of Robynson or his work.

in this chapter), along with Too Blue, Graduation, and Home in a

16. Reproduced in Romare Bearden and Harry Henderson, A History

Box. Too Blue is not included in Peter T. Nesbett and Michelle

of African-American Artists: From 1792 to the Present (New

DuBois, Jacob Lawrence: Paintings, Drawings, and Murals

York: Pantheon Books, 1993), 182.

(1935–1999), a Catalogue Raisonné (Seattle: University of Wash-

17. David C. Driskell, Two Centuries of Black American Art, exh. cat.

ington Press/Jacob Lawrence Catalogue Raisonné Project,

(New York: Alfred A. Knopf; Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1976), 61–62.

2000) (hereafter cited as Catalogue Raisonné). 8. Langston Hughes, note on an envelope, “Note from rence

(artist) who left today the first drawing for

d r e a m d e f e r r e d  / L angston

Hughes / s u n day,

jac o b l aw ­

m o n tag e o f a

o cto b e r 10, 194 8 ,”

Hughes Papers, box 101, folder 1894; and Hughes to Arna Bontemps, December 8, 1948, quoted in Arna Bontemps–Langston

18. See Richard J. Powell, Homecoming: The Art and Life of William H. Johnson (Washington, DC: National Museum of American Art, 1991). 19. James A. Porter, Modern Negro Art (1943; repr., Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1992), 135.

Hughes Letters, 1925–1967, ed. Charles H. Nichols (New York:

20. Ibid., 141.

Dodd, Mead, 1980), 242. Earlier, on October 4, Hughes wrote to

21. Ibid., 142.

Bontemps: “I guess I failed to tell you Jake Lawrence is doing

22. Gwendolyn Bennett, “Jacob Lawrence, American Artist,” Main­

drawings for it [Montage of a Dream Deferred]. And I’m having parts of it set to music” (ibid., 236). Bontemps was also a fan of Lawrence’s art; he planned to include Jacob Lawrence in a book on American notables, and he corresponded with the artist in

stream 1 (Winter 1947): 98. 23. According to Nesbett and DuBois, Catalogue Raisonné, 21 and 26, neither work was exhibited before the 1980s. 24. Leslie King-Hammond, “Inside-Outside, Uptown-Downtown: Ja-

the summer of 1942. I want to thank Richard Courage for provid-

cob Lawrence and the Aesthetic Ethos of the Harlem Working-

ing me with a copy of this letter from the Arna Bontemps Pa-

Class Community,” in Over the Line: The Art and Life of Jacob

pers, SCRC.

Lawrence, ed. Peter T. Nesbett and Michelle DuBois (Seattle:

9. There are photographs of six drawings in the Hughes Papers (JWJ MSS26). Langston Hughes gave a copy of Montage of a Dream

University of Washington Press/Jacob Lawrence Catalogue Raisonné Project, 2000), 74.

Deferred (New York: Henry Holt, 1951) to Lawrence with the in-

25. One of the most famous of the street corner orators was Ira Kemp

scription on the title page, “Especially for/Jake~this book~New York, February 22, 1951.” I am grateful to Barbara Earl Thomas

Justice and narrowly lost. He was an organizer of the Harlem

(1902–37), who ran for the state assembly against Robert W.

for showing me this book in Seattle during May 2006, just before

Labor Union. Kemp’s funeral was featured in the New York Am­

the Lawrences’ book collection was dispersed to libraries.

sterdam News, December 11, 1937, 1.

10. They admired each other’s work. Lawrence went to see Hughes’s stage productions, such as Simply Heavenly of 1957 and the

26. Lawrence to Suggs, November 12, 1973, Lawrence-Knight Papers, reel 3042, frame 258, AAA. The ellipses are Lawrence’s.

gospel musical Jericho Jim Crow, dedicated to the freedom

27. JRFA; photocopy provided to me by Diane Tepfer.

movement, which opened in January 1966, and he appreciated

28. William C. Haygood to Jacob Lawrence, April 18, 1942, renewing

getting offprints from the poet. Hughes, in turn, went to see

the fellowship with a $1,200 grant, JRFA; photocopy provided to

Lawrence’s exhibitions and owned at least two of his drawings. Hughes Papers, box 101, folder 1894. 11. Langston Hughes, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” Nation, June 23, 1926, 692–94.

me by Diane Tepfer. 29. “244,000 Native Sons,” Look, May 1940, 8. The essay included thirteen photographs by Photo League photographers. 30. Ottley, “New World A-Coming,” v.

12. Alain Locke, Negro Art: Past and Present (Washington, DC: As-

31. Ibid., 1.

sociates in Negro Folk Education, 1936), 120. Cahill’s remarks

32. Ibid., 2.

were originally published as the introduction to New Horizons in

33. Ibid.

American Art (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1936), 29–30,

34. At the time the “Harlem” pictures were exhibited in 1943, they

an exhibition catalogue of Federal Art Project paintings and

were numbered and had captions; see catalogue, SCRC, reel

sculpture.

4571, AAA. At the end of his life, he insisted that they were not

13. Alain Locke, The Negro in Art: A Pictorial Record of the Negro Artist and of the Negro Theme in Art (1940; repr., New York: Hacker Art Books, 1968), 9. 14. Augusta Savage to Arthur Schomburg, January 16, 1935, Arthur Alfonso Schomburg Papers, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, SCRBC.

312  notes to pages

a series but paintings on a “theme.” See Nesbett and DuBois, Catalogue Raisonné, 70. 35. Richard J. Powell, Jacob Lawrence (New York: Rizzoli Art Series, 1992),[3]. 36. This picture was called Dancing at the Savoy when reproduced in James A. Porter’s Modern Negro Art.

170 – 179

37. There seems to be no photograph of the Organize painting. Its disappearance may also reflect the disinclination of museums and private patrons to purchase paintings about labor ­o rganizing. 38. Culled from Nesbett and DuBois, Catalogue Raisonné. Neuberger would later buy the War series of fourteen paintings, which he subsequently gave to the Whitney Museum of American Art. 39. Howard Devree, “From a Reviewer’s Notebook,” New York Times, May 16, 1943, X12. 40. M.R., “Effective Protest by Lawrence of Harlem,” Art Digest, May 15, 1943, 7.

Powell, Homecoming, fig. 159. The Lawrences were living in New Jersey at the time; see p. 308, n. 51. 51. Jacob Lawrence, transcript of interview by James Buell and David Driskell, February 4, 1982, 23, Amistad Research Center, Museum Services Files, Tulane University. 52. Jacob Lawrence, transcript of interview by Carroll Greene, October 26, 1968, AAA, www.aaa.si.edu/collections/oralhistories/ transcripts/lawren68.htm. Lawrence later elaborated that when he went into the Coast Guard, “I didn’t leave Harlem. I make the psychological distinction. I didn’t leave; I was still there”; see Lawrence, interview by Buell and Driskell, February 4, 1982, 22.

41. The Downtown Gallery kept clippings of reviews. Lawrence’s exhi­

Hughes continued to think of the artist as living in New York; in

bition received reviews from New Masses (June 8, 1943), the New

his September 21, 1946, column for the Chicago Defender, 14,

Yorker (May 29, 1943), Opportunity (July 1943), Springfield (MA)

Hughes highlighted the artists residing in New York and included

Sunday Union and Republic (May 16, 1943), Newsweek (June 7,

Lawrence along with Aaron Douglas and Ollie Harrington.

1943), Art News (June–July 1943), New York World-Telegram

53. Kymberly Pinder has pointed out to me the parallel situation of

(May 22, 1943), and New York Sun (May 14, 1943). 42. See Arthur P. Davis, “The Harlem of Langston Hughes’ Poetry,”

Archibald J. Motley in relation to Bronzeville. In 1965, after returning to New York from a teaching stint at Brandeis University,

Phylon 13, no. 4 (1953): 276–83. Davis taught at Howard Univer-

Knight and Lawrence moved close to Harlem, to 211 West 106th

sity and edited, with J. Saunders Redding, Negro Caravan and

Street.

Cavalcade: Negro American Writers from 1760 to the Present (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971). 43. See Cheryl Lynn Greenberg, “Or Does It Explode?”: Black Harlem in the Great Depression (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 211–12. See also Dominic J. Capeci Jr., The Harlem Riot of 1943 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1977).

54. Jacob Lawrence, statement to David Schapiro, 1972, in Social Realism: Art as a Weapon, ed. David Shapiro (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1973), 217. The ellipses are probably Lawrence’s; they were characteristic of his writing style. 55. Lawrence to Susan E. Strickler, Toledo Museum of Art, January 21, 1979, Lawrence-Knight Papers (not filmed), AAA.

44. Adam Clayton Powell Sr., “Riots and Ruins,” manuscript, n.d.

56. Lowery Stokes Sims, “Jacob Lawrence: Summer Street Scene in

(preface dated 1945), 37, typescript collection, box 33, SCRBC,

Harlem (1948),” in Seeing America: Painting and Sculpture from

quoted in Greenberg, “Or Does It Explode?” 211–12. 45. Langston Hughes, “Here to Yonder,” Chicago Defender, August 14, 1943, 14. The following week he continued with his com-

the Collection of the Memorial Art Gallery, ed. Marjorie B. Searl (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2006), 271. 57. Jacob Lawrence, “Plan of Work,” a part of his application for a

ments to “White Shopkeepers” and also referred to the Detroit

fellowship, 1945, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation

riots.

Archives.

46. Portland [Oregon] Art Museum Bulletin 5, no. 3 (November 1943): 3. I am grateful to Susie Cohen for sending me a photocopy of

58. See Chapter 5 regarding Hughes on Jim Crow in the military. 59. Hughes later published anthologies of the Simple stories, but

the mimeographed four-page bulletin. The five paintings pur-

they were thoroughly revised, perhaps to make them more ac-

chased by the museum were: They Live in Old and Dirty Tenement

cessible to a white audience. I recommend reading the originals

Houses, You Can Buy Bootleg Whiskey for Twenty-Five Cents a

in the Chicago Defender, now online, through its archives search

Quart, And Harlem Society Looks On, Harlem Hospital’s Free

site at http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/chicagodefender/advanced-

Clinic Is Crowded with Patients Every Morning and Evening, and The Undertakers Do a Good Business.

search.html. 60. Chicago Defender, October 5, 1946, 14.

47. Jacob Lawrence, transcript of interview by Michael Harris, No-

61. Raymond Williams, Resources of Hope (London: Routledge,

vember 22, 1988, 8, Lawrence-Knight Papers (not filmed),

1989), 242, argues: “A new theory of socialism must now cen-

AAA.

trally involve place. Remember the argument was that the pro-

48. Langston Hughes, “My America,” in What the Negro Wants, ed.

letariat had no country, the factor which differentiated it from

Rayford W. Logan (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina

the property owning classes. But place has been shown to be a

Press, 1944), 301.

crucial element in the bonding process—more so perhaps for

49. Arnold Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes, vol. 2, 1941–

the working class than the capital-owning classes.  .  .  . When

1967, I Dream a World, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University

capital has moved on, the importance of place is more clearly

Press, 2002), 162.

revealed.” Quoted in David Harvey, Justice, Nature and the Ge­

50. William H. Johnson’s Moon over Harlem, ca. 1943–44 (Smith­ sonian American Art Museum), directly references the riot; see

ography of Difference (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 29. 62. During the 1930s many of the playwrights and directors of Fed-

notes to pages

183 – 189  

313

eral Theatre Project plays, in their attempt to reach a popular

73. Ibid., 81.

audience, focused on urban working-class life. Invariably the

74. See Michelle DuBois, “Playing with the Game Motif: An Interpre-

drama developed in front of tenement facades. A favorite play

tive Study of Jacob Lawrence’s Game Paintings” (MA thesis,

that ran through most of 1938, One-Third of a Nation, the title

University of Washington, 2000). For Kibitzers, see Ronny Co-

taken from President Roosevelt’s speech about poverty in the

hen, “Jacob Lawrence: Kibitzers, 1948,” in Addison Gallery of

United States, had a stage set constructed to look like a tene-

American Art: 65 Years (Andover, MA: Addison Gallery of Amer-

ment with broken columns and crumbling plaster; the tenement even had a “voice,” delivered as a monologue when the play

ican Art/Phillips Academy, 1996), 418. 75. The year 1947 stands out as a benchmark for major league

opens. The Federal Theatre Project’s Sing for Your Supper,

baseball, as that was the year when Jackie Robinson began play-

which opened in March 1939, had a tenement front with laundry

ing for the Brooklyn Dodgers, thus integrating the sport. See

hanging across the span of balconies. See John O’Connor and

Robert Peterson, Only the Ball Was White: A History of Legend­

Lorraine Brown, eds., Free, Adult, Uncensored: The Living His­

ary Black Players and All-Black Professional Teams (New York:

tory of the Federal Theatre Project (Washington, DC: New Republic Books, 1978), 173. The movies, also in the 1930s and 1940s, dealt with themes of love, revenge, and murder that took place in the urban streets.

Oxford University Press, 1992). 76. Elizabeth Steele, “The Materials and Techniques of Jacob Lawrence,” in Nesbett and DuBois, Over the Line, 256. 77. Robert Farris Thompson, “From the First to the Final Thunder:

63. King Vidor made a movie of it in 1931.

African-American Quilts, Monuments of Cultural Assertion,” in

64. New York Times, January 19, 1947, xi. See also Howard Barnes,

Who’d a Thought It: Improvisation in African-American Quiltmak­

“The Theaters,” New York Herald Tribune, January 11, 1947.

ing, ed. Eli Leon (San Francisco: San Francisco Craft and Folk

65. Life, February 24, 1947, 78. 66. The beautiful young heroine, Rose Maurrant (lyric soprano), is propositioned by a married co-worker, hassled by a thug, and

Art Museum, 1988). 78. Langston Hughes, Montage of a Dream Deferred (New York: Henry Holt, 1951), [xi].

wooed by her neighbor, Sam Kaplan (tenor), working his way

79. I believe that he coded the site of the picture as not being Harlem

through law school. Together the heroine and the hero sing about

by painting the onlookers as white people; however, Kymberly

going away together. Through the windows we hear an old radical

Pinder, commenting on an early draft, suggests that the vendors

deploring the conditions of capitalism and the birth moans of a

may be catering to white tourists up in Harlem. Harlem was and

pregnant neighbor, followed by the wail of a newborn. The next

remains a tourist site.

morning, movers arrive to move into the street the furniture owned by a tenant in arrears; an unfaithful wife (Rose’s mother) and her lover are shot by a jealous husband. I am grateful to Andrew Whitfield for providing me with a DVD of the opera. 67. Alain Locke, “Reason and Race: A Review of the Literature of the Negro for 1946,” Phylon 8, no. 1 (1947): 21.

80. Lawrence to Mark R. Kriss of the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, 1979, Lawrence-Knight Papers (not filmed), AAA. 81. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (New York: Random House, 1952), 347. The protagonist then realizes that the hawker is his comrade Clifton, who recently quit the radical organization to which they both belonged and disappeared; now he is on the streets

68. See Ann Petry, The Street (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1946). The

degrading himself as a huckster. Within moments a policeman

novel provides rich descriptions of both the characters’ person-

arrives to disperse the crowd and arrest the hawker. Clifton im-

alities and the places in which they live. The story develops rap-

pulsively punches the policeman, who retaliates by shooting

idly after a con man and band leader, Boots Smith, engages

him. Once the news of this act spreads uptown, a riot erupts in

Lutie to sing nights at a club but then acts as a procurer for his

Harlem—a riot described by Ellison in terms that his readers

white, criminal boss. Meanwhile, a perpetually angry and conniving building superintendent, Jones, attempts to win sexual

would recognize as the 1943 Harlem riot. 82. This painting is not included in Nesbett and DuBois, Catalogue

favors from her. When rebuffed, he seeks revenge by enlisting

Raisonné. However, a similar painting, Birth, is reproduced,

her credulous son in a fraudulent scheme that leads to the son’s

with the comment: “One of two paintings commissioned by

arrest. The novel ends with the murder of Smith and the desper-

Seventeen magazine in 1948, this work was never published.

ate Lutie making frantic plans to escape the street.

The artist completed[Birth] first, then executed The Fur Coat,

69. Ibid., 64.

which contains the same subject matter but reverses the fore-

70. Ibid., 65.

ground and background elements” (111). The lack of joy in The

71. See Alfred Butterfield, “The Dark Heartbeat of Harlem,” New York

Fur Coat suggests death rather than birth. Michelle DuBois

Times, February 10, 1946, 117. The title given was Street Scene.

agrees with me that the figure in the fur coat suggests Gwen-

72. Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Random House, 1961), 29. Jacobs’s observations were based on various neighborhoods in New York, including East Harlem, which closely resembled Harlem itself.

314  notes to pages

189 – 197

dolyn Knight, who because of medical problems could not have children. 83. This would be evident when he went to Nigeria in 1964 and painted the markets there, dominated as they were by women.

concept of the “public sphere,” there has been a growing num-

84. See Chapter 7 for a discussion of the ten paintings Lawrence did

ber of cultural studies on public space and place; see Michel de

while residing at Hillside Hospital. 85. Ellen Harkins Wheat, Jacob Lawrence: American Painter, exh.

Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of

cat. (Seattle: Seattle Art Museum, 1986), 102, provides an excel-

California Press, 1988), especially the chapter “Walking the

lent analysis of this painting. Slums was actually a commission

City”; Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (1974; repr., Ox-

from Fortune; Jacob Lawrence, telephone interview by author,

ford: Blackwell, 1991); George Harvey, Justice, Nature and the

September 3, 1985. Instead of Slums, Fortune 43 (February 1951)

Geography of Difference (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996); and others. In 1959 uptown Harlem concerns were not those of midtown

published The Dilemma of an Aging Population. 86. Katharine Kuh, American Artists Paint the City, exh. cat. for 28th

or downtown Manhattan, where a group of white artists were

Biennale, Venice (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1956), 8–9.

also commenting on “the street” but in a very different way. To

Typical of the racial and gender composition of exhibitions dur-

thirty-year-old Claes Oldenburg, a white artist trained at Yale

ing the 1950s, the show of thirty-five artists included only three

and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, who joined a

women and two African Americans—Norman Lewis as well as

group of avant-garde artists, poets, and dancers in Greenwich

Lawrence.

Village in the mid-1950s, the city’s streets had become sites of

87. Wheat, Jacob Lawrence, 102, has noted the small “starlike pat-

civic collapse and alienation, which he expressed in his perfor-

terns” or “sparkles” that characterize his 1950s paintings.

mance/installation piece The Street. See Joshua Shannon,

88. Hughes’s text accompanies 140 photographs by DeCarava, who

“Claes Oldenburg’s The Street and Urban Renewal in Greenwich

toured Harlem with his camera, taking shots of children playing

Village, 1960,” Art Bulletin 86 (March 2004): 136–61. Olden-

on the streets and running through the spray of fire hydrants

burg’s piece shows chaos and the arbitrariness of human

and adults walking along the broad sidewalks, sitting on stoops,

agency, unlike the sense of order and purpose in Lawrence’s images.

leaning out their windows, and listening to street-corner orators. He also photographed intimate interior scenes—stunning close-

94. Lawrence was not involved with the Spiral group, a discussion of

ups of men, women, and their children. Hughes’s text is fictional,

which can be found in Bearden and Henderson, History of Afri­

not documentary. A continuous narrative provided by the mono-

can-American Artists, 400–403.

logue of a fictional Mary Bradley stitches together the photographs. The elderly Mary rejects thoughts of death (“Lord, I’m gazes on the young grandchildren in her charge and ruminates

7. the double consciousness of masks and masking

about her various children, some divorced and some not, and

The epigraphs are from Ralph Ellison, “Change the Joke and Slip

so tangled up in living, I ain’t got time to die”) as she fondly

her adult grandsons—Rodney, a young man who parties and

the Yoke,” in Shadow and Act (1964; repr., New York: Vintage Interna-

dances, and respectable Chick, who wears a suit to his down-

tional, 1995), 55; and A. David Napier, Masks, Transformation, and

town job. One to four sentences of the running monologue ac-

Paradox (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), xxv.

company each photograph. Hughes gave a copy of the book, which he inscribed, to Lawrence for Christmas, 1955. LawrenceKnight Papers, Estate of Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence, Seattle, 2006, promised gift to AAA.



1. The exhibition titled Performance was on view from January 27 to February 14. The tempera paintings were listed in the brochure as (1) Billboard, (2) Tragedy and Comedy (Fig. 161), (3) Makeup

89. Lawrence to Hughes, n.d., Hughes Papers, box 101, folder 1894.

(Fig. 162), (4) Night after Night (Fig. 163), (5) A Christmas Pag­

For the trials and tribulations of the play, see Rampersad, Life of

eant, (6) Concert, (7) Marionettes (Fig. 164), (8) Vaudeville (Fig.

Langston Hughes, 2:232–75. 90. Lawrence to Miss Colbert, [in response to a high school project, May 1962], Jacob Lawrence Papers, SCRC.

152), (9) Ventriloquist (Fig. 166), (10) Fantasy, (11) Curtain (Fig. 165), and (12) After the Show. After the Show is painted in dark blues, gray, and black with just a touch of white to outline the

91. Doreen Massey, “A Global Sense of Place,” Marxism Today, June

edges of the chairs on which the skulls “sit” and a bit of red to

1991, 28, quoted in Kevin Robins, “Prisoners of the City: Whatever

represent roses in vases on an otherwise empty table. The image

Could a Postmodern City Be?” in Space and Place: Theories of

suggests the traditional cast dinner backstage (one notes the

Identity and Location, ed. Erica Carter, James Donald, and Judith

blue brick wall and the curtain) after the final performance of a

Squires (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1993), 325.

run of a specific show. But the darkness and the skulls portend

92. Elliot Liebow has described such “streetcorner men” in Tally’s

a greater finality. Lawrence scholar Peter Nesbett, in the entry

Corner: A Study of Negro Streetcorner Men (Boston: Little,

he wrote for Christie’s catalogue, states incorrectly that After the

Brown, 1967), but with more pessimistic conclusions.

Show was not part of the series, but he does offer some interest-

93. Since Jürgen Habermas’s The Structural Transformation of the

ing alternative readings.

Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society

2. “Stories with Impact,” Time, February 2, 1953; Carlyle Burrows,

(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989), in which he developed his

“Lawrence Temperas,” New York Herald Tribune, February 1,

notes to pages

197 – 205  

315

1953; “Jacob Lawrence Exhibits Show Business Paintings,” Jet,

12. Miller and Nowak, Fifties, 65. William Gropper explored this cli-

February 1953; S[idney] G[eist], “Jacob Lawrence,” Art Digest,

mate of fear in his suite of fifty lithographs, printed between 1953

February 1, 1943, 17.

and 1956, titled Caprichos; see Louis Lozowick, William Gropper

3. Stuart Preston, “Diverse Moderns,” New York Times, Sunday,

(East Brunswick, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1983), 55,

February 1, 1953. Fairfield Porter also wrote a brief review, “Re-

and Norma S. Steinberg, “William Gropper: Art and Censorship

views and Previews: Jacob Lawrence,” Art News 51 (February

from the 1930s through the Cold War Era” (PhD diss., Boston

1953): 73, that compared Lawrence to Orozco: “Like Orozco, each painting is for him an idea which is almost the same as be-

University, 1994), 143–58. 13. I do not mean to imply a straight cause-and-effect relationship; the phenomenon of the rise of abstraction is complicated by

ing dramatic.” 4. I have discussed some of these issues in Patricia Hills and Ro-

many factors. See Patricia Hills, review of How New York Stole

berta Tarbell, The Figurative Tradition and the Whitney Museum

the Idea of Modern Art: Abstract Expressionism, Freedom, and

of American Art, exh. cat. (New York: Whitney Museum of Amer-

the Cold War, by Serge Guilbaut, Archives of American Art Jour­ nal 24, no. 1 (1984): 26–29.

ican Art, 1980). 5. To this exhibition Lawrence contributed Harlem (1946), an image

14. Mark Rothko, “The Romantics Were Prompted,” possibilities 1

that contrasts a tall, elegant apartment building with surround-

(Winter 1947–48): 84, reprinted in Theories of Modern Art: A

ing tenements; see Margaret Lynne Ausfeld and Virginia Meck-

Source Book by Artists and Critics, ed. Herschel B. Chipp

lenburg, Advancing American Art, exh. cat. (Montgomery, AL: Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, 1984).

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 548. 15. Robert Motherwell, quoted in “What Abstract Art Means to Me,”

6. FBI report on Ben Shahn, October 3, 1951, reproduced in Patricia

Bulletin of the Museum of Modern Art, Spring 1951, reprinted in

Hills, Modern Art in the USA: Issues and Controversies of the

Chipp, Theories of Modern Art, 562. The symposium took place

20th Century (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001),

on February 5, 1951. 16. Not surprisingly, the language of existentialism seemed appropri-

196–97. 7. See Jane DeHart Mathews, “Art and Politics in Cold War America,” American Historical Review 81 (October 1976): 762–87. 8. A follow-up four-page report dated August 3, 1953, elaborated on his “subversive” activities. To mention a few: the report noted that

ate to describe those anxieties prompted by the war, the bomb, automation, suburban conformity, the rising military-industrial complex, and the cold war. Sartre and Beckett captured this mood in their plays No Exit and Waiting for Godot.

he had received an award from the New Masses magazine at a

17. Other iconographical clusters would be single figures lost in a

banquet in January 1946; Lawrence’s exhibitions had been favor-

dystopian wasteland of empty buildings and rubble, as in Ben

ably reviewed in the Communist Party’s Daily Worker; and his

Shahn’s The Red Staircase (1945) and George Grosz’s Peace II

name was on the masthead of several organizations, such as the

(1946); figures lost in mazes and labyrinths, as in George Took-

Committee for the Negro in the Arts. The FBI report comments:

er’s The Subway (1950); and crucified Christ- or Lazarus-like

“It has been reliably reported that the Committee for the Negro in

figures, as in Stephen Greene’s The Burial (1947) and Siegfried

the Arts is a Negro Communist Party front organization fostered

Reinhardt’s Crucifixion (1953). I discuss this imagery in ch. 4,

by the Communist Party to infiltrate Negroes in the arts and en-

“Painting 1941–1980,” in Hills and Tarbell, Figurative Tradition.

tertainment field and to propagandize alleged acts of racial dis-

See also Greta Berman and Jeffrey Wechsler, Realism and Re­

crimination in employment of Negroes in that field.” Lawrence’s

alities: The Other Side of American Painting, 1940–1960 (New

name was also included on the letterhead of Artists Equity Association, which, the report notes, Dondero called the “latest link in a chain of Red-instigated artists’ organizations designed to control art and artists.” In all likelihood Lawrence did not know of the existence of these FBI files. He continued to be active in Artists Equity, even being elected to the presidency in 1957. 9. Barbara Haskell, Ralston Crawford, exh. cat. (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1985), 70. 10. Douglas T. Miller and Marion Nowak, The Fifties: The Way We Really Were (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1977), 60. 11. Louis Mumford, “Atom Bomb: Social Effects,” Air Affairs 1 (March

Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Art Gallery, 1982). 18. See Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Héléne Iswolsky (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1984). 19. Among the films were Children of Paradise (1945), Nightmare Alley (1947), Strangers on a Train (1951), and La Strada (1954). 20. “Philip Guston: Carnegie Winner’s Art Is Abstract and Symbolic,” Life, May 27, 1946, 92. 21. “19 Young Americans,” Life, March 20, 1950, 89. 22. William Gropper, Jules Mervin, and Jacob Lawrence all made images of informers during the 1950s. They may have recalled that the John Ford movie The Informer (1935) won four Acad-

1947): 380. In Paul Boyer’s By the Bomb’s Early Light: American

emy Awards. For Lawrence, see Chapter 8 for a discussion of

Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (New York:

Panel 11 of his Struggle . . . From the History of the American

Pantheon Books, 1985), ch. 23, “Psychological Fallout: Con-

People series, entitled “120.9.14.286.3.33-ton 290.9.27 be at

sciousness and the Bomb,” 275–89, focuses on Mumford and

143.9.28.110.8.17.255.9.29 evening 178.9.8  .  .  . An informer’s

his writings at this time.

coded message” (1955).

316  notes to pages

206 – 208

23. All three were members of Artists Equity, and in 1947 Kuniyoshi

tended the MoMA exhibition, he made drawings of masks based

was elected president. Both Lawrence and Kuniyoshi, along with

on what he had seen (Ruth Fine, “A Sense of Place—Norman

forty-four other artists, signed a statement published in the first

Lewis in Harlem: ‘An Inquiry into the Laws of Nature,’ ” lecture

issue of Reality: A Journal of Artists’ Opinions, asserting their

given at the National Gallery of Art, January 15, 2006). Law-

belief that abstract art was a blind alley and that “art should be

rence, as noted in Chapter 1, saw the show with a group led by

directed to the people.” Shahn was an early member of the Real­

Charles Seifert.

ity group but did not sign the statement. Its text is in Hills, Mod­ ern Art, 181–83. 24. Jacob Lawrence, transcript of interview by author, July 1983. 25. Jacob Lawrence, transcript of interview by author, May 20, 1985. 26. Henry Louis Gates Jr., introduction to The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). 27. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903; repr., New York: Bantam Books, 1989), 3. 28. Nathan Irvin Huggins, Harlem Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 195. 29. Jacob Lawrence, “My Opinion about Painting,” A.L.A. [Artists League of America] News, no. 2 (1946): [2]. 30. Gates, introduction to Signifying Monkey, xix.

37. See New York Amsterdam News, February 22, 1933, 1, regarding the prize; the funds were donated by Mrs. John D. Rockefeller Jr. For a discussion of Fétiche et Fleurs, see Bearden and Henderson, History of African-American Artists, 162. 38. Self-Portrait is reproduced in Bearden and Henderson, History of African-American Artists, 181. 39. White artists during the 1920s and 1930s seemed less inclined to draw on mask iconography. According to Charles Eldredge, Georgia O’Keeffe: American and Modern (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), 185, O’Keeffe’s Mask with Golden Apple was one of “the rare visual references by any of the Stieglitz artists to the arts of Sub-Saharan Africa, this despite Stieglitz’s own early recognition of the force of that tradition.” 40. Later he would speak with admiration of the expressive masks

31. During the 1980s and 1990s, writers and scholars began speak-

of Władysław Benda; see W. T. Benda, Masks (New York: Wat-

ing of many consciousnesses—ethnicity, race, gender, sexual

son-Guptill, 1944). See Jacob Lawrence, interview by Carroll

orientation, class, family dynamics—rather than simply a double

Greene, October 26, 1968, AAA, www.aaa.si.edu/collections/

consciousness. Around midcentury, however, the “color line”

oralhistories/transcripts/lawren68.htm. The online version

was, as W. E. B. Du Bois stated in 1903, “the problem of the

omits the name of Benda, which is noted on p. 84 of the original

Twentieth Century”; see Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk, 29.

transcript, Lawrence-Knight Papers, AAA.

32. As Karl Marx has observed, “Men make their own history, but

41. We have no reason to believe that Lawrence made any of these

they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it un-

specific masks, but we do know, from a companion photograph,

der circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circum-

that he was present on the day of the camera shoot (see Fig.

stances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the

10). The Harmon Foundation hired Allen to take these pictures,

past”; see the second paragraph of The Eighteenth Brumaire of

many of which are now in the Harmon Foundation Collection,

Louis Napoleon (1852), in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Se­ lected Works in Two Volumes (1869; repr., Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1955), 2:247. 33. For a discussion of the reception of African art, see Helen Marie

NARA-MD. 42. “Art by Negroes of Harlem Put on Exhibition,” New York Herald Tribune, September 28, 1933, 40. 43. Quoted in Harlem Adult Education Committee press release,

Shannon, “From ‘African Savages’ to ‘Ancestral Legacy’: Race

September 27, 1933, Harmon Foundation, box 1, MD, LOC.

and Cultural Nationalism in the American Modernist Reception

44. Henry Louis Gates Jr., Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the

of African Art” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1999), especially the appendix, “Exhibitions of, and Including, African Art in New

“Racial” Self (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), xxx. 45. Quoted in Thelma Berlack-Boozer, “Masks of African Types Are

York from 1914 to 1935.” In 1932 African bronze statuettes from

Fascinating to Sculptress,” New York Amsterdam News, July 18,

the collection of Gregor Ahron were on view at the 135th Street

1936, 18.

branch; see New York Amsterdam News, December 28, 1932, 14.

46. Later in his career, Lawrence painted scenes of Halloween antics

This exhibition is not listed in Helen Shannon’s otherwise thor-

by masked tricksters or children crudely costumed as bullfight-

ough appendix. 34. Romare Bearden and Harry Henderson, A History of African-

ers with a dog as a “bull.” 47. Ralph Ellison, “Twentieth-Century Fiction and the Black Mask of

American Artists: From 1792 to the Present (New York: Pantheon

Humanity,” in Shadow and Act, 27 n. 1. Ellison states that he

Books, 1993), 261.

wrote the essay in 1946, but it is not clear that the note was also

35. See Alain Locke, “The Legacy of the Ancestral Arts,” in The New

written in 1946. Ellison made his remarks in the context of ob-

Negro: An Interpretation, ed. Alain Locke (New York: Albert and

serving white authors writing fiction about blacks, but his re-

Charles Boni, 1925).

marks would pertain to black authors as well.

36. See James Johnson Sweeney, ed., African Negro Art (New York:

48. Lawrence was released on November 12, 1949, but returned on

Museum of Modern Art, 1935). After the artist Norman Lewis at-

January 16 and stayed until August 4, 1950; see Peter T. Nesbett

notes to pages

209 – 212  

317

and Michelle DuBois, “Chronology,” in Over the Line: The Art and

56. The New Masses dinner was billed as “Honoring Negro and White

Life of Jacob Lawrence, ed. Peter T. Nesbett and Michelle DuBois

Americans for Their Contribution Towards an America for All

(Seattle: University of Washington Press/Jacob Lawrence Cata-

People.” The statement read: “Freedom is indivisible and in

logue Raisonné Project, 2000), 36.

America can proceed only as racial minorities are fully emanci-

49. See FBI files, Lawrence’s application dated September 12, 1977.

pated. The democratic quality of our society can be determined

President Jimmy Carter wanted to appoint Lawrence to the

only by the degree of Jim Crow that still exists.” The honorees

National Council of the Arts. As a presidential appointee he had

included Mary McLeod Bethune for education, W.E.B. Du Bois

to undergo a background check by the FBI. The Senate confirmed

for history, Sterling Brown for poetry, Duke Ellington for music,

the appointment on April 3, 1978; see Congressional Record,

Jacob Lawrence for art, Alain Locke for literary criticism, Joe

Senate, 95th Cong., 2nd sess., April 3, 1978, S4679. 50. Elton C. Fax, Seventeen Black Artists (New York: Dodd, Mead,

Louis for sports, Paul Robeson for citizenship, and Frank Sinatra “for his courageous fight on behalf of all minorities.” Howard Da Silva was master of ceremonies; sponsors included Milton Avery,

1971), 161. 51. Bearden and Henderson, History of African-American Artists,

William Rose Benet, Leonard B. Boudin, Theodore Dreiser, Chaim

305. A similar comment by Romare Bearden and Harry Hender-

Gross, Philip Evergood, José Ferrer, Hugo Gellert, William Grop-

son, in Six Black Artists on American Art (Garden City, NY:

per, Robert Gwathmey, Langston Hughes, Rockwell Kent, Louis

Doubleday, 1972), 113, is quoted in Ellen Harkins Wheat, Jacob

Lozowick, Albert Maltz, John Sloan, Moses Soyer, Carl Van Doren,

Lawrence: American Painter, exh. cat. (Seattle: Seattle Art Mu­

Mark Van Doren, and Max Weber. Program of the event, Jacob

seum, 1986), 101; Lawrence confirmed to Wheat in 1983 that

Lawrence Papers, SCRC, Reel 4572, frame 410, AAA. Many of

Bearden and Henderson were accurate in their assessment of

these people were later blacklisted. See also p. 316, n. 8.

his situation. There are other speculations about the immediate

57. See Victor S. Navasky, Naming Names (New York: Viking, 1980).

cause of the mental breakdown. Recently Samella Lewis has

58. “Red Visitors Cause Rumpus,” Life, April 4, 1949, 39–43.

speculated in an interview of Alitash Kebede, “A Visit with Col-

59. See Martin Bauml Duberman, Paul Robeson (New York: Alfred

lector Extraordinaire Samella Lewis,” International Review of

A. Knopf, 1988), 341–42, regarding Robeson’s remarks and the

African American Art 21, no. 1 (2006): 30, “You know for a long

Associated Press’s distortions.

time African Americans did not collect Jacob Lawrence. They

60. Ibid., 360–62, regarding Robinson’s testimony. Duberman, Paul

thought his work was ugly. . . . That’s one of the things I think

Robeson, 361, quotes the New Age, July 23, 1949, that “Har-

that sent him to the hospital, because African Americans didn’t

lemites  .  .  . split sharply on the issue of whether the popular

seem to want his work. They couldn’t even sell them for four or

ballplayer should have gone before the committee. . . . Opinion

five hundred dollars to African Americans and now they’re out of

was both congratulatory and condemnatory.” In 1949 Lawrence

reach, almost.” Lewis adds that the same was true for Richmond

painted The Long Stretch (Fig. 203), inspired by Robinson.

Barthé and others of that generation. The FBI, in its investigation

61. See Rampersad, Life of Langston Hughes, 2:171.

of Lawrence, interviewed the artist Julian Levi, who was also

62. J. Saunders Redding, On Being Negro in America (New York:

represented by the Downtown Gallery; the FBI report, dated

Bobbs-Merrill, 1951), 25. Redding viewed the writing of his book

September 28, 1977, states that “it was [Levi’s] recollection

as a catharsis: “I want to get on to other things. I do not know

[Lawrence] had some type of nervous breakdown due to pres-

whether I can make this clear, but the obligations imposed by

sures that Negroes had to face in service at that time.”

race on the average educated or talented Negro . . . are vast

52. The historian Robbie Lieberman calls 1949 the “year of shocks”;

and become at last onerous. I am tired of giving up my creative

see Robbie Lieberman, “Communism, Peace Activism, and Civil

initiative to these demands. I think I am not alone” (26). In his

Liberties: From the Waldorf Conference to the Peekskill Riot,”

book he also wanted to explain how and why he eventually re-

Journal of American Culture 18 (Fall 1995): 59.

jected communists’ attempts to recruit him, although he ac-

53. Langston Hughes, “A Portent and a Warning to the Negro People

knowledged the party’s commitment to fighting racism.

from Hughes,” Chicago Defender, February 5, 1949, 6; portions

In many of his Chicago Defender columns, Langston Hughes

also quoted in Arnold Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes,

maintained that African Americans suffering from “Jim Crow

vol. 2, 1941–1967, I Dream a World, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford

shock, segregation-neuroses, and discrimination-fatigue” were

University Press, 2002), 171. 54. Lillian Scott, “Along Celebrity Row,” Chicago Defender, January

candidates for psychoanalysis; see Langston Hughes, “Doc, Wait! I Can’t Sublimate!” Chicago Defender, March 4, 1944. For a medical view of the intersection of racism and mental health,

15, 1949, 8. 55. Nesbett and DuBois, “Chronology,” 32, states he was recruited

see Alvin F. Poussaint, MD, and Amy Alexander, Lay My Burden

by the Communist Party but did not join. Bob Blackburn, more

Down: Unraveling Suicide and the Mental Health Crisis among

politically active than Lawrence, confirmed that Lawrence was not a Communist Party member (Bob Blackburn, interview by

“This whole business with Jake has been so terrifying and upset-

author, June 7, 1988).

318  notes to pages

African-Americans (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000). 63. On August 12, 1949, Gwendolyn Knight wrote to Edith Halpert:

212 – 214

ting that it is only now that I have begun to function normally.”

intense, but if he hadn’t maintained some sort of a struc­tural

Halpert responded with a long letter dated August 16. She reas-

integrity, he would not have been able to make those paintings.

sured Knight that she had spoken to a psychiatrist friend about

That’s what made his paint­ings so great” (“In Conversation: Jack

Lawrence’s illness, which she predicted would be “of considerable

Whitten with Robert Storr,” Brooklyn Rail: Critical Perspectives

duration” and during which “he must be under care all the time in

on Art, Politics and Culture 9 [September 2007], www.brooklynrail 

some institution or other.” She quoted a letter from the psychiatrist

.­org/2007/09/art/whitten). Lawrence’s former student Allan

(who was working in a Veterans Administration hospital in Topeka,

Kol­lar explained that to Lawrence plastic “encompassed compo-

Kansas): “ ‘In my compulsive way, I have decided not to wait for

sition and the beauty of in­ter­locking forms”; Allan Kollar, e-mail

Dr. Karl Menninger’s return to discuss the problem of Jacob Law-

to author, November 4, 2008.

rence; mainly because I have felt that too much time should not

71. For a discussion of Square Dance, see Patricia Hills, “Jacob

be wasted. I did, however, confer with the Chief of our Psychiatric

Lawrence: Square Dance,” in American Dreams: American Art to

Service, and a couple of other doctors whose opinion I respect.

1950 in the Williams College Museum of Art, ed. Nancy M. Mat-

We all came to the same conclusion: (1) If the diagnosis is unmis-

thews (Williamstown, MA: Williams College Museum of Art,

takably schizophrenia, Jake must be hospitalized; (2) Hospitaliza-

2001). Drama—Hallowe’en Party (1950, Art Market, 2008) in-

tion will have to be continued for a long time; (3) He should be transferred at the earliest moment to a Veterans Hospital, not only

cludes a masked ghost figure. 72. Paul Laurence Dunbar, The Complete Poems of Paul Lawrence

because a private hospital is costly, or because Jake is a veteran,

Dunbar (New York: Dodd Mead, 1913), 71.

but because it is the concensus [sic] of opinion that modern

73. Lawrence, interview by author, July 1983.

methods will be applied in the therapy.’ ” Halpert explained that

74. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (1952; New York: Grove

the psychiatrist and his colleagues had recommended the VA

Press, 1967), 109, my emphasis.

hospital in the Bronx and would make certain that Lawrence got

75. Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk, 3.

special care. Halpert asked Knight to telephone her upon receiving

76. Lawrence, interview by author, May 20, 1985.

the letter. On August 21 Knight replied by thanking Halpert and

77. See New York Amsterdam News, January 19, 1935; in a readership

enclosing a request that Lawrence be admitted to the VA hospital

poll of Harlem’s most popular celebrities, Ethel Waters edged

in the Bronx. (See Downtown Gallery Records, reel 5549, frames

out Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

466–69, AAA.) Presumably Halpert was to make the arrangements

78. Quoted in Wheat, Jacob Lawrence, 103.

for the transfer. However, Lawrence remained at Hillside Hospital;

79. George Washington Dixon in 1827 and Thomas D. Rice in 1828

there are no available records on what happened next or who paid

performed “Jim Crow.” See Joseph Boskin, Sambo: The Rise and

for the private hospital expenses. The nature of the therapy is sug­

Demise of an American Jester (New York: Oxford University

gested by Lawrence’s own paintings: individual psychotherapy,

Press, 1986). Even earlier, in 1769, a New York theater per-

medication, creative therapy (art lessons), recreational therapy

formed the comic opera The Padlock, with one white actor in

(patients’ playing cards and games, dancing, staging plays), occu­

blackface performing a slave; see John D. Silvera, “Still in Black-

pational therapy (sewing and weaving), and gardening. 64. Aline B. Louchheim [Saarinen], “An Artist Reports on the Troubled Mind,” New York Times Magazine, October 15, 1950, 15.

face,” Crisis 46 (March 1939): 76. Silvera’s article was one of the first to protest the stereotypes perpetuated in minstrelsy. 80. Beginning with Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy

65. “Jacob Lawrence,” Ebony, April 1951, 73.

and the American Working Class (New York: Oxford University

66. Ibid.

Press, 1993), there has been a surge of excellent studies on min-

67. New York Post, March 26, 1961, quoted in Wheat, Jacob Law­

strelsy, including Susan Gubar, Racechanges: White Skin, Black

rence, 102.

Face in American Culture (New York: Oxford University Press,

68. Lawrence, interview by author, May 20, 1985.

1997), and William J. Mahar, Behind the Burnt Cork Mask: Early

69. Redding, On Being Negro, 26.

Blackface Minstrelsy and Antebellum American Popular Culture

70. In 1963 Lawrence told Mort Cooper, “I work every day. And

(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999).

anything that interrupts this rhythm completely throws me off”

81. Ellison, “Change the Joke,” 47–48.

(Cooper, “Portrait of a Negro Painter,” Chicago Defender, May

82. Ibid., 49.

18, 1963, 9). In an interview with Robert Storr, the artist Jack

83. Ibid.

Whitten recounted the advice Lawrence had given him; Whitten

84. Huggins, Harlem Renaissance, 260.

said: “It’d be difficult to tell you what sort of mental state I was

85. Quoted in Jessie Fauset, “The Gift of Laughter,” in Locke, New

going through by late ’68. For the first time in my life I had to see

Negro, 164.

a shrink simply because I thought I was going off the deep end.

86. I am grateful to Kymberly Pinder for flagging parts of this discus-

I would occasionally go and talk to Jacob Lawrence. And he would

sion and encouraging me to rethink it. See Lott, Love and Theft,

tell me, ‘Well, you got to keep your mind on the plastic.’ It’s like the Van Gogh syndrome. Van Gogh was obviously emotionally

36, for Frederick Douglass’s encounter with a minstrel troupe. 87. Langston Hughes, “Minstrel Man,” in Locke, New Negro, 144.

notes to pages

214 – 218  

319

puppet troupes in the world.” The article goes on to discuss “all-

88. These performers were frequently cited in both the ads and the

colored vaudeville units” operating in cities across the country

reviews of the New York Amsterdam News.

with performances staged “in hospitals and asylums, C. C. C.

89. See Henry Louis Gates Jr., “The Chitlin Circuit,” New Yorker,

camps, settlement houses and school auditoriums.”

February 3, 1997, 44–55. 90. See Lawrence W. Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness:

105. Preston, “Diverse Moderns.”

Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom (New

106. Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk, 3.

York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 298.

107. See C. B. Davis, “Reading the Ventriloquist’s Lips,” Tulane Drama

91. Quoted in ibid., 298.

Review 42 (Winter 1998): 133–56. Peter T. Nesbett, in an essay

92. See Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 49 n. 7.

for the catalogue Important American Paintings, Drawings and

93. Boskin, Sambo, 66.

Sculpture (New York: Christie’s, May 21, 2008), 20–22, argues that the puppet is “a surrogate for Lawrence himself.”

94. Derek Walcott, ‘What the Twilight Says: An Overture,” in Dream on Monkey Mountain and Other Plays (London: Jonathan Cape,

108. S[tuart] P[reston], “About Art and Artists: Group Shows at Two Galleries Reopen Local Season with Varied Works,” New York

1972), 3–40, quoted in Gates, Figures in Black, 173.

Times, September 13, 1954, 18.

95. Richard J. Powell, “Harmonizer of Chaos: Jacob Lawrence at Midcentury,” in Nesbett and DuBois, Over the Line, 154. To Pow-

109. Gates, comments made following my talk “Masks and Masking,” February 28, 2007.

ell the two figures recall the famous African American comedians Dewey “Pigmeat” Markham and Tim Moore, who frequently

110. See FBI file on Jacob Lawrence, memo dated June 26, 1953.

played at the Apollo Theater. Moore later played in the 1950s

111. Nesbett and DuBois, “Chronology,” 38, state that he declined the invitation. The letter of rejection and the letter “declining”

television series Amos ’n’ Andy.

the offer are not in the archives. Perhaps he simply never heard

96. Henry Louis Gates Jr., comments during the Q&A following my

further from USIA of the rejection.

talk, “Masks and Masking in the Art of Jacob Lawrence,” delivered at the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, Harvard University, February 28, 2007. and “Marmontel” in The Oxford Companion to French Literature,

the paintings of the protest years, 1955 –70

ed. Sir Paul Harvey and J. E. Heseltine (Oxford: Clarendon Press,

Epigraphs are from Richard Wright, “Blueprint for Negro Litera-

97. Gates, Figures in Black, 51–54, refers to the essays “Arlequin”

8.

1959), 27, 456; the reference to Harlequin’s African origins is

ture” (1937), in Amistad 2: Writings on Black History and Culture, ed.

suggested in Marmontel, Éléments de literature (1787).

John A. Williams and Charles F. Harris (New York: Vintage Books,

98. The figure also recalls the zoot-suiters of the 1940s, who were themselves transgressors. 99. Quoted in “Stories with Impact,” Time, February 2, 1943, 50,

1971), also at ChickenBones: A Journal, www.nathanielturner.com/ blueprintfornegroliterature.htm; and Jacob Lawrence, interview by Carroll Greene, October 26, 1968, AAA. Parts of this chapter were

quoted in Lizzetta LeFalle-Collins, “The Critical Context of Jacob

first developed for “Jacob Lawrence’s Paintings during the Protest

Lawrence’s Early Works, 1938–1952,” in Nesbett and DuBois,

Years of the 1960s,” in Over the Line: The Art and Life of Jacob Law­

Over the Line, 131.

rence, ed. Peter T. Nesbett and Michelle DuBois (Seattle: University

100. Another touch is the rooster depicted on the head of Harlequin’s staff. Lawrence may have seen a variant of the routine originally

of Washington Press/Jacob Lawrence Catalogue Raisonné Project, 2000), 175–91.

developed by the black minstrel Bob Mack, who costumed himself as a rooster and then commenced a mock fight with a real



1. Milton W. Brown, Jacob Lawrence, exh. cat. (New York: Whitney

bantam rooster on stage. In the early twentieth century Bert Wil-

Museum of American Art, 1974), 15. Peter T. Nesbett and Mi-

liams adapted the rooster act for his Ziegfield Follies routine. See

chelle DuBois’s “Chronology,” in Nesbett and DuBois, Over the

Errol G. Hill and James V. Hatch, A History of African American Theatre (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 124. 101. See Michelle DuBois, “Playing with the Game Motif: An Interpretive Study of Jacob Lawrence’s Game Paintings” (MA thesis, University of Washington, 2000). 102. In 1959 Ingmar Bergman directed The Seventh Seal, in which Death is similarly dressed and hooded. 103. See Elizabeth Steele, “The Materials and Techniques of Jacob Lawrence,” in Nesbett and DuBois, Over the Line, 256.

Line, 36, states that Lawrence conceived of the series in 1949. 2. Quoted in Selden Rodman, Conversations with Artists (New York: Capricorn Books, 1961), 105. Rodman does not cite the date of his interview of Lawrence. 3. Lawrence, interview by Greene, October 26, 1968, www.aaa  .si.edu/collections/oralhistories/transcripts/lawren68.htm. There were precedents to Lawrence’s pictorial survey. When ­Diego Rivera unveiled his New Workers School murals in September 1933, T. R. Poston of the New York Amsterdam News

104. See “800 Have Jobs on WPA Units,” New York Amsterdam News,

praised Rivera’s inclusion of African Americans throughout his-

June 6, 1936, 8: “There are marionette groups now working in

tory, including incidents of slaves in rebellion, Crispus Attucks’s

Buffalo, New York, and in San Francisco, the Buffalo group su-

death, and portraits of Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass;

pervised by Esther B. Whiholm. These are the only all-Negro

see New York Amsterdam News, September 6, 1933, 9.

320  notes to pages

219 – 232

4. Jacob Lawrence to John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Founda-

15. Lawrence expressed his admiration for Clark’s work in a 1986

tion, January 28, 1954, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foun­

letter: “As always, we enjoyed your comments on various social

dation Archives, New York. I am grateful to Mary Kiffer for pro-

issues of the day. Your contribution is appreciated by us all.”

viding me with the photocopies of Lawrence’s applications. 5. Jacob Lawrence to Langston Hughes, February 23, 1954, Hughes

Lawrence to Clark, June 30, 1986, Kenneth Clark Papers, box 4, folder 4, MD, LOC.

Papers, box 101, folder 1894. According to Peter T. Nesbett and

16. See Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (New

Michelle DuBois, Jacob Lawrence: Paintings, Drawings, and

York: Harper and Row, 1980), 441–59. Zinn’s account of the civil

Murals (1935–1999), a Catalogue Raisonné (Seattle: University

rights movement is succinct and based on firsthand experience.

of Washington Press/Jacob Lawrence Catalogue Raisonné Proj-

For descriptions and analyses of ordinary African Americans

ect, 2000) (hereafter cited as Catalogue Raisonné), 130, Law-

defying segregation on the buses in the South, see Robin D. G.

rence had originally engaged the film historian Jay Leyda to

Kelley, Race Rebels (New York: Free Press, 1996).

provide the text captions. 6. Henry Allen Moe to Jacob Lawrence, April 2, 1954, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Archives.

17. For brief histories of the Birmingham events of 1963, see Steven Kasher, The Civil Rights Movement: A Photographic History, 1954–68 (New York: Abbeville Press, 1996), 88–113; Anthony

7. Nesbett and DuBois, “Chronology,” 38, 42; Chapelbrook Founda-

Lewis and the New York Times, Portrait of a Decade: The Sec­

tion to Jacob Lawrence, January 11, 1955, awarding him $250 a

ond American Revolution (New York: Random House, 1964),

month for a year, SCRC, reel 4571, AAA.

175–89; and Juan Williams, Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil

8. Lawrence did not like the financial arrangements with Alan; see

Rights Years, 1954–1965 (New York: Penguin Books, 1988),

Ellen Harkins Wheat, Jacob Lawrence: American Painter, exh.

181–95. The most graphic source is the PBS series Eyes on the

cat. (Seattle: Seattle Art Museum, 1986), 108.

Prize, which contains footage of newsreels.

9. When shown at the Alan Gallery in 1956, they were billed as the first thirty of a sixty-painting series. Lawrence insisted that the

18. Zinn, People’s History, 447. 19. See Jacob Lawrence and Gwendolyn Knight, transcript of inter-

paintings not be sold separately, but William Meyers bought the

view by Paul J. Karlstrom, November 18, 1998, 66, Lawrence-

whole lot and proceeded to sell the panels individually over time.

Knight Papers (not filmed), AAA, provided to me by Karlstrom.

(See Nesbett and DuBois, Catalogue Raisonné, 130.)

20. See Lewis and New York Times, Portrait of a Decade, 214–24.

In 1957 when Alan downsized his gallery to six artists, Law-

21. Lawrence may have had in mind the court proceedings regarding

rence was one of those eliminated. Without the steady sales

an interracial couple, Mildred Jeter Loving and Richard Perry

jump-started by regular solo exhibitions, Lawrence’s income

Loving. They had been married in 1958 in the District of Colum-

from his art was drastically reduced. He had been teaching, but

bia but lived in Virginia. Arrested by Virginia police on charges

only part time. First he taught at the Five Towns Music and Art

of violating Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act, which forbade inter-

Foundation in Cedarhurst, Long Island (1955–62, 1966–68). He

racial marriage, they were convicted, but their one-year sen-

would teach part time and later full time at Pratt Institute

tence was suspended provided they left Virginia. In 1963 the

(1955–70), the New School for Social Research (1966–69), and

American Civil Liberties Union took up their case and appeals

the Art Students League (1967–69). (See Nesbett and DuBois,

followed. In 1967 the Supreme Court struck down Virginia’s an-

“Chronology,” for his teaching.) He also did one-day stints as a

timiscegenation law, thus ending all such race-based restrictions

visiting artist, as when he gave a painting demonstration at

on marriage. I am grateful to my editor Sue Heinemann for call-

Middlebury College in March 1956. The simultaneous part-time

ing this legal case to my attention.

teaching jobs left little time to paint, but it helped that the Law-

22. V. R., “In the Galleries,” Arts 37 (May 1963): 112.

rences had moved to 130 St. Edwards Street in the Fort Green

23. See Donald Attwater, The Penguin Dictionary of Saints (Baltimore:

section of Brooklyn, a ten-minute walk to Pratt. The best source

Penguin Books, 1965), 304. Sebastian’s history is not fully known.

for the various jobs he held can be found in his correspondence

He had been an officer in the imperial guard in Rome before he

archived in Jacob Lawrence Papers, SCRC, which have been

became a follower of Christ. When his arrow wounds were mi-

microfilmed by the AAA, reels 4571–73.

raculously healed, Diocletian ordered him to be beaten to death.

10. Howard Devree, “Forceful Painting,” New York Times, January 6, 1957, D15. 11. “Birth of a Nation,” Time, January 14, 1957, 82.

24. See Lewis and New York Times, Portrait of a Decade, 46–69. 25. See Robert Coles, Children of Crisis: A Study of Courage and Fear (1964, Boston: Little, Brown, 1967), 80: Ruby Bridges “com­

12. J. R. M., “Jacob Lawrence,” Arts 31 (January 1957): 53.

prehended her exposure to harassment and wondered about its

13. Lawrence actually participated in a contest to do a UNESCO

causes. She is a Negro; she knows that and could hardly help

mural and won the competition (along with Stuart Davis), but

knowing it during those months. There are restrictions and penal-

funds did not materialize for the project; see Nesbett and

ties associated with her racial condition; she knows that and

DuBois, “Chronology,” 42.

has been taught them. No, she cannot go here or sit there. No,

14. Kenneth B. Clark, Prejudice and Your Child[1955], 2nd ed., enl. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963), 23.

her race’s people do not ordinarily appear on television pro­ grams or in the movies, Yes, she would probably never finish

notes to pages

232 – 242  

321

school, because money is short, expenses high, her family large

arrived it was really a hostile environment until I threatened

and opportunities very few. . . . Her mother daily confirmed and

them with filing a suit with the ACLU.” When DuBois pressed the

enforced what her children knew, what they had to know as they

Lawrences to describe the hostility, Knight replied, “We could

grew older and left their backyards to face the world of school,

not get any services, we could not find a place to live, it was ter-

buses and shopping centers.” See www.rubybridges.com for in-

rible. And the Africans were hostile to us and I think they were

formation on her recent activities for the Ruby Bridges Foundation

going along with the CIA because they were afraid of them, I

in New Orleans.

guess.” The Lawrences threatened to sue the U.S. government

26. Jacob Lawrence and Gwendolyn Knight, taped interview by au-

and eventually got the U.S. officials to relax their restrictions against them. Through businessmen friends, they were able to

thor, April 19, 1995. 27. Unsigned review, “Jacob’s Dream,” Newsweek, April 15, 1963,

find housing. I am grateful to Nesbett and DuBois for making the transcript available to me.

100. 28. Lawrence and Knight, interview by author, April 19, 1995. 29. Quoted in Mort Cooper, “Portrait of a Negro Painter,” Chicago Defender, May 18, 1963, 9.

43. See the discussion of his FBI file in Chapter 7. Michelle DuBois told me that when she and Peter Nesbett were preparing their “Chronology,” the Lawrences did not want them to write for the

30. Brief comment following the caption for American Revolution, in

FBI file. I, too, respected these wishes; however, after Knight

Motive 24 (October 1963). The issue was devoted to the arts and

died I did obtain it. The FBI was suspicious of many African

consisted of poetry, fiction, articles on art and topics of general

Americans considered radical by the U.S. government, such as

interest, and book and movie reviews.

Malcolm X, who traveled to Africa at the time. The artist Eliza-

31. Anthony Lewis subtitled his book on the civil rights movement

beth Catlett, living in Mexico, also found herself harassed by

“The Second American Revolution,” but it was not quite a revo-

U.S. officials in the mid-1950s. When she became a Mexican

lution. Instead it was a “race-relations revolution . . . a unique

citizen, the U.S. government would not issue her a visa to enter

effort to join a society rather than overthrow it.” See Lewis and

the country. The ban was not lifted until 1971. Catlett, taped in-

New York Times, Portrait of a Decade, 14. 32. Warhol used the Charles Moore photographs reproduced in Life,

terview by author, June 5, 1995. 44. Ulli Beier to the Lawrences, September 14, 1964, LawrenceKnight Papers, reel D-286, AAA.

May 17, 1963, 30–31. 33. The science of gathering statistics on crowds was not very pre-

45. “Artist Extraordinary,” clipping from Link: The Nigerian-American

cise. Kasher, Civil Rights Movement, 118, states: “Estimates of

Quarterly Newsletter 11 (July 1964), Lawrence-Knight Papers,

the crowd size range from 200,000 to 500,000. It was unquestionably the largest political demonstration in the United States

reel D-286, frame 175, AAA. 46. See USIS [USIA], Lagos, to Lawrence, September 28, 1964, Lawrence-Knight Papers, AAA, reel D-286, frame 42. In 1965 the

to date.” 34. Ibid., 116.

USIA printed a special issue of their publication, Topic (No. 5),

35. Cooper, “Portrait of a Negro Painter,” 9.

focused on “The Negro in the American Arts,” which featured

36. Jacob Lawrence and Gwendolyn Knight, taped interview by au-

Lawrence; see Lawrence-Knight Papers (not filmed), box 4, “Printed Matter,” AAA.

thor, April 20, 1995. 37. “Leading Negro Artists,” Ebony, September 1963, 131–40.

47. Lawrence, interview by author, April 19, 1995.

38. Lawrence’s involvement with the civil rights movement prompted

48. Lawrence’s friend Langston Hughes had just written a musical

Philip Evergood to write him on October 21, 1963: “You are doing

about the civil rights movement, Jericho-Jim Crow, which was to

a wonderful job heading the Artists Committee of Snick [SNCC],”

open in January 1965 at the Greenwich Mews Theater on West

Jacob Lawrence Papers, SCRC. 39. Terry Dintenfass, interview by Paul Cummings, January 13, 1975, AAA, www.aaa.si.edu/collections/oralhistories/transcripts/ dinten74.htm. Raymond Saunders exhibited at the Dintenfass Gallery in 1962, 1964, 1966, 1969, and 1971. 40. He had wanted to travel to Nigeria in 1961, but the State Department denied him a visa that year (see Chapter 7). 41. Lawrence and Knight, interview by author, April 19, 1995; see also Wheat, Jacob Lawrence, 107–8.

13th Street. In a letter to Hughes sometime before Christmas, Lawrence told Hughes of his plans to see it; Lawrence to Hughes, n.d. (December 1964?), Hughes Papers, box 101, folder 1894. 49. See Lucy R. Lippard, A Different War: Vietnam in Art, exh. cat. (Seattle: Real Comet Press/Whatcom Museum of History and Art, 1990), 12. 50. The painting is based on a drawing, Struggle (Drawing for), done ca. 1965. 106th Street is a broad street of large early twentiethcentury apartments on the Upper West Side; the Lawrences

42. Gwendolyn Knight, in Knight and Lawrence, transcript of taped

lived in 8E, a two-bedroom apartment. During his stay at Bran-

interview by Michelle DuBois and Peter Nesbett, June 7, 1999:

deis, Lawrence had received a major honor from the cultural

“We went on our own. We paid our own way to go, and we paid

world when he was inducted into the prestigious National Insti-

our own living expenses, but still they wanted control over our

tute of Arts and Letters on May 19, 1965. His friend Ben Shahn

coming and going, they wanted to keep an eye out. . . . When we

made a moving nomination speech, and other artists paid trib-

322  notes to pages

242 – 249

ute to Lawrence through their congratulatory letters. Philip Ev-

World, 1922), 53. Lawrence was one of the pallbearers at McKay’s

ergood wrote Lawrence before the induction on February 5,

funeral in 1948, when the poem was read; see Lillian Scott, “Along Celebrity Row,” Chicago Defender, June 5, 1948, 17.

1965, saying he was glad of the election and adding: “The Institute needs more painters with some guts and imagination”;

62. Lawrence, interview by Karlstrom, November 18, 1998, 13.

Lawrence-Knight Papers, reel D-286, frame 55.

63. Lawrence painted Confrontation at the Bridge when commissioned by Transworld Art, New York, to design an image to be

51. I am grateful to Ann Prentice Wagner for sending me archival materials from the National Portrait Gallery. See Ann Prentice

included in one of three portfolios to accompany An American

Wagner, “Catalogue Entry 43, Stokely Carmichael by Jacob Law-

Portrait, 1776–1976, 10 vols.; see Peter T. Nesbett, Jacob Law­

rence,” in Eye Contact: Modern American Portrait Drawings from

rence: Thirty Years of Prints (1963–1993), a Catalogue Raisonné

the National Portrait Gallery, ed. Wendy Wicks Reaves, exh. cat.

(Seattle: Francine Seders Gallery/University of Washington

(Washington, DC: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institu-

Press, 1994), 32. For the actual event, see film footage in the PBS documentary Eyes on the Prize.

tion, 2002), 216–19. 52. “The Nation,” Time, July 15, 1966, 15.

64. The excerpts that follow are from Rustin, “Role of the Artist,” 260–63.

53. Telephone conversation, noted on memorandum, between Jacob Lawrence and Frederick S. Voss, November 8, 1991, National

65. One needs to recall that W. E. B. Du Bois, a previous editor of the

Portrait Gallery curatorial files, quoted in Wagner, “Catalogue

Crisis, defended “propaganda” in the service of fighting racism. See p. 292, n. 48.

Entry 43,” 218. Time, however, did not publish the cover. 54. Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Black Power: Radical Politics and African

66. See Bayard Rustin, “The Role of the Artist in the Freedom

American Identity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,

Struggle,” Crisis 77 (August–September 1970): 260–63, and Ja-

2004), 76–77, notes three explanations for why the panther be-

cob Lawrence, “The Artist Responds,” Crisis 77 (August–September 1970): 266–67.

came the symbol of the Lowndes County Freedom Organization, based on his interviews with participants.

67. Quoted by Stan Nast, “Painter Lawrence Is Honored for a ‘Protest’ That Was Life,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, April 5, 1980, quoted in

55. Addison Gayle Jr., introduction to The Black Aesthetic (Garden

Wheat, Jacob Lawrence, 114. This statement echoes what José

City, NY: Doubleday, 1971), xvii–xviii. 56. Jane Van Cleve, “The Human Views of Jacob Lawrence,” Stepping

Clemente Orozco told the New York Times reporter in 1940, that

Out Northwest 12 (Winter 1982): 33–37, quoted in Wheat, Jacob

his art had “no political significance”; see “Orozco Completes Fresco at Museum,” New York Times, July 4, 1940, sec. 1.

Lawrence, 113. Lawrence reiterated this story to the author on April 20, 1995. 57. Lawrence and Knight, interview by author, April 20, 1995. At this

68. John Hersey, Hiroshima (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946), 8–9. 69. Ibid., 48–49.

interview Gwendolyn Knight pointed out that the students at

70. Ibid., 60.

California State College in Hayward, where Lawrence was a vis-

71. In the mid-1980s Professor William Vance, my colleague at

iting artist from September 1969 to March 1970, were even more

Boston University, recalled in conversation that Hersey’s ac-

militant because of the influence of the Black Panthers, head-

count, coming as it did in 1946, did much to dispel anti-Japa-

quartered in nearby Oakland.

nese sentiments among Americans in the early postwar years.

According to Edward J. Barnes, black students at that time

72. I am grateful to Sidney Shiff, who let me photocopy Lawrence’s statement in October 2005.

characteristically rejected traditional techniques and research methods because such learning came from the middle-class

73. “Bikini,” Fortune, December 1946, 156.

white establishment and thus did not seem “relevant” to issues

74. In 2008, when the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts bought

of racism. See Edward J. Barnes, “The Black Community and

the Hiroshima series and subsequently exhibited all eight pan-

Black Students in White Colleges and Universities,” in Black Stu­

els, I sent them a draft of my discussion here. I am pleased that

dents in White Schools, ed. Edgar A. Epps, National Society for

the publicity department saw fit to draw liberally from my re-

the Study of Education Series on Contemporary Educational Is-

marks in their press release.

sues (Worthington, OH: Charles A. Jones, 1972), 60–73. 58. The range of viewpoints can be found in Samella S. Lewis and Ruth G. Waddy, Black Artists on Art, No. 1 (Los Angeles: Con-

epilogue

temporary Crafts, 1969).

The epigraph is quoted in M. Levin and J. S. Wilson, “No Bop Roots in

59. See Lawrence, interview by Greene, October 26, 1968, www.aaa  .si.edu/collections/oralhistories/transcripts/lawren68.htm.

Jazz: Parker,” Down Beat 16 (September 9, 1949): 12. I am grateful to Kenneth Hartvigsen for finding the citation.

60. “The Black Artist in America: A Symposium,” Metropolitan Mu­ seum of Art Bulletin 27 (January 1969): 259. The actual date of the symposium was not noted in the Bulletin. 61. Claude McKay, Harlem Shadows (New York: Harcourt, Brace and



1. In the northeast suburban section of Seattle, not far from the University of Washington, they lived in a one-and-a-half story bungalow at 4316 Thirty-seventh Street Northeast. In 1982 Law-

notes to pages

249 – 259  

323

rence was adamant that they would move back to New York once

launched into a project of filming Lawrence. Frustrated by the

he retired: “We really miss the East Coast, and we want to come

consistently bland responses that he felt he was getting from

back,” he told James Buell and David Driskell. See transcript of

Lawrence, Sutherland attempted to make the artist angry. When

interview, February 4, 1982, 2, Amistad Research Center, Mu-

Sutherland finally succeeded, Lawrence ended that day’s shoot-

seum Services Files, Tulane University. For his years in Seattle, see ch. 4, “At Home in the West: 1968 to Present,” in Ellen Harkins Wheat, Jacob Lawrence: American Painter, exh. cat. (Seattle: Seattle Art Museum, 1986).

ing. Sutherland’s documentary was never made. 19. I recall this conversation over drinks in Seattle, after Knight received her Women’s Caucus for Art award on February 2, 1993. 20. At a dinner given after the opening of the 1994 MoMA exhibition

2. It is now called California State University/East Bay.

of the Migration series, I recall Lawrence’s standing to thank the

3. Peter T. Nesbett and Michelle DuBois, “Chronology,” in Over the

patrons and others and reciting his usual litany of all the sup-

Line: The Art and Life of Jacob Lawrence, ed. Peter T. Nesbett

portive groups in his life. When he came to the word commu­

and Michelle DuBois (Seattle: University of Washington Press/

nists, Henry Luce III, one of the guests at the dinner, com-

Jacob Lawrence Catalogue Raisonné Project, 2000), 50.

menced a very noisy coughing fit. (My thanks to Elizabeth

4. Allan Kollar, e-mail to author, November 8, 2008. 5. George Washington Bush (1779–1863) was one of the first black settlers in what is now the state of Washington. For information

Hutton Turner, who also attended the dinner, for reminding me of this incident.) 21. The Whitney show, curated by Milton W. Brown, traveled to the

on commissions, honorary degrees, and major exhibitions, see

Saint Louis Art Museum, the Birmingham Museum of Art, the

Nesbett and DuBois, “Chronology.”

Seattle Art Museum, the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art

6. Romare Bearden and Harry Henderson, A History of African-

and the Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, and the New

American Artists: From 1792 to the Present (New York: Pantheon

Orleans Museum of Art. The Seattle show circulated to the Oak-

Books, 1993), 312, discuss the pressures on Lawrence during his

land Museum, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Phillips

New York years.

Collection in Washington, D.C., the Dallas Museum of Art, and

7. Michelle DuBois, e-mail to author, March 2008. 8. Jacob Lawrence, transcript of interview by Henry Louis Gates Jr., June 3, 1992, 19, Phillips Collection.

the Brooklyn Museum. 22. The Hampton exhibition traveled to the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the

9. Bonnie Hoppin, “Arts Interview,” Puget Soundings, February 1977,

Studio Museum in Harlem, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the

6, quoted in Ellen Harkins Wheat, “Jacob Lawrence” (PhD diss.,

Delaware Art Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Car-

University of Washington, 1987), 447.

negie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. The Phillips exhibition circu-

10. Jacob Lawrence and Gwendolyn Knight, transcript of taped

lated to the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Portland Art Museum in

inter­view by unknown interviewer, June 1, 1987. The bracketed

Oregon, the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Saint Louis Art Mu-

ellipses indicate material I have omitted; the other ellipses are

seum, and MoMA.

in the original transcript. I am grateful to Barbara Earl Thomas

23. See Nesbett and DuBois, “Chronology.”

for providing me in May 2006 with a photocopy of the transcript,

24. See Peter T. Nesbett, Jacob Lawrence: The Complete Prints

which was held in the archives of the Jacob and Gwendolyn

(1963–2000), a Catalogue Raisonné (Seattle: University of Wash­

Lawrence Estate prior to deposit in the AAA. 11. Robin Updike, “Modern Master,” Pacific Northwest [Seattle Times Magazine], June 28, 1998, 18.

ington Press / Francine Seders Gallery, 2001). 25. Over the Line opened at the Phillips Collection and traveled to the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Detroit Institute of

12. Walter Christmas, audiotaped interview by author, May 4, 1995,

Arts, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Museum

maintained that Knight was then “a better painter” than

of Fine Arts, Houston. The paperback version of Over the Line

­L awrence.

served as the catalogue and contains a section of fifty additional

13. Whitfield Lovell, e-mail to author, July 2, 2008.

pages that includes statements from the sponsors, the director,

14. Barbara Earl Thomas, “Never Late for Heaven,” in Never Late for

and the curator, as well as the list of exhibited works and addi-

Heaven: The Art of Gwen Knight, by Sheryl Conkelton and Bar-

tional photographs to make complete the photographic record

bara Earl Thomas, exh. cat. (Seattle: University of Washington

of the exhibition.

Press / Tacoma, WA: Tacoma Art Museum, 2003), 18. This cata-

26. Walter Christmas, interview by author, May 4, 1995.

logue is the primary source for information on Knight.

27. Lawrence, interview by author, January 11, 1994.

15. Lawrence and Knight, interview by unknown interviewer, June 1,

28. I previously discussed the prints with builders as a theme in Patricia Hills, “The Prints of Jacob Lawrence: Chronicles of Strug­

1987. 16. May Stevens, telephone conversation with author, March 23, 2007, and February 8, 2008.

gles and Hopes,” in Nesbett, Jacob Lawrence: The Complete Prints. See also Peter T. Nesbett, “Jacob Lawrence: The Builder

17. See p. 319, n. 70.

Paintings,” in Jacob Lawrence: The Builders, Recent Paintings,

18. In 1986 David Sutherland, a noted documentary filmmaker,

exh. cat. (New York: D. C. Moore Gallery, 1998); and Lowery Stokes

324  notes to pages

259 – 266

Sims, “The Structure of Narrative: Form and Content in Jacob Lawrence’s Builder Paintings, 1946–1998,” in Nesbett and DuBois, Over the Line.

Knight Papers, Estate of Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence, Seattle, 2006, promised gift to AAA. 2. See funeral service program, Lawrence-Knight Papers, box 1 of

29. Jacob Lawrence, transcript of responses to queries from Belle­

10 (unfilmed as of 2006), AAA; and the Web page for the

vue Art Museum, Washington, not dated, in response to a request

Ebenezer Baptist Church, www.ebenezer909.org/historypage1.

that he write up comments for students in connection with the

html.

exhibition Celebrations—No Place Like Home (November 20,

3. I am most grateful to Chris McKay for researching the South

1993–January 8, 1994), Lawrence-Knight Papers, Estate of Jacob

Carolina records of Ancestry Library Edition and the various U.S.

and Gwendolyn Lawrence, Seattle, 2006, promised gift to AAA.

censuses referenced here and for providing me with the relevant

Quoted in Elizabeth Steele, “The Materials and Techniques of Jacob Lawrence,” in Nesbett and DuBois, Over the Line, 254, based on her interview of Lawrence on March 5, 1999.

photocopies. 4. Peter T. Nesbett and Michelle DuBois, “Chronology,” in Over the Line: The Art and Life of Jacob Lawrence, ed. Peter T. Nesbett and

30. See Michelle DuBois, “Playing with the Game Motif: An Interpre-

Michelle DuBois (Seattle: University of Washington Press/Jacob

tive Study of Jacob Lawrence’s Game Paintings” (MA thesis,

Lawrence Catalogue Raisonné Project, 2000), 25, provide infor-

University of Washington, 2000). 31. Floyd Coleman, e-mail to author, March 22, 2008. 32. Whitfield Lovell, e-mail to author, July 2, 2008. Subsequent quotations from Lovell are also from this e-mail. 33. According to Peter T. Nesbett and Michelle DuBois, Jacob Law­ rence: Paintings, Drawings, and Murals (1935–1999), a Cata­ logue Raisonné (Seattle: University of Washington Press/Jacob Lawrence Catalogue Raisonné Project, 2000), 112, an undated note by Lawrence in the Terry Dintenfass Papers, AAA, stated the figure was Jackie Robinson. Integration did not just happen

mation regarding Lawrence’s siblings; one assumes that the art-  ­ist provided them with the information. Geraldine’s family has reserved their privacy on Lawrence family matters. Throughout the chronology, Nesbett and DuBois refer to Lawrence’s mother as “Rosa Lee.” 5. Mort Cooper, “Portrait of a Negro Painter,” Chicago Defender, May 18, 1963, 9. 6. “Jacob Lawrence,” Current Biography Yearbook, ed. Charles Moritz (New York: H. W. Wilson, 1965), 252. 7. Ellen Harkins Wheat, Jacob Lawrence: American Painter, exh.

because baseball managers suddenly became antiracist. Active

cat. (Seattle: Seattle Art Museum, 1986), 30–31, 194 n. 25.

campaigns in the black community brought integration to the

8. Ellen Harkins Wheat, “Jacob Lawrence” (PhD diss., University of

sport: for example, the actor Canada Lee was active in the End

Washington, 1987), 413, from her recorded interview of Law-

Jim Crow in Baseball Committee; see Wright Papers, box 100, folder 1436. 34. See Nesbett, Jacob Lawrence: The Complete Prints, 26. The screenprint image had an edition of two hundred signed and numbered; another edition of four thousand signed on the plate,

rence, February 22, 1983. 9. Nesbett and DuBois, “Chronology,” 48. 10. See Wheat, Jacob Lawrence, 31. 11. Judy Coles Payne to Jacob Lawrence, May 11, 1980, LawrenceKnight Papers, box 4 of 10 (unfilmed as of 2006), AAA.

and an unlimited edition of posters. Nesbett notes that the im-

12. For Knight’s mother, see Certificate of Baptism, Island of Bar­

ages were created “to commemorate the involvement of black

bados, for Miriam Helena Small, registered June 15, 1961,

athletes in the Olympic games, track being an event in which

­L awrence-Knight Papers, Estate of Jacob and Gwendolyn Law-

black athletes had traditionally excelled. But it also serves as a

rence, Seattle, 2006, promised gift to AAA; for Knight’s father,

poignant, if indirect, reminder of Jesse Owens’s triumphant vic-

see Barbara Earl Thomas, “Never Late for Heaven,” in Never

tories in the 1936 Berlin Games.”

Late for Heaven: The Art of Gwen Knight, by Sheryl Conkelton

35. Updike, “Modern Master,” 18.

and Barbara Earl Thomas, exh. cat. (Seattle: University of Wash-

36. Lawrence, lecture, November 15, 1982, quoted in Wheat, Jacob

ington Press; Tacoma, WA: Tacoma Art Museum, 2003), 9 

Lawrence, 105.

and 10. 13. Ibid., 10.

appendix: jacob armstead lawrence and his family

14. Knight kept details of her early life private, although she did open



16. Barbara Earl Thomas, conversation with author, April 4, 2008,

1. Lawrence’s address book and a typewritten memorial notice, dated September 26, 1969, signed “The Family,” Lawrence-

up somewhat to Barbara Earl Thomas. 15. This has changed in the last ten years. Seattle.

notes to pages

267 – 276  

325

selected bibliography

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gress. 1936. Reprint, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986. Beard, John R. The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture, the Negro Patriot of Hayti: Comprising an Account of the Struggle for Liberty in the Island, and a Sketch of Its History to the Pres­ ent Period. London: Ingram, Cooke, 1853. [———.] Toussaint L’Ouverture: A Biography and Autobiography. Ed. James Redpath. Boston: James Redpath, 1863. Bearden, Romare. “The Negro Artist and Modern Art.” Oppor­ tunity 12 (December 1934): 371–72. Bearden, Romare, and Harry Henderson. A History of AfricanAmerican Artists: From 1792 to the Present. New York: Pantheon Books, 1993. Berman, Greta. The Lost Years: Mural Painting in New York City under the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Proj­ ect, 1935–1943. New York: Garland, 1978. Berman, Greta, and Jeffrey Wechsler. Realism and Realities: The Other Side of American Painting, 1940–1960. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Art Gallery, 1982. Bernier, Celeste-Marie. African American Visual Arts: From Slavery to the Present. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008. Bibby, Deirdre L. Augusta Savage and the Art Schools of Har­

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cat. New York: Alfred A. Knopf; Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1976. Du Bois, W. E. B. “Criteria of Negro Art.” Crisis, October 1926, 293. ———. The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches. 1903. Reprint, with an introduction by Henry Louis Gates Jr. New York: Bantam Books, 1989. DuBois, Michelle. “Playing with the Game Motif: An Interpretive Study of Jacob Lawrence’s Game Paintings.” MA thesis, University of Washington, 2000. Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. New York: Random House, 1952.

———. Shadow and Act. 1964. Reprint, New York: Vintage International, 1995. Evans, Walker. “In the Heart of the Black Belt.” Fortune, August 1, 1948, 88. Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove Press, 1967. Originally published as Peau noire, masques blancs (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1952). Fax, Elton C. Seventeen Black Artists. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1971. Fine, Ruth. The Art of Romare Bearden. Exh. cat. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2003. Francis, Jacqueline. “Making History: Malvin Gray Johnson’s and Earle W. Richardson’s Studies for Negro Achievement.” In The Social and the Real: Political Art of the 1930s in the Western Hemisphere, ed. Alejandro Anreus, Diana L. Linden, and Jonathan Weinberg. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006. Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. “The Chitlin Circuit.” New Yorker, February 3, 1997, 44–55. ———. Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the “Racial” Self. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. ———. “New Negroes, Migration, and Cultural Exchange.” In Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series, ed. Elizabeth Hutton Turner. Exh. cat. Washington, DC: Rappahannock Press/ Phillips Collection, 1993. ———. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. ———, ed. The Classic Slave Narratives. New York: Signet Classic, 1987. Gayle, Addison, Jr. The Black Aesthetic. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971. Goeser, Carolina. Picturing the New Negro: Harlem Renais­ sance Print Culture and Modern Black Identity. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007. Goldsby, Jacqueline. A Spectacular Secret: Lynching in Ameri­ can Life and Literature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Greenberg, Cheryl Lynn. “Or Does It Explode?”: Black Harlem

Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989. Harris, Leonard, ed. The Critical Pragmatism of Alain Locke: A Reader on Value Theory, Aesthetics, Community, Culture, Race, and Education. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999. Harris, Leonard, and Charles Molesworth. Alain L. Locke: The Biography of a Philosopher. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. Harrison, Alferdteen, ed. The Black Exodus: The Great Migra­ tion from the American South. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991. Harrison, Helen A. “John Reed Club Artists and the New Deal: Radical Responses to Roosevelt’s ‘Peaceful Revolution.’ ” Prospects 5 (1980): 240–68. Hedin, Raymond. “Strategies of Form in the American Slave Narrative.” In The Art of Slave Narrative: Original Essays in Criticism and Theory, ed. John Sekora and Darwin T. Turner. Macomb: Western Illinois University, 1982. Hemingway, Andrew. Artists on the Left: American Artists and the Communist Movement, 1926–1956. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002. Henri, Florette. Black Migration: Movement North, 1900–1920: The Road from Myth to Man. New York: Anchor Press, 1976. Hersey, John. Hiroshima. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946. Hill, Errol G., and James V. Hatch. A History of African Ameri­ can Theatre. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Hills, Patricia. “Jacob Lawrence as Pictorial Griot: The Harriet Tubman Series.” American Art 7 (Winter 1993): 40–59. ———. “Jacob Lawrence’s Expressive Cubism.” In Jacob Law­ rence: American Painter, by Ellen Harkins Wheat. Exh. cat. Seattle: Seattle Art Museum, 1986. ———. “Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series: Weavings of Pictures and Texts.” In Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series, ed. Elizabeth Hutton Turner. Exh. cat. Washington, DC: Rap­ pahannock Press/Phillips Collection, 1993. ———. “Jacob Lawrence’s Paintings during the Protest Years of the 1960s.” In Over the Line: The Art and Life of Jacob Law­

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Raisonné Project, 2000. ———. Social Concern and Urban Realism: American Painting of the 1930s. Exh. cat. Boston: Boston University Art Gallery, 1983. Hills, Patricia, and Roberta Tarbell. The Figurative Tradition and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Exh. cat. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1980. Huggins, Nathan Irvin. Harlem Renaissance. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971. Hughes, Langston. The Collected Works of Langston Hughes, ed. Arnold Rampersad. 16 vols. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001–4.

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Wheat, Ellen Harkins. “Jacob Lawrence.” PhD diss., University of Washington, 1987. ———. Jacob Lawrence: American Painter. Exh. cat. Seattle: Seattle Art Museum, 1986. ———. Jacob Lawrence: The Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman Series of 1938–40. Exh. cat. Hampton, VA: Hampton University Museum; Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991. Williams, Juan. Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954–1965. New York: Penguin Books, 1988. Willis, Deborah. “The Schomburg Collection: A Rich Resource

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illustrations

All artwork by Jacob Lawrence unless otherwise indicated. Frontispiece: Brooklyn Stoop, 1967  ii Map of Central Harlem, ca. 1930s–1940s  10 1. Jacob Lawrence at work on Frederick Douglass series panel, c. 1939, photographed by Kenneth F. Space  8 2. View of 125th Street, looking west from Seventh Avenue, 1943  12 3. Sid Grossman, Children Playing on Sidewalk, 1939  12 4. Charles Alston in his studio, 1930s  13 5. Page from Arthur Wesley Dow, Composition: A Series of Exercises in Art Structure for the Use of Students and Teachers, 1938  14

1 2. Jacob Lawrence in corner of studio at 306, 1930s, photographed by James L. Allen  22 13. Bob Blackburn working on lithographic stone,   1930s  22 14. Winold Reiss, Alain LeRoy Locke, ca. 1925  24 15. Chow, 1936  28 16. Augusta Savage with her staff at the Harlem Community Art Center, 1930s  31 17. Gwendolyn Bennett, two instructors, Augusta Savage,   and Eleanor Roosevelt at the opening of the Harlem Community Art Center, December 1937  31

6. Augusta Savage in her studio, 1930s  18

18. Moving Day (Dispossessed), 1937  32

7. Augusta Savage, Gwendolyn Knight, 1934–35  19

19. Charles Alston, Magic in Medicine and Modern Medicine,

8. Display of masks at Harlem Art Workshop, 1933, photographed by James L. Allen  20 9. Jacob Lawrence and other students at the Harlem   Art Workshop, 1933, photographed by James L.   Allen   20 10. Jacob Lawrence and other students with teacher at the

ca. 1936–40  34 20. Artists on the WPA Harlem Hopsital murals project, supervised by Charles Alston, ca. 1936  34 21. William Johnson exhibition, Harlem Community Art   Center, June 6, 1939  36 22. Halloween Sand Bags, 1937  37

Harlem Art Workshop, 1933, photographed by James L.

23. Rain, 1938  37

Allen  21

24. Dust to Dust, 1938  39

11. Henry W. Bannarn, ca. 1937  21

25. Blind Beggars, 1938  39

335

26. Jacob Lawrence with Mary Beattie Brady at his American Artists School opening, 1939  41 27. Jacob Lawrence presenting a panel from his Toussaint

45. The Life of Harriet Tubman, 1940 (thumbnails of 31 panels)  78 4 6. The Life of Harriet Tubman, Panel 3: “ ‘A house divided

L’Ouverture series to the registrar at the Baltimore  

against itself cannot stand. I believe that this govern- 

Museum of Art, 1939, photographed by James L.  

ment cannot last permanently half slave and half free.  

Allen  41

I do not expect this union to be dissolved; I do not  

28. Baltimore Museum installation, wall of Lawrence’s work, 1939  41 29. “An Artist of Merit: Pictorial History of Haiti Set on Canvas,” New York Amsterdam News, June 3, 1939  43 30. José Clemente Orozco at work on the fresco Dive Bomber

expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will cease   to be divided. It will become all one thing or the other.’— Abraham Lincoln”  84 47. The Life of Harriet Tubman, Panel 4: “On a hot summer   day about 1820, a group of slave children were tumbling

and Tank at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, June

in the sandy soil in the state of Maryland—and among

1940, photographed by Eliot Elisofon  45

them was one, Harriet Tubman. Dorchester County,

31. Jacob Lawrence lecturing on his art at Lincoln School,   New Rochelle, New York, February 28, 1941, photographed by Ray Garner  47 32. Edith Halpert reading at the home of Charles Sheeler, ca. 1935–40, photographed by Sheeler  49

Maryland.”  85 4 8. The Life of Harriet Tubman, Panel 5: “She felt the sting   of slavery when as a young girl she was struck on the   head with an iron bar by an enraged overseer.”  86 49. The Life of Harriet Tubman, Panel 9: “Harriet Tubman

3 3. Carl Van Vechten, Jacob Lawrence, 1941  51

dreamt of freedom (‘Arise! Flee for your life!’), and in

3 4. The Life of Harriet Tubman, Panel 7: “Harriet Tubman

the visions of the night she saw the horsemen coming.

worked as water girl to field hands. She also worked at

Beckoning hands were ever motioning her to come, and

plowing, carting, and hauling logs.”  56

she seemed to see a line dividing the land of slavery from

35. Rex Ingram in Haiti, 1938  60 36. The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture, 1938 (thumbnails   of 41 panels)  62 37. The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture, Panel 10: “The cruelty  

the land of freedom.”  87 50. Margaret Bourke-White, Hood’s Chapel, Georgia, photo   in Erskine Caldwell and Bourke-White’s You Have Seen Their Faces, 1937  87

of the planters towards the slaves drove the slaves to

51. William H. Johnson, Chain Gang, ca. 1939–40  88

revolt, 1776. Those revolts, which kept cropping up  

52. The Life of Harriet Tubman, Panel 10: “Harriet Tubman  

from time to time, finally came to a head in the

was between twenty and twenty-five years of age at the

rebellion.”  69

time of her escape. She was now alone. She turned her

3 8. The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture, Panel 12: “Jean Francois, first Black to rebel in Haiti.”  71 39. The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture, Panel 20: “General

face toward the North, and fixing her eyes on the guiding star, she started on her long, lonely journey.”  89 5 3. The Life of Harriet Tubman, Panel 18: “At one time during

Toussaint L’Ouverture, Statesman and military genius,

Harriet Tubman’s expedition into the South, the pursuit

esteemed by the Spaniards, feared by the English, dreaded

after her was very close and vigorous. The woods were

by the French, hated by the planters, and reverenced by  

scoured in all directions, and every person was stopped

the Blacks.”  71 4 0. Artist unknown, Toussaint L’Ouverture, in 1863 edition   of John R. Beard’s Toussaint L’Ouverture  71 41. The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture, Panel 23: “General

and asked: ‘Have you seen Harriet Tubman?’ ”  91 5 4. The Life of Harriet Tubman, Panel 24: “It was the year 1859, five years after Harriet Tubman’s first trip to Boston. By this time, there was hardly an antislavery worker who

L’Ouverture collected forces at Marmelade, and on  

did not know the name Harriet Tubman. She had spoken

October the 9th, 1794, left with 5,000 men to capture  

in a dozen cities. People from here and abroad filled her

San Miguel.”  72

hand with money. And over and over again she made her

42. The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture, Panel 36: “During the

mysterious raids across the border into the South.”  92

truce Toussaint is deceived and arrested by LeClerc.

55. Forward, 1967  94

LeClerc felt that with Toussaint out of the way, the Blacks

56. Through Forest, Through Rivers, Up Mountains, 1967  94

would surrender.”  73

57. The Migration of the Negro, Panel 18: “The migration

4 3. Artist unknown, Toussaint Captured by Stratagem, in 1853 edition of John R. Beard’s Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture  74 4 4. Artist unknown, Harriet Tubman, in Sarah H. Bradford’s Life of Harriet Tubman, 1869  77

336  illustr ations

gained in momentum.”  96 5 8. The Migration of the Negro, Panel 1: “During the World War there was a great migration North by Southern Negroes.”  101

59. The Migration of the Negro, 1940–41 (thumbnails of 60 panels)  102

 ote: The captions under the images give Lawrence’s 1941 N captions for The Migration of the Negro. In 1993 he revised these captions as follows: 1. During World War I there was a great migration north by southern African Americans. 2. The war had caused a labor shortage in northern industry. Citizens of foreign countries were returning to their native lands. 3. From every southern town migrants left by the hundreds to travel north. 4. All other sources of labor having been exhausted, the migrants were the last resource. 5. Migrants were advanced passage on the railroads, paid for by northern industry. Northern industry was to be repaid by the migrants out of their future wages. 6. The trains were crowded with migrants. 7. The migrant, whose life had been rural and nurtured by the earth, was not moving to urban life dependent on industrial machinery. 8. Some left because of promises of work in the North. Others left because their farms had been devastated by floods. 9. They left because the boll weevil had ravaged the cotton crop. 10. They were very poor. 1 1. Food had doubled in price because of the war. 12. The railroad stations were at times so crowded with people leaving that special guards had to be called to keep order. 13. The crops were left to dry and rot. There was no one to tend them. 14. For African Americans there was no justice in the southern courts. 15. There were lynchings. 16. After a lynching the migration quickened. 17. Tenant farmers received harsh treatment at the hands of planters. 18. The migration gained in momentum. 19. There had always been discrimination. 20. In many of the communities the Black press was read with great interest. It encouraged the movement. 21. Families arrived at the station very early. They did not wish to miss their trains north. 22. Migrants left. They did not feel safe. It was not wise to be found on the streets late at night. They were arrested on the slightest provocation. 23. The migration spread. 24. Their children were forced to work in the fields. They could not go to school. 25. They left their homes. Soon some communities were left almost empty. 26. And people all over the South continued to discuss this great movement. 27. Many men stayed behind until they could take their families north with them. 28. The labor agent sent south by northern industry was a familiar presence in the Black communities. 29. The labor agent recruited unsuspecting laborers as strike breakers for northern industries. 30. In every southern home people met to decide whether or not to go north.

31. The migrants found improved housing when they arrived north. 32. The railroad stations in the South were crowded with northbound travelers. 33. Letters from relatives in the North told of the better life there. 34. The Black press urged the people to leave the South. 35. They left the South in great numbers. They arrived in the North in great numbers. 36. Migrants arrived in Chicago, the gateway to the West. 37. Many migrants found work in the steel industry. 38. They also worked on the railroads. 39. Railroad platforms were piled high with luggage. 40. The migrants arrived in great numbers. 41. The South was desperate to keep its cheap labor. Northern labor agents were jailed or forced to operate in secrecy. 42. To make it difficult for the migrants to leave, they were arrested en masse. They often missed their trains. 43. In a few sections of the South leaders of both Black and White communities met to discuss ways of making the South a good place to live. 44. But living conditions were better in the North. 45. The migrants arrived in Pittsburgh, one of the great industrial centers of the North. 46. Industries boarded their workers in unhealthy quarters. Labor camps were numerous. 47. As the migrant population grew, good housing became scarce. Workers were forced to live in overcrowded and dilapidated tenement houses. 48. Housing was a serious problem. 49. They found discrimination in the North. It was a different kind. 50. Race riots were numerous. White workers were hostile toward the migrants who had been hired to break strikes. 51. African Americans seeking to find better housing attempted to move into new areas. This resulted in the bombing of their new homes. 52. One of the most violent race riots occurred in East St. Louis. 53. African Americans, long-time residents of northern cities, met the migrants with aloofness and disdain. 54. For the migrants, the church was the center of life. 55. The migrants, having moved suddenly into a crowded and unhealthy environment, soon contracted tuberculosis. The death rate rose. 56. The African American professionals were forced to follow their clients in order to make a living. 57. The female workers were the last to arrive north. 58. In the North the African American had more educational opportunities. 59. In the North they had the freedom to vote. 60. And the migrants kept coming.

60. The Migration of the Negro, Panel 13: “Due to the South’s losing so much of its labor, the crops were left to dry and spoil.”  112 61. The Migration of the Negro, Panel 14: “Among the social conditions that existed which was partly the cause of the migration was the injustice done to the Negroes in the courts.”  113 62. The Migration of the Negro, Panel 15: “Another cause

illustr ations  337

was lynching. It was found that where there had been a lynching, the people who were reluctant to leave at first   left immediately after this.”  113 6 3. The Migration of the Negro, Panel 31: “After arriving North the Negroes had better housing conditions.”  115 6 4. The Migration of the Negro, Panel 38: “They also worked in large numbers on the railroad.”  115 65. The Migration of the Negro, Panel 42: “They also made   it very difficult for migrants leaving the South. They   often went to the railroad stations and arrested the Negroes wholesale, which in turn made them miss their train.”  116 66. The Migration of the Negro, Panel 44: “Living conditions were better in the North.”  116 67. The Migration of the Negro, Panel 45: “They arrived in Pittsburgh, one of the great industrial centers of the North, in large numbers.”  117 6 8. The Migration of the Negro, Panel 49: “They also found discrimination in the North although it was much different from that which they had known in the South.”  117 69. The Migration of the Negro, Panel 52: “One of the largest race riots occurred in East St. Louis.”  118 70. The Migration of the Negro, Panel 58: “In the North the Negro had better educational facilities.”  119 71. Jack Delano, Sharecropper and Wife, Georgia, photo in Richard Wright and Edwin Rosskam’s 12 Million Black Voices, 1941  121 72. Marion Post, Cotton Buyer and Negro Farmer Discussing

81. Russell Lee, Negro Housing, Chicago, Ill., photo in Richard Wright and Edwin Rosskam’s 12 Million Black Voices, 1941  132 82. Edwin Rosskam, Boy in Front of Apartment House, Chicago, Ill., photo in Richard Wright and Edwin Rosskam’s 12 Million Black Voices, 1941  132 83. Rampart Street, 1941  134 84. “Justice, à la Dixie,” New York Amsterdam News, November 20, 1937  138 85. William C. Chase, “Impatience,” New York Amsterdam News, September 21, 1935  138 86. “Judge Lynch Presides” by T. R. Poston, with photo of the Thomas Hart Benton’s painting A Lynching, New York Amsterdam News, March 2, 1935  139 87. William C. Chase, “Deporting Him, Eh?” New York Amsterdam News, July 5, 1933  140 88. Gwendolyn Knight, Untitled (New Orleans Series), 1941  142 89. Patterson Hotel on New Orleans’ Famous Rampart Street, photo in Peter Wellington Clark’s Delta Shadows, 1942  142 90. Bar and Grill, 1941  143 91. Bus, 1941  144 92. The Wall, 1941  144 93. Spring Plowing, 1942  145 94. “How We Live in South and North,” Survey Graphic, November 1942  146 95. Sidewalk Drawings, 1943  147

Price, Mississippi, photo in Richard Wright and Edwin

96. Unidentified artist, Pvt. Joe Louis Says, 1942  149

Rosskam’s 12 Million Black Voices, 1941  122

97. William C. Chase, “Hitler Is Here!” New York Amsterdam

73. The Migration of the Negro, Panel 17: “The migration was

News, June 26, 1943  149

spurred on by the treatment of the tenant farmers by the

98. Charles Alston, The Negro Press, 1944  149

planter.”  122

99. Starvation, 1943  151

74. Dorothea Lange, Hoeing Cotton, Alabama, photo in Richard Wright and Edwin Rosskam’s 12 Million Black Voices, 1941  123 75. The Migration of the Negro, Panel 48: “Housing for the Negro was a very difficult problem.”  125 76. The Migration of the Negro, Panel 60: “And the migrants kept coming.”  127 77. Carl Mydans, Back Yard of Alley Dwelling, Washington, D.C., photo in Richard Wright and Edwin Rosskam’s 12 Million Black Voices, 1941  127 78. John Vachon, Courtroom Scene, Virginia, photo in Richard

100. Killing the Incurable and Aged, 1943  151 101. Decommissioning the Sea Cloud (also known as United States Coast Guard Boat), 1944  153 102. Lawrence with Capt. Joe Rosenthal and Carl Van Vechten at Museum of Modern Art opening, 1944  153 103. Painting the Bilges, 1944  154 104. War, Panel 8: Beachhead, 1947  155 105. War, Panel 11: Casualty—The Secretary of War Regrets, 1947  155 106. Victory, 1947  155 107. Untitled [Sailors at a Bar], 1947  156

Wright and Edwin Rosskam’s 12 Million Black Voices,

108. In the Heart of the Black Belt, 1947  160

1941  128

109. Gee’s Bend, 1947  160

79. International News Photos, Lynching, Georgia, photo in

110. Beer Hall, 1947  161

Richard Wright and Edwin Rosskam’s 12 Million Black

111. Red Earth—Georgia, 1947  162

Voices, 1941  128

112. July 4th, Independence Day, Vicksburg, Mississippi,

80. Twenty-six panels from Lawrence’s Migration series as they appeared in Fortune (November 1941)  130

338  illustr ations

1947  162 113. One-Way Ticket, 1948  165

114. Silhouette (The Lynching), 1948  165

155. Ben Shahn, Conversations, 1958  209

115. Untitled [Lynchings], 1947  167

156. Malvin Gray Johnson, Negro Masks, 1932  211

116. Untitled [Man with Hat and Cigarette], 1948  167

157. Lois Mailou Jones, Les Fétiches, 1938  211

117. Slave Rebellion, 1948  167

158. Square Dance, 1950  215

118. Dixie Café, 1948  167

159. Psychiatric Therapy, 1949  216

119. Play Street, 1942  168

160. Comedians Tim Moore and Johnny Lee at the Apollo, late

1 20. Parade, 1948  171

1930s, photographed by Morgan and Marvin Smith  219

121. Street Scene—Restaurant, ca. 1936  173

161. Tragedy and Comedy, 1952  220

1 22. A street-corner orator, 125th Street, ca. 1938,

162. Makeup (also known as Dressing Room), 1952  222

photographed by Morgan and Marvin Smith  174

163. Night after Night, 1952  223

1 23. Street Orator’s Audience, 1936  174

164. Marionettes, 1952  224

1 24. Pool Parlor, 1942  176

165. Curtain, 1952  225

1 25. This Is Harlem, 1943  178

166. Ventriloquist, 1952  227

1 26. They Live in Fire Traps, 1943  178

167. The Masquerade, 1954  227

127. Often Three Families Share One Toilet, 1943  179

168. Celebration, 1954  228

1 28. Russell Lee, Toilet in “Kitchenette” Apartment House,

169. Masks, 1954  228

Chicago, Ill., photo in Richard Wright and Edwin

170. Supermarket—All Hallow’s Eve, 1994  229

Rosskam’s 12 Million Black Voices, 1941  179

171. American Revolution, 1963  230

1 29. There Are Many Churches in Harlem. The People Are Very Religious, 1943  180 1 30. There Is an Average of Four Bars to Every Block, 1943  180 131. Many Whites Come to Harlem to Watch the Negroes Dance, 1943  181 1 32. The Music Lesson (originally titled Mothers and Fathers Work Hard to Educate Their Children), 1943  182 1 33. Because of High Rents and Unfit Conditions Rent Strikes Are Becoming More Frequent (also known as Rent Strike), 1942  182 1 34. The Ballad of Margie Polite, 1948  185

172. Struggle . . . From the History of the American People, Panel 5: “We have no property! We have no wives! No children! We have no city! No country!—Petition of Many Slaves, 1773.” 1955  234 173. Struggle . . . From the History of the American People, Panel 13: “Victory and Defeat,” 1955  235 174. Struggle . . . From the History of the American People, Panel 11: “120.9.14.286.9.33-ton 290.9.27 be at 153.9.28.110.8.17.255.9.29 evening 178.9.8 . . . —An Informer’s Coded Message,” 1955  235 175. Playroom, 1957  237 176. Charles Moore, Police Dogs Attacking Demonstrator

1 35. Barber Shop, 1946  186

during Anti-segregation Protest in Birmingham, Alabama,

1 36. Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight, February 17, 1946  186

1963  238

137. Going Home, 1946  186

177. Two Rebels, 1963  238

138. The Lovers, 1946  188

178. Taboo, 1963  240

1 39. End of the Day, 1945  188

179. Ordeal of Alice, 1963  241

140. Children at Play, 1947  190

180. Pete Harris, Elizabeth Eckford, One of the Little Rock

141. Shoe-Shine Boys, 1948  191 142. Nichols, Girls Playing Dodge Ball on 142nd Street, 1949  191

Nine, Pursued by the Mob outside Little Rock Central High School, September 4, 1957  242 181. Andy Warhol, Red Race Riot, 1963  243

143. The Checker Players, 1947  192

182. The Family, 1964  244

144. Kibitzers, 1948  193

183. Festival of the Images, Ilobu, photo in Ulli Beier, Art in

145. Dancing Doll, 1947  195

Nigeria, 1960  245

146. The Fur Coat, 1948  196

184. Street to Mbari, 1964  246

147. Rummage Sale, 1948  197

185. Menagerie, 1964  247

148. Slums, 1950  198

186. Dreams No. 1, 1965  248

149. Brownstones, 1958  200

187. Struggle III—Assassination, 1965  249

150. Street Shadows, 1959  201

188. Confrontation, 1965  250

151. Romare Bearden, The Dove, 1964  202

189. Portrait of Stokely Carmichael, 1967  250

152. Vaudeville, 1951  204

190. Wounded Man, 1968  252

153. Billboards, 1952  206

191. Cover for Freedomways, winter 1969  252

154. Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Juggler, 1952  209

192. Confrontation at the Bridge, 1975  253

illustr ations  339

193. Ralston Crawford, Test Able, 1946  256

198. Cabinet Maker, 1957  264

194. Hiroshima: Market, 1983  257

199. Poster Design . . . Whitney Exhibition, 1974  265

195. Hiroshima: People in the Park, 1983  257

200. Builders, 1980  266

196. Mary Randlett, Jacob Lawrence on the Stairs to His Attic

201. The Studio, 1996  266

Studio, Seattle, 1983(?)  260 197. Mary Randlett, Gwendolyn Knight and Jacob Lawrence in Seattle, mid-1980s  261

340  illustr ations

202. Schomburg Library, 1987  267 203. The Long Stretch, 1949  269 204. Study for the Munich Olympic Games Poster, 1971  269

index

Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations Abernathy, Ralph, 236

Agee, James, 99

Abyssinian Baptist Church, 15, 16, 281n28

Agricultural Adjustment Administration/Agricultural Adjust-

ACA Gallery, Struggle for Negro Rights (1935 exhibition), 138–39, 306n20 African Americans

ment Act, 99, 300n9 Alan, Charles, 5, 169, 232 Alan Gallery exhibitions, 232

and African history, 23–24

Albers, Josef, 157, 193

in American history, 30, 57, 58, 74–77, 97, 98–99,  

Allen, James Egert, 58

133, 231–33 “double consciousness” of, 209–11, 217, 226,   317n31 experience of, vs. that of white Americans, 3–4   (see also racism, psychological effects of) folk traditions of, 75, 172, 279n25 masking and, 210–12, 216–19, 221, 226 and rural life, 121–24, 126, 145 see also civil rights movement; Harlem; Jim Crow   segregation African art, 23–26, 286n102

Allen, James L., 17, 40, 42, 211, 283n46 Harlem Art Workshop masks, 20 Lawrence at Harlem Art Workshop, 20, 21 Lawrence at studio “306,” 22 Lawrence with Toussaint panel, 41 Alston, Charles (“Spinky”), 5, 13, 26, 29, 34, 46, 52, 131, 136, 137, 141, 210, 280n8, 280n16, 293n84, 304n60 employed by government, 17, 27, 283n43, 287n119, 290n25 Harlem Artists Guild member, 26, 27 Harlem Hospital murals, 34, 34

exhibitions of, 25, 210, 317n33

The Negro Press, 149, 149

masks, 210, 211

praise for Lawrence, 3, 11, 33, 36

and modern art, 25, 210

Spiral member, 202

“primitive,” defined as, 212

as teacher, 3, 13, 14, 16, 20–21, 25, 28, 35

341

Alston, Charles (“Spinky”) (continued) 

Bates, Addison, 34, 35, 265

see also 306 West 141st Street (Alston/Bannarn studio

Bates, Ruby, 137

“306”)

Baudelaire, Charles, 202

American Artists’ Congress, 2, 3, 23, 76, 150 Defense of World Democracy (1937 exhibition), 86, 88 American Artists School, 35–36, 38, 40, 57, 59, 88, 290n9 American Negro Exhibition/Art of the American Negro, Chicago (1940 exhibition), 46 American Society of African Culture, 245

Beard, John Reilly, The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture, 59, 60, 70, 72, 74, 295n17, 296n22 Bearden, Romare, 2, 5, 44, 52, 131, 141, 149, 251, 260 The Dove, 202, 203 A History of African-American Artists, 2, 21, 27, 149, 213 “The Negro Artist and Modern Art,” 25, 26

Amos, Emma, 202, 260

bebop style, 170, 194

Amsterdam News (New York Amsterdam News), 29, 38, 42, 57,

Becker, Samuel, 138

58, 59, 136, 172, 212

Beecher, Henry Ward, 76, 77, 84

Bennett reviewed in, 25–26

Beier, Ulli, 245

on CCC camps, 27–28, 287n125–27, 288n128–29

Bellow, George, The Law Is Too Slow, 137

on Harlem Community Art Center, 30, 284n68

Bennett, Gwendolyn, 5, 14, 26, 31, 36, 76, 286n107

on lynchings, 136, 137, 138, 138, 139

Amsterdam News review, 25–26

Savage in, 19, 284n61

and Harlem Artists Guild, 287n114

Anderson, Eddie (“Rochester”), 219 Andrews, William, 77 anticommunism. See cold war antilynching art exhibitions, 137–39 antimiscegenation statutes, 239, 321n21

and Harlem Community Art Center, 30–31, 52–53, 294n111 support for Lawrence, 31, 36, 172, 308n51 Benton, Thomas Hart, 172 A Lynching, 138, 139

antiwar movement, 249

Berman, Avis, 145

Apel, Dora, 135

Bernstein, Leonard, 213

Apollo Theater, 217, 219, 221

Bethune, Mary McLeod, 148

Arden Gallery, 41

Biassou, Georges, in Lawrence’s Toussaint series, 64, 70

Armstrong, Louis, 219

Bikini Atoll atomic texts, 207

Art Digest, 132, 183

Billet, Jeannot, in Lawrence’s Toussaint series, 64, 70

Art Front, 3, 35, 287n113, 300n2

Birmingham, Alabama, 236–38, 242, 243

Art News, 38

Black Emergency Cultural Coalition (BECC), 251

art workshops, 16, 17, 19; see also Harlem Art Workshop

Black Mountain College, 157, 193

Artis, William, 18, 19, 25, 31, 44

Black Panthers, 250, 251, 323n57

Artists Equity, 316n8, 317n23

Black Power movement, 250, 251

Artists’ Union, 3, 23, 26, 27, 34, 35, 287n113

Blackburn, Bob, 5, 21, 22, 29, 44, 52, 285n80, 318n55

Arts, 233

blackface minstrelsy. See minstrelsy

Atkinson, Brooks, 189

Bonaparte, Napoleon, 72, 74

Attaway, William, 23, 29, 44 Attucks, Crispus, 29

in Lawrence’s Toussaint series, 67, 68, 72, 74 Bontemps, Arna, 5, 47, 170 Boskin, Joseph, 220

Balanchine, George, La Valse (1941 ballet), 226 Baltimore Afro-American, 136 Baltimore Museum of Art, Contemporary Negro Art (1939   exhibition), 40, 41 Bannarn, Henry (“Mike”), 21, 21, 27, 57, 136 as teacher, 3, 5, 28, 29, 33, 35, 137 see also 306 West 141st Street (Alston/Bannarn   studio “306”)

Bourke-White, Margaret, 86, 99 Hood’s Chapel, Georgia, 86–88, 87 Boykin, Cloyd L., 283n49 Bradford, Sarah, 83–86, 88, 90, 92 Harriet Tubman engraving, 77 Brady, Mary Beattie, 5, 17, 20, 26, 41, 48, 52 support for Lawrence, 33, 40–46, 47, 49, 50 Brandeis University, 247, 249

Baranik, Rudolf, 262

Breckenridge, Mrs. Henry, 30

Barnes, Albert, 172

Bridges, Ruby, 242, 321n25

Barnes, Edward J., 323n57

Brooks, Van Wyck, 24

Barr, Alfred H., Jr., 5

Brown, Eleanor McMillen. See McMillen Gallery exhibition

Barthé, Richmond, 48

Brown, John, 76

342  index

Brown, Milton W., 231, 302n28

Coleman, Floyd, 268, 311n122

Brown, Samuel J., 137

Coleman, Frederick, 34

Brown, Sterling A., 148

Coles, C. B., 159

Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, 236, 239–40

Coles, Robert, Children of Crisis, 242, 321n25

Burrows, Carlyle, 205

collage cubist style, 279n24

Burtin, Will, 158

College Art Association (CAA), 2, 16, 17, 19, 282–83nn37–42;

Bush, President George H. W., 263

see also McMahon, Audrey Committee for the Negro in the Arts, 316n8

Cahill, Holger, 3, 14, 17, 29, 30, 171–72

communism. See Communist Party; Left

Caldwell, Erskine, 86, 99

Communist Party (CPUSA), 2, 35, 137, 207

Calkins, Deborah, 48, 50, 293nn84–85, 304n60, 310n101

Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), 243, 249

Calloway, Cab, 219

Connor, Eugene “Bull,” 236

Calo, Mary Ann, 17, 283n44, 283n49, 284n69, 284n72

Conrad, Earl, 157

Campbell, E. Simms, 138

Constantine, Mildred, 17

Canaday, John, 93

Cooke, Marvel, 29

Carmichael, Stokely, 249–50, 250

Cooper, Mort, 38, 242, 243

Carnegie Corporation, 16, 17, 20, 282n37, 283n44, 283n49,

Copland, Aaron, 213

284nn68–69, 284n72, 285n75

Cox, Oliver C., 157

carnival, as theme, 208

Crawford, Ralston, Test Able, 207, 255, 256

Carroll, Kathleen, 51

Crichlow, Ernest, 18, 23

Carroll, Lewis, Alice in Wonderland, 242

Crisis, The, 130

Carter, President Jimmy, 254, 318n49

Crowninshield, Frank, 51

Carter, Michael, 175

Cullen, Countee, 23, 50, 52, 183

Catlett, Elizabeth, 132, 322n43

Cummings, Paul, 244

Cayton, Horace R., 120

Cunard, Nancy, 23

Chapelbrook Foundation, 232 Chaplin, Charlie, 213

Daily Worker, 213, 316n8

Chase, William C., 137, 138

Davie, Maurice R., 158

“Deporting Him, Eh?” 140, 140

Davis, Arthur P., 183–84, 185

“Hitler Is Here!” 148, 149

Davis, Benjamin, Jr., 213

“Impatience,” 137, 138

Davis, Jefferson, 76

Chiang Kai-shek, 207

Davis, Sammy, Jr., 219

Chicago Artists Group, 47

Day, Selma, 34, 34

Chicago Defender, 136, 137, 150, 242, 254

DC Moore Gallery, 263

Chicago School of Sociology, 120

DeCarava, Roy, 29

“chitlin circuit,” 219

The Sweet Flypaper of Life, 199, 315n88

Christmas, Walter, 21

Delano, Jack, Sharecropper and Wife, Georgia, 121–22, 121

Christophe, Henri, 72, 74, 296n18, 297n23, 298n38

DePorres Interracial Center exhibition, 42

in Haiti, 60, 296n20

Dermody, Lawrence T., 34

in Lawrence’s Toussaint series, 60, 66, 68

Dessalines, Jean-Jacques, 296n21, 298n38

civil rights movement, 5–6, 236–40, 242–43, 246, 247, 249, 251, 253 Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), 27–28, 287n125 racism in, 27–28, 287nn126–27, 288nn128–29 Clark, Kenneth B., 18, 236 doll study, 236

Hughes’s play on, 296n18 in Lawrence’s Toussaint series, 60, 65, 68, 73, 74 Devree, Howard, 183, 233 Dewey, John, 3, 14–15, 16 Art as Experience, 15 DeZayas, Marius, 24

Clark, Maurice, 59

Dintenfass, Terry, 5, 244–45, 263

Clark, Peter Wellington, Delta Shadows, 141–42, 142

Dixiecrats, 158

Coast Guard, 150–57, 185, 308n62

Doe, Lewis, 140

Coates, Robert, 152

Dondero, Rep. George, 207

cold war, 5, 231, 206–9, 213–14, 219, 245

“Double V” campaign, 147–49

imagery of, 316n17, 316n22

Douglas, Aaron, 3, 23, 26, 29, 57, 76, 297n23, 298n50

index  343

Douglas, Stephen, 84

Fax, Elton, 11, 15, 18, 29, 31, 212

Douglass, Frederick, 57, 75, 76, 88, 150

FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), 207, 322n43; see also

Dow, Alfred Lesley, 13, 14, 61, 194 Composition, 13, 14 Downtown Gallery exhibitions American Negro Art (1941), 141 Crawford, Ralston, solo, 255

Lawrence, Jacob: FBI file Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA/FAP), 2, 3, 14, 17, 19, 30, 34, 38 Federal Theatre Project (FTP) of the Works Progress Administration, 38, 59, 296n18, 312n62; see also Haiti

Lawrence, solos, 141, 169, 205, 213, 214–15, 219, 313n41

Fields, W. C., 218

see also Halpert, Edith

films, post-World War II, 316n19

Driskell, David, 172

Fine, Ruth, 317n36

Du Bois, W. E. B., 5, 50, 119, 148, 267

Ford, Mr. and Mrs. Edsel, 52

Black Reconstruction in America, 159, 311n109

Fortune, 207, 255

“double consciousness,” 210, 217, 226, 317n31

“In the Heart of the Blackbelt,” 158–59, 161, 163

and propaganda in art, 29, 292n48

“And the Migrants Kept Coming, 48, 129–131, 130,

The Souls of Black Folk, 210, 217, 226, 299n65, 317n31 DuBois, Michelle, 263, 310n101

143–44, 304n62 “The Negro’s War,” 131, 149

DuBois, William, 59

Francine Seders Gallery, 263

Dunbar, Paul Laurence, “We Wear the Mask,” 216–17, 226

François, Jean, in Lawrence’s Toussaint series, 63, 64, 70, 71

Dunham, Katherine, 23, 52, 219

Frank, Robert, 311n112, 307n38

Dunning, William Archibald, 295n9

Franklin, John Hope, 157

Ebony, 197, 214, 255

Freedom Riders, 236

Eckford, Elizabeth, 240, 242

Freelan, Allan, 138

Edmund Pettus Bridge, Selma, Alabama, 253

Funn, Dorothy, 29

Frazier, Franklin, 158

Edmundson, William, 52, 172 Einstein, Albert, 213

Garrison, William Lloyd, 76

Eisenstein, Sergei, 302n29

Garvey, Marcus, 278n2

Potemkin (film), 120, 301n23 Ellington, Duke, 219 Ellison, Ralph, 3, 23, 27, 163, 209, 217

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., 5, 77, 212, 228, 260, 303n52 Figures in Black, 221 The Signifying Monkey, 209–10

“Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke,” 205, 217–18

Gayle, Addison, Jr., The Black Aesthetic, 251

Invisible Man, 28, 194, 239, 314n81

Gaylord, Cecil, 34

“Twentieth-Century Fiction,” 212

Gee’s Bend, Alabama, 311n107

Embree, Edwin R., 44, 175 Emergency Work Bureau of the Gibson Committee, 17, 282n39, 282n42 Emmart, A. D., 40 Evans, Edgar, 34 Evans, Walker, 99, 121, 123, 310n105 “In the Heart of the Blackbelt,” 158–59, 161, 163 Evergood, Philip, 5, 207, 238, 244, 323n50 Renunciation, 207, 255 experience, culture of, 3–4, 14–15; see also Lawrence, Jacob:   on experience expressionism, 4

Lawrence’s painting of, 159, 160 Geist, Sidney, 205 Genauer, Emily, 132 Gibson Committee. See Emergency Work Bureau of the Gibson Committee Gilliam, Sam, Jr., 251 Glenn, John, 34 Gold, Mike, 169 Goldwater, Sen. Barry, 249 Goodelman, Aaron J., 139 Goodman, Randy, 15, 45, 60, 150 Gorer, Geoffrey, 220 Gorleigh, Rex, 25, 31

Fair Employment Act (Executive Order 8802), 148

Gottlieb, Harry, 5, 35

Fanon, Frantz, 220, 224

Goya, Francisco, Disasters of War, 233

Black Skin, White Masks, 217

Gramsci, Antonio, 159

Farm Security Administration (FSA), 99, 159, 301n14

Great Depression, 1–3, 5, 9, 11, 13–16, 19

Farmer, James, 243

Great Migration, 97–133

Faubus, Gov. Orville, 240

Greenblatt, Stephen, 1, 5

34 4  index

Greene, Carroll, 75, 187, 231, 251

Harris, Leonard, Alain L. Locke , 278n21, 286n102

“griot,” defined, 75, 97, 270, 298n42

Harris, Michael, 184

Gropper, William, 316n12

Harris, Pete, photograph of Elizabeth Eckford, 240, 242

Grossman, Sid, Children Playing on Sidewalk, 12

Harrison, Richard B., 29

Guggenheim Foundation (John Simon Guggenheim Memorial

Haskell, Barbara, 207

Foundation), 152, 157, 187, 232, 310n85 Guillaume, Paul, 4 Guston, Philip, If This Be Not I, 208 Gwathmey, Robert, 238

Hatch, John Davis, Jr., 283n42 Hayden, Palmer, 40, 51, 52 Fétiche et Fleurs, 210 Midsummer Night in Harlem, 172 Hayes, Vertis, 34

Haiti, history of, 36, 59, 60, 69–70, 72–74, 296n21, 298n37,

Hellman, Lillian, 213

298n38; see also Lawrence, Jacob: Toussaint L’Ouverture

Helm, McKinley, 52

series

Hemingway, Andrew, 306n20

Haiti (1938 play), 38, 59–60, 296n20 Halpert, Edith, 5, 49, 172, 183, 232

Henderson, Harry, A History of African-American Artists, 2, 21, 27, 149, 213

as dealer in 1940s, 141, 143, 145, 151, 205

Henry, Barbara, 252

and Lawrence’s Coast Guard assignments, 150, 157

Henry, Patrick, 232, 233

and Lawrence’s early career, 47, 48–50, 51, 52, 129,  

Henson, Matthew, 29

141

Herndon, Angelo, 136, 137, 139

on Lawrence’s hospitalization, 212, 214, 318n63

Hersey, John, Hiroshima, 231, 254–56

praise for Lawrence, 310n85.

Herskovits, Melville J., 25

See also Downtown Gallery exhibitions

Hillside Hospital, 6, 197, 206, 214, 319n63

Hampton University Museum, 263

Hiss, Alger, 207

Handy, William C., 52.

Hoover, J. Edgar, 207

Harlem, 5, 9–10, 136, 176–77, 179, 181, 183–85, 189–90,

Hoppin, Bonnie, 260

192–95, 197, 199–203, 219

House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), 207

artistic community in, in 1930s, 9–31

Hudson, Bill, 238

Lawrence’s memories of, 15, 187, 221, 313n52

Huggins, Nathan, Harlem Renaissance, 210, 218

Lawrence’s paintings of, 169–203 (see also specific

Hughes, Langston, 5, 6, 23, 50, 148, 169–71, 175, 183–87, 213,

works under Lawrence, Jacob)

296n18

map of, 10

and FBI, 213

photographs of, 12, 174, 191

friendship with Lawrence, 199, 213, 232, 312nn7–10,

population of, 175, 305n2 riots in, 23, 183–85

322n48 —w ritin g s

Harlem Adult Education Committee, 17, 20, 211

“Ballad of the Landlord,” 170

Harlem Art Committee, 29

“The Ballad of Margie Polite,” 185

Harlem Art Workshop, 17, 20, 50, 211

Chicago Defender essays, 135, 136, 164, 184, 189, 213,

Harlem Artists Guild, 3, 23, 26–27, 34, 76, 262, 287n112, 287n114 Harlem Community Arts Center, 17, 26, 29–31, 48, 52, 53, 262, 288n146, 289n151 Paintings and Sculpture by 21 New York City Negro Artists (1938 exhibition), 36 Exhibition of Negro Cultural Work (1939 exhibition), 291n30

305n4, 306n23, 318n62 “a dream deferred,” 170 “Harlem,” 170 “Laughing to Keep from Crying,” 218 “Lynching Song,” 165 “Minstrel Man,” 218 “Montage of a Dream Deferred,” 170, 194 “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” 3, 170–71

Harlem Highlanders, 52

Not Without Laughter , 218

Harlem Hospital murals, 28, 34, 289n3

“One-Way Ticket,” 164

Harlem Renaissance, 2

One-Way Ticket, 164, 185

harlequin, 221, 228, 320n97

Semple (“Simple”) stories, 135, 189

Harmon, Mrs. William E., 52

“Silhouette,” 164, 169

Harmon Foundation, 17, 19, 20, 26, 40, 42, 48, 50, 52, 58,

Simply Heavenly (musical), 199

284n64, 284n69, 287n112; see also Brady, Mary Beattie

The Sweet Flypaper of Life, 199

index  345

Hughes, Langston (continued)

Klein, Emanuel, 214

—w ritin g s

Knight, Gwendolyn, 5, 6, 34, 36, 53, 76, 186, 187, 197, 247,  

“White Shopkeepers Who Own Stores in Negro   Neighborhoods,” 184

261, 263, 276, 314n82 Condé Nast employment of, 212, 262

Hunt, Richard, 251

as dance teacher, 157

Hurston, Zora Neale, 15, 50, 209

and Lawrence before marriage, 18, 19, 21, 34, 45, 276

Their Eyes Were Watching God, 141 Hyman, Stanley Edgar, 217

as Lawrence’s assistant and companion, 99, 261, 263, 297n24 on Lawrence’s hospitalization, 214, 318n63

Ingram, Rex, 60

in Lenexa, 145

Ingram, Zell, 31

marriage to Lawrence, 50, 135

Ink Spots, 219

in New Orleans, 141

International Labor Defense, 137

in Nigeria, 245, 262 Savage’s sculptural portrait of, 19

Jackson, Jay, 138

in Seattle, 259, 260–62

Jacobs, Jane, The Death and Life of Great American Cities,

Seattle Art Museum exhibition, 262

190, 192–93 James, C. L. R., 296n18 James, Skip, 212

Tacoma Art Museum exhibition, 262 Untitled (New Orleans Series), 141, 142 Women’s Caucus for Art award, 262

James Weldon Johnson Literary Guild, 36

Knight, Harry, 17, 282n40

Jarrett, Gene Andrew, 25, 286n102

Knopf, Alfred (publishing house), 169

Jefferson, Louise E., 25, 31

Kollar, Allan, 259, 319n70

Jennings, Wilmer, 138

Korean War, 207

Jet, 205

Kuh, Katharine, 199, 315n86

Jim Crow segregation, 27–28, 135, 136, 139, 143, 157, 158–59,

Kuniyoshi, Yasuo, The Juggler, 208, 209

164, 166, 184, 268, 306nn23–26

Kwait, John. See Schapiro, Meyer

in military, 131, 147–49, 150, 151 see also lynching; racism

LaFarge, Father, 42

John Reed Club, 23, 35

LaGuardia, Mayor Fiorello, 16, 40

Johnson, Charles S., 148, 151, 157

Lange, Dorothea, 99, 121

Johnson, James Weldon, 9, 30, 52

Hoeing Cotton, Georgia, 123, 123

Johnson, President Lyndon B., 166, 249

Lawrence, Geraldine (sister), 9, 276, 302n30

Johnson, Malvin Gray, 40, 48, 297n23

Lawrence, Jacob

Marching Elks, 172

ancestry of, 275–76

Negro Masks, 210, 211

on “African Idiom in Modern Art” (lecture), 61

Self-Portrait, 210–11

builder scenes, 265–67

Johnson, William H., 36 Chain Gang, 88, 88, 172

catalogue raisonné, 301n21 CCC service, 27, 28, 33

Jones, John, 140

on civil rights movement, 251

Jones, Lois Mailou, Les Fétiches, 210–11, 211

Clark, Kenneth, friendship, 321n15

Joseph, Ronald, 5, 21, 34, 34, 44, 52

Coast Guard service, 150–57, 185, 308n62

Julius Rosenwald Fund, 43, 44, 47, 53, 98, 133, 135, 145,  

and Communist Party, 213, 318n55

175, 307n43

community, praise for, 1, 11, 254, 263 on cubism, 61

Kemp, Ira, 312n25

crying masks, 219

Kennedy, President John F., 166, 239

on discipline in art, 319n70

Kennedy, Stetson, 157

education, early, 280n7

Keppel, Frederick, 17, 283n53, 284n69

exhibitions, 3, 36, 38, 40, 42, 43, 46, 47, 131, 232,

Kersands, Billy, 217 King, Rev. Martin Luther, Jr., 236, 243, 251

293nn68–69, 309n81, 321n9; see also under Downtown Gallery exhibitions

King-Hammond, Leslie, 15, 173

on experience, 23, 251, 307n43

Kirstein, Lincoln 5, 44

FBI file, 212, 213, 245, 286n130, 316n8, 318n49

346  index

finances and income, 38, 43, 44, 48, 49, 50, 99, 135, 143, 152, 169, 183, 291n44, 310n85, 321n8, 321n9

American Revolution, 230, 242, 243, 252–53 And Harlem Society Looks On, 181

government harrassment, 322n42

Antiquities, 245–46

Halpert correspondence, 50, 141, 150, 152, 157

Back Room, 291n28

on Harlem, 15, 187, 221, 313n52

The Ballad of Margie Polite, 185, 185

history, interest in, 24, 58, 59, 98, 133, 231

Bar and Grill (1937), 36, 291n28

hospitalization, 6, 197, 206, 212, 214–15, 229, 318n51,

Bar and Grill (1941), 141, 142, 143

319n63

Barber Shop, 186, 187

Hughes friendship, 213, 199, 232, 312nn7–10, 322n48

Beachhead, 152, 154

Julius Rosenwald Fund fellowships, 43, 44, 47, 53, 98,

Because of High Rents and Unfit Conditions, 182, 183

99, 133, 135, 145, 146, 175, 291n43, 307n43

Bed Time, 291n28

Locke correspondence, 42–43

Beer Hall, 159, 161

lynching as theme, 206, 210, 229, 317n40

Beggar No. 1, 291n28

marriage, 50, 135, 293n93

Beggar No. 2, 291n28

masks and masking, 11, 13, 16, 206, 210, 216, 229, 317n40

Billboards, 205, 206

and McCarthyism, 209, 213

Birth, 314n82

McKay friendship, 44–45, 323n61

Blind Beggars, 15, 38, 39, 216

mental breakdown (see hospitalization above)

Born to Fear, 309n74

murals, 259, 321n13

Boy with Kite, 239

in New Orleans, 49, 50, 141–43, 145, 307n42

Brooklyn Stoop, ii, 254

in Nigeria, 245–46

Brownstones, 199, 200

Orozco encounter, 45, 46, 138, 292n62, 292n64

Builders (1980), 266, 266

personal characteristics, 4, 6, 21

The Builders (1947), 161

on Philadelphia, 15, 98–99

Bus, 143, 144, 145, 146

photographs of, 8, 20, 21, 22, 36, 41, 43, 47, 50, 51, 153,

The Businessmen, 159

186, 260, 261

The Butcher, 36

poem “To all mothers,” 75

Cabaret, 239

as “primitive” artist, 38, 172

Cabinet Maker, 187, 264, 265

printmaking, 263

Cat Fish Row, 161

on propaganda in art, 46

Catholic New Orleans, 141, 143

on protest art, 184–85, 242, 254

Celebration, 226–28, 227

on racism, 6, 59, 150–51, 163, 209, 210, 217, 229, 240,

The Checker Players, 192–93, 192, 194

243, 244 residences and studios, 9, 27, 44, 50, 53, 185, 245, 259, 307n48, 309n77, 313n53, 323n1

Chess on Broadway, 199 Children at Play, 190, 190, 192 Christmas, 291n28

on South, 135–36, 150, 158

Christmas Dinner, 36

southern trips, 135, 141–43, 145–46, 150–2, 157–63

A Christmas Pageant, 315n1

stature in American art history, 6, 244, 268

Chow, 28, 28

on “struggle” as way of life, 231–32, 253–54, 270

City College Is Like a Beacon over Harlem, 183

and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, 322n38

A Class in Shoemaking, 161

style and techniques, 4, 6, 11, 13, 14, 15, 61, 75, 95, 97,

Coast Guard paintings, 152, 304n73

112, 126, 132, 171, 173, 193–94, 199

Concert, 315n1

teaching, 259–60, 310n93, 321n9

Confrontation, 249, 250

tricksters, use of, 212, 229, 317n46

Confrontation at the Bridge, 253, 253, 323n63

women as sources of inspiration, 76

Creative Therapy, 215

women as subjects, 75, 195, 233, 314n83

Curtain, 205, 225–26, 225

on World War II, 150, 156

Dancing Doll, 194, 195

WPA/FAP employment, 43, 175

Dawn, 36

—wo r ks

Decommissioning the Sea Cloud, 152, 153

After the Show, 205, 315n1

Depression, 215

All Hallow’s Eve, 239

The Dilemma of an Aging Population, 315n85

Alley, 143

Dixie Café, 166, 167

index  347

Lawrence, Jacob (continued)

Ice Peddlers, 173, 291n28

—wo r ks 

In the Garden, 215



Dorrance Brook Square, 291n28

In the Heart of the Black Belt, 159, 160

Drama—Hallowe’en Party, 215

Interior, 291n28

Drawing Water, 145

Interior Scene, 172–73

Dreams No. 1, 247, 248

Invisible Man among the Scholars, 239

Dust to Dust, 15, 38, 39, 291n28

John Brown series, 4, 70, 141, 143, 175

End of the Day, 188, 189, 247

July 4th, Independence Day, Vicksburg, Mississippi, 161,

Evening, 36

162

Family, 36

Junk, 36

The Family, 243–44, 244, 247

Kibitzers, 193, 193, 194

Fantasy, 315n1

Killing the Incurable and Aged, 151, 151

Feast, 36

Lady with Veil, 291n28

Fire, 36

The Libraries Are Appreciated, 183

Firewood, 145, 146

Library, 291n28

Forward, 93, 94

Library II, 239

Four Sheep, 246

Library III, 239

Four Students, 239

The Long Stretch, 268, 269

Frederick Douglass series, 4, 8, 57, 70, 74, 75, 86, 97

The Lovers, 188, 189

Freedomways cover, 252, 252

Makeup, 221–22, 222

From Life unto Death, 309n74

Many Whites Come to Harlem (or Dancing at the Savoy),

The Fur Coat, 194–95, 196, 314n82

179, 181, 181, 312n36

Games, 259

Marionettes, 205, 224–25, 224, 226

Gee’s Bend, 159, 160, 194

The Masked Ball, 226

George Washington Bush series, 259, 324n5

Masks, 228–29, 228

Going Home, 186, 187, 189, 194

The Masquerade, 226, 227

Graduation, 312n7

Meat Market, 246

The Green Table, 141

Menagerie, 246–47, 247

Halloween Sand Bags, 14, 36

Migration (1947), 161

Harlem (1942), 145, 146, 190

The Migration of the Negro series, 4, 6, 45, 51–52, 97–

Harlem (1946), 316n5

120, 102–11, 122, 124, 126, 128–33, 152, 172, 175,  

Harlem paintings (1952–53), 52, 53, 146, 177, 179, 181,

245, 261, 304n69, 304n70; Panel 1, “During the World

183

War there was a great migration . . . ,” 100, 101, 102;

Harriet and the Promised Land series, 93, 94, 95

Panel 13, “Due to the South’s losing so much of its

Harriet Tubman (drawing), 166

labor . . . ,” 104, 112, 112; Panel 14, “. . . injustice done

Harriet Tubman series (1940), 4, 6, 43, 46, 57, 70, 77– 

to the Negroes in the courts,” 104, 112, 113; Panel 15,

93, 78–83; Panel 3, “ ‘A House divided against itself

“Another cause was lynching . . . ,” 104, 112, 113, 129,

cannot stand . . . ,’ ” 79, 84, 84; Panel 4, “On a hot

165, 303n58; Panel 17, “ . . . treatment of the tenant

summer day . . . ,” 79, 84–85, 85; Panel 5, “She felt

farmers by the planter,” 105, 122, 122; Panel 18, “The

the sting of slavery . . . ,” 78, 86, 86; Panel 7, “Harriet

migration gained in momentum,” 96, 105, 120, 124;

Tubman worked as water girl . . . ,” 56, 78, 86; Panel 9,

Panel 31, “After arriving North the Negroes had better

“Harriet Tubman dreamt of freedom . . . ,” 79, 86, 87;

housing conditions,” 106, 114, 115; Panel 38, “They

Panel 10, “Harriet Tubman was between twenty . . . ,”

also worked . . . on the railroad,” 108, 114, 115; Panel

80, 88, 89; Panel 18, “At one time during Harriet Tub-

42, “They also made it very difficult for migrants leav-

man’s expedition . . . ,” 81, 90, 91; Panel 24, “It was

ing the South . . . ,” 109, 114, 116; Panel 44, “Living

the year 1859 . . . ,” 83, 90, 92; sources for, 76–77,

conditions were better in the North,” 108, 114, 116;

83–86, 88, 90, 92, 93

Panel 45, “They arrived in Pittsburgh . . . ,” 108, 114,

Hiroshima paintings, 231, 254–56; Hiroshima: Farmers,

117, 124, 126; Panel 48, “Housing for the Negroes was

256; Hiroshima: Market, 256, 257; Hiroshima: People

a very difficult problem,” 109, 114, 124, 125; Panel 49,

in the Park, 256, 257; Hiroshima: Street Scene, 256

“They also found discrimination in the North . . . ,” 110,

Home in a Box, 312n7

114, 117; Panel 52, “One of the largest race riots . . . ,”

Hospital paintings, 214–16, 215, 216

111, 118, 118, 124; Panel 58, “In the North the Negro

348  index

had better educational facilities,” 111, 119, 119;

Slave Trade, 166

Panel 60, “And the migrants kept coming,” 111,  

Slums, 197, 198, 199

124, 126, 127

Soldiers and Students, 239

Mothers and Fathers Work Hard to Educate Their Children (or The Music Lesson), 182, 183

Spring Plowing, 145, 145 Square Dance, 215, 215

Moving Day (Dispossessed), 32, 36, 291n28

Starvation, 151, 151

The Music Lesson (or Mothers and Fathers Work Hard

Steelworkers, 187

to Educate Their Children), 182, 183

Stenographers, 187

Night after Night, 222, 223, 224

Street Orator’s Audience, 173, 174, 175, 194, 291n28

Northbound, 239

Street Scene—Restaurant, 15, 172, 173, 194

Occupational Therapy No. 1, 215

Street Shadows, 200, 201, 202

Occupational Therapy No. 2, 215

Street to Mbari, 246, 246

Often Three Families Share One Toilet, 177, 179, 179

Strike, 268

One-Way Ticket, 164, 165

Struggle . . . From the History of the American People

Ordeal of Alice, 239–40, 241, 322n25

series, 4, 199, 231–33; Panel 5, “We have no prop-

Painting the Bilges, 152, 154

erty! . . . ,” 232, 233, 234; Panel 11, “ . . . An Informer’s

Parade, 170, 171, 194

Coded Message,” 233, 235, 316n22; Panel 12, “And a

Peddlers, 291n28

Woman Mans a Cannon,” 233; Panel 13, “Victory and

The People Are Beginning to Organize. They Want a Good Harlem, 183, 313n37

Defeat,” 233, 235 Struggle III—Assassination, 249, 249

Performance paintings, 199, 205–6, 210, 219, 232, 315n1

The Studio, 266, 266 (lithograph)

The Photographer, 176

Study for the Munich Olympic Games Poster, 268, 269,

Play Street, 168, 176

270

Playroom, 236, 237, 254

Subway, 291n28

Pool Parlor, 176, 176, 183

Supermarket—All Hallow’s Eve, 229, 229, 267

Portrait of Stokely Carmichael, 249–50, 250

Taboo, 239, 240

Poster Design . . . Whitney Exhibition, 265–66, 265

Tailors, 187

Praying Ministers, 239

Terror of the Klan, 166

Protest Rally, 249

Theatre, 291n28

Psychiatric Therapy, 216, 216

There Are Many Churches in Harlem, 179, 180

Radio Repairs, 187

There Is an Average of Four Bars to Every Block, 179, 180

Rain, 36, 37

They Live in Fire Traps, 177, 178

Rain, No. 1, 291n28

This Is a Family Living in Harlem, 179

Rain, No. 2, 291n28

This Is Harlem, 177, 178

Rampart Street, 134, 141–42

Through Forests, Through Rivers, Up Mountains, 94, 95

Recreational Therapy, 215

Tombstones, 145, 146

Red Earth—Georgia, 161, 162

Too Blue, 312n7

Roof Top, 36

Toussaint L’Ouverture series, 4, 6, 38, 40, 43, 44, 46, 57,

Roosters, 246

59–74, 62–68, 75, 97, 98, 172, 297–98n23; Panel 10,

Round Up, 36

“The cruelty of the planters . . . ,” 63, 69–70, 69;

Rummage Sale, 195, 197

Panel 12, “Jean Francois, first Black to rebel in Haiti,”

Schomburg Library, 267, 267

63, 70, 71; Panel 20, “General Toussaint L’Ouverture,

The Seamstress, 187

Statesman . . . ,” 64, 70, 71; Panel 23, “General

Sedation, 216

L’Ouverture collected forces at Marmelade . . . ,” 65,

Shell Shocked, 291n28

70, 72; Panel 36, “During the truce Toussaint is de-

The Shoemaker, 187

ceived . . . ,” 67, 72, 73

Shoe-Shine Boys, 190, 191, 192, 194

Tragedy and Comedy, 219–21, 220

Shoe Shine Girl, 291n28

Trapped, 309n74

Shrimps and Potatoes, 291n28

Two Men in a Bar, 292n60

Sidewalk Drawings, 146–47, 147

Two Rebels (lithograph), 238–39, 238

Silhouette (The Lynching), 164, 165

Two Rebels (tempera), 239

Slave Rebellion, 166, 167

Underground Railroad, 166

index  349

Lawrence, Jacob (continued)

and Halpert, 48, 51–53

—wo r ks

and Lawrence, correspondence with, 42–43

The Undertakers Do a Good Business, 181 Untitled (Lynchings), 165–66, 167 Untitled [Man with Hat and Cigarette], 166, 167

and Lawrence, support of, 4, 33, 44, 45, 145 on migration, 97, 119, 120 —w ritin g s

Untitled (Sailors at a Bar), 156, 156

“Advance on the Art Front,” 42

Vaudeville, 204, 205, 219, 221, 320n100

“Art or Propaganda?” 292n48

Ventriloquist, 226, 227

Negro Art: Past and Present, 25, 172

Victory, 152, 155

The Negro in Art, 48

The Wall, 143, 144, 266

The New Negro, 24, 119

War series, 156; Panel 8, Beachhead, 152, 155; Panel 11, Casualty—The Secretary of War Regrets, 152, 155

and Pollack, 47, 51–52, 129 Logan, Rayford W., 148

Watchmaker, 187

Look, “244,000 Native Sons,” 175

When It Is Warm the Parks Are Filled with People, 181

Lord, Francisco, 31, 34

Woman, 36

Lorensen, Jutta, 300n8

Woman with Veil, 36

Lorentz, Pare, The River, 99–100, 124

Worker, 36

Louchheim, Aline [Saarinen], 28, 132, 148, 150, 214

Wounded Man, 251–52, 252

Louis, Joe, 23, 146, 148, 149, 177

You Can Buy Bootleg Whiskey, 179

L’Ouverture, Toussaint, 29, 36, 57, 58, 59–60; see also

Lawrence, Jacob, Sr. (father), 136, 275–76 Lawrence, Rosalee Armstead (mother), 9, 11, 27, 28, 136, 275–76

Lawrence, Jacob: Toussaint L’Ouverture series Lovell, Whitfield, 262, 268, 303n45 Lowndes County Freedom Organization, 250

Lawrence, William (brother), 9, 276

Lozowick, Louis, 3, 35

Lee, Johnny, 219, 219

Luce, Henry, 129

Lee, Russell

Luce III, Henry, 324n20

Church Service, Illinois, 131

lynching, 23, 136–40, 305n11, 305nn14–15

Negro Housing, Chicago, Ill., 131

exhibitions protesting, 137–39

Toilet in “Kitchenette” Apartment House, 179, 179

imagery concerning, 112, 113, 114, 128, 129, 138, 139,

Left, 2, 4, 166, 171, 207, 214, 270

165, 165, 166, 167

Lenexa, Virginia, 145, 307n48 Levine, Lawrence W., 75

MacLeish, Archibald, 52, 99

Levy, Adele Rosenwald (Mrs. David), 52, 304n69

Mailer, Norman, 213

Lewis, Anthony, 322n31

Malcolm X assassination, 249

Lewis, John, 243

Mann, Thomas, 213

Lewis, Norman, 18, 23, 26, 31, 202, 260

Mao Zedong, 207

Lewis, Samella, 14

March on Washington, 130–31, 243

Leyda, Jay, 5, 33, 45, 46, 99, 120, 121, 301n19, 321n5

marionettes, 320n104

Life, 42, 189, 208, 209, 230, 243

Marx, Karl, 59, 317n32

“Peoples of New York,” 197 “Red Visitors Cause Rumpus,” 213

masks and masking, 20, 208, 210–12, 216–19, 221, 226, 317n39; see also Lawrence, Jacob: masks and masking; minstrelsy

Lightfoot, Elba, 34, 34

Masses and Mainstream, 164, 165, 166

Lincoln, Abraham, 76, 77, 84

Massey, Doreen, 202

Lindsey, Richard W., 19, 25, 34

Maurin, Nicholas Eustache, 70, 71

Lloyd, Tom, 251

Mbari Artists and Writers Club, 245

Locke, Alain, 3, 5, 19, 23, 24–25, 43, 61, 183, 232, 286nn101–2

McCarthy, Joseph, 207

on “American” experience, 4

McCarthy Era. See cold war

and Bennett, 53

McCausland, Elizabeth, 46

as book reviewer for Phylon, 157–58, 190

McKay, Claude, 5, 23, 29, 44–45, 169, 323n61

and Brady, 18, 40–42, 46, 49 on community art, 26 controversial ideas of, 24–25, 286nn101–2 on Fortune layout, 129

350  index

Home to Harlem, 219–20, 221 “If We Must Die,” 252 McMahon, Audrey, 2, 3, 16–17, 29, 30, 53, 282nn39–40, 282n42; see also College Art Association (CAA)

McMillen Gallery exhibition, 51–52, 294nn98–99, 294n101 Meredith, James, 239, 242, 249 Metropolitan Museum of Art, 18, 183

New York Public Library, 135th Street Harlem branch,   17, 18, 38, 58, 60, 99, 135 Newman, Arnold, 260

Artists for Victory (1942–43 exhibition), 183

Newsweek, 242

Harlem on My Mind (1969 exhibition and symposium),

Nichols, Girls Playing Dodge Ball, 190, 191

251

Nixon, Herman, 99

Midtown Payson Gallery, 263

Noguchi, Isamu, 139

Miller, Douglas T., The Fifties, 207–8

Nowak, Marion, The Fifties, 207–8

Miller, J. Hillis, 279n23, 302n34 minstrelsy, 217–19, 226, 319n79, 319n86

O’Connor, Francis V., 38

Molesworth, Charles, Alain L. Locke, 278n21, 286n102

Office of War Information (OWI), 149, 308n59

Mondrian, Piet, 114

Oldenburg, Claes, 315n93

Moon, Bucklin, 157

Oliver, Billye, 29

Moore, Bridget, 5

O’Neill, Eugene, The Emperor Jones, 296n18

Moore, Charles, Police dogs attacking demonstrator, 238, 238

Opportunity, 284n63

Moore, Jack, 126, 303n47

oral traditions, 99, 298n47

Moore, Tim, 219, 219

Orozco, José Clemente, 45, 46, 138

Moreley, Eugene, 35

with Dive Bomber and Tank, 45

Mosby, William, 138

Ottley, Roi, “New World A-Coming,” 169, 176–77

Motherwell, Robert, 207–8

Oubre, Hayward L., 268

Motive, 322n30 Motley, Archibald J., Jr., 40

Paine, Thomas, 232

Mumford, Lewis, 207–8

Panofsky, Erwin, 1

Municipal Art Committee (New York), 29, 30, 34

Park, Robert E., 120

Municipal Art Galleries (New York), 288n143

Parker, Charlie, 259

Murray, Albert, 11

Parker, Theodore, 90

Murrell, Sara, 21, 34

Parker, Thomas, 30

Museum of Modern Art (New York), 131, 208

Penn, Irving, 260

African Negro Art (1935 exhibition), 23

Perry, Fred, 31

Muste, A. J., 148

Petry, Ann, The Street, 146, 314n68

Mydans, Carl, 121

Phillips, Duncan, 52, 143

Backyard of Alley Dwelling, 126, 127 Myrdal, Gunnar, An American Dilemma, 157

Phillips, Harlan, 11 Phillips, Wendell, 76 Phillips Collection, 131, 263

Napier, I. David, 205

Pickens, Alton, Carnival, 208

Napoleon Bonaparte. See Bonaparte, Napoleon

Pinder, Kymberly, 313n53, 314n79

Natanson, Nicholas, 303n47

Pious, Robert, 31

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 23, 136, 137, 243, 253 An Art Commentary on Lynching (1935 exhibition), 137–39, 306n16

Pippin, Horace, 52, 88, 172 Pittsburgh Courier, 136 place, as cultural concept, 175, 187, 189, 199–202, 219, 313n61, 315n93

Negro History Week, 58, 295n5

Polite, Margie, 184

Nesbett, Peter, 263

Pollack, Peter, 5, 46, 47, 51, 52, 129

Neuberger, Roy, 183

Pollak, Frances, 16, 17

New Masses, 3, 129, 139, 213, 318n56

Pollock, Jackson, 199, 207, 268

New Orleans, 141–43, 142, 306n32, 307n39

Popular Front, 35, 171, 290n7

Lawrence in, 49, 50, 141–43, 145, 307n42 New Republic, 164, 165, 166 New Rochelle (New York), Lincoln School, 46

Porter, Fairfield, 316n3 Porter, James, 25, 57, 286n101 Modern Negro Art, 4, 147, 172, 184

New School for Social Research, 45

Portland Art Museum, Oregon, 183, 184

New York Amsterdam News. See Amsterdam News

Post, Marion, 121

New York Herald Tribune, 9, 19, 20, 211

Cotton Buyer and Negro Farmer, 122, 122

index  351

Poston, T. R., 138, 284n61 Powell, Adam Clayton, Jr., 147–48, 177, 185, 213, 281n28, 282n35 Powell, Adam Clayton, Sr., 184, 281n28

Rivera, Diego, 45 Man at the Crossroads, 23 Roberts, Mrs. E. P., 29 Robeson, Paul, 145, 214, 296n18

Powell, Richard J., 177, 221, 320n95

Rockefeller, Mr. and Mrs. John D., Jr., 52

Pratt Institute, 251, 259

Rockefeller, Nelson, 23

President’s Commission on Civil Rights, 158

Robinson, Bill “Bojangles,” 219

Preston, Stuart, 205–6, 225–26

Robinson, Jackie, 214, 268, 314n75, 318n60

“primitivism” in art, 25–26, 172, 212, 279n25, 299n71

Rodman, Selden, 231

Progressive Education Association, 17

Rogers, Charles, 5, 44

propaganda, art as, 29, 46, 292n48

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 30, 31, 52

public space, 315n93; see also place, as cultural concept

Roosevelt, President Franklin Delano, 27, 130–31, 137, 148,

Quarles, Benjamin, 159

Rose, Arnold, 157

racism

Rosenberg, Julius and Ethel, 207

305n14 Rose, Ernestine, 20, 284n69, 284n72, 295n6 Lawrence on, 6, 59, 150–51, 163, 209, 210, 217, 229, 240, 243, 244 psychological effects of, 135, 163–64, 185, 236, 240, 242–44, 318n62 see also Jim Crow segregation; lynching

Rosenthal, Captain Joe S., 150, 152, 153, 157 Rosenwald Fund. See Julius Rosenwald Fund Rosskam, Edwin, 98, 120, 122, 126, 128 Boy in Front of Apartment House, Chicago, Ill., 131, 132 Rosskam, Louise, 121

Rampersad, Arnold, 185, 214

Rothko, Mark, 208

Randlett, Mary

Rothstein, Arthur, 121, 123, 126

Jacob Lawrence on the Stairs to His Attic Studio, Seattle, 260

Rustin, Bayard, 148, 243 “The Role of the Artist in the Freedom Struggle,” 253–54

Gwendolyn Knight and Jacob Lawrence in Seattle, 261 Randolph, A. Philip, 30, 52, 130–31, 148, 243, 294n111

Saarinen, Aline Louchheim, 28, 132, 148, 150, 214

Raynal, Abbé, 69

Saint Sebastian, 239

Reality: A Journal of Artists’ Opinions, 317n23

Salvation Army, 16

Redding, J. Saunders, 148, 163–64, 214

Saroyan, William, 38

No Day of Triumph, 311n116

Saunders, Raymond, 244, 322n39

On Being Negro in America, 214, 215, 318n62

Savage, Augusta, 3, 5, 17–19, 18, 23, 25, 26, 31, 33, 36, 38, 76,

Redpath, James. See Beard, John H. Reed, Daisy C., 11, 280n6; see also Utopia Children’s House

172, 262 as director of Harlem Community Art Center, 30, 31

Reed, Ishmael, 209

Gwendolyn Knight, 18, 19

Refregier, Anton, 35

as teacher, 17, 18, 21, 236, 284n63

Reid, O. Richard, 23, 25, 34

Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts, 18, 19

Reilly, John M., 123–34

Schapiro, Meyer, 2–3, 25, 286n101

Reisman, Philip, 35

Schmeling, Max, 23

Reiss, Winold, Alain LeRoy Locke, 24

Schomburg, Arthur, 18, 19, 23, 57, 172

Resettlement Administration (RA). See Farm Security   Administration (FSA) Revere, Paul, 232

“The Negro Digs Up His Past,” 58 Schomburg Collection. See New York Public Library, 135th Street Harlem branch

revolutionary artist, defined, 35

Schuyler, George S., 148

Reynor, Vivian, 239

Scientific and Cultural Conference for World Peace (1949), 213

Rice, Elmer, Street Scene (opera), 189, 314n66

Scott, Emmett J., Negro Migration during the War, 99, 114

Rich, Daniel, 51

Scott, Hazel, 219

Richardson, Earle W., 297n23

Scott, William E., 296n23

Richardson, Grace, 34

Scottsboro Boys, 23, 35, 136, 137

riots, 246, 251, 307n44

Seabrooke [Powell], Georgette, 34, 34

in Harlem in 1935, 23

Seattle, 259–60

in Harlem in 1943, 183–85

Seattle Museum of Art, 263

352  index

Seattle Post-Intelligence, 254

Street, William E., 159

Sebree, Charles, 47, 48

street-corner orators, 1, 15, 58, 99, 173, 174, 312n25

Seders, Francine, 5, 263

Stryker, Roy E., 1, 99, 120, 131, 260, 301n14

Seifert, Charles C., 23, 30, 38, 58, 286n93

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), 243, 249,

Selma to Montgomery March, 249, 253

322n38

Seward, William, 76

Studio Museum in Harlem, 1, 260

Shahn, Ben, 121, 123, 207, 322n50

Suggs, Willlie, 75

Conversations, 208, 209

Survey Graphic, 40, 52, 145–46, 146

Shakespeare, William, As You Like It, 224

Sutherland, David, 324n18

Shaw, Lint, 128, 129, 303n57

Swift, Hildegarde Hoyt, The Railroad to Freedom, 76, 77, 84,

Sheehan, Joseph, 30

86, 90, 92, 93

Sheeler, Charles, 143 photo of Edith Halpert, 49

Tacoma Art Museum, 262

Shiff, Sidney, 254, 255

Taine, Henri, 161, 163

Shostakovich, Dmitri, 213

Tanner, Henry O., 26, 268

Shuttlesworth, Fred, 236

Taylor, Paul, 99

Sillen, Samuel, 304n59

Taylor, Prentiss, 138

Simkins, Francis Butler, 166

Taylor, Robert N., 76

Simpson, Mertin, 260

Temporary Emergency Relief Administration (TERA), 17

Sims, Lowery Stokes, 187

Tepfer, Diane, 293n84

Siqueiros, David, 45

Terry Dintenfass Gallery exhibitions, 93, 238–40, 242

Sister Minnie (of Harlem), 16

Thomas, Barbara Earl, 263, 276, 325n14

Skinner, Captain Carlton, 152, 157

Thomas, Mr. and Mrs. Harry, 140

Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture, Maine, 268

Thompson, Ralph, 304n59

slave narratives, 76–77, 85, 299n55

Thompson, Robert Farris, 194

Smith, Bessie, 140

Thomson, Virgil, 99

Smith, Garrett, 76

306 West 141st Street (Alston/Bannarn studio “306”), 14, 20–

Smith, Lillian, 158 Smith, Marvin, 18 Smith, Morgan and Marvin, photographers comedians Tim Moore and Johnny Lee, 219, 219

21, 33, 35, 36, 57, 58, 76, 170 as meeting place for artists and writers, 23, 29, 236, 285n30, 285n87 workshop sponsored by WPA/FAP, 17, 27, 28–29

Harlem Hospital murals project, 34, 34

Time, 205, 221, 233, 249–50

street-corner orator, 125th Street, 173, 174

Toomer, Jean, Cane, 151

South

Toussaint. See L’Ouverture, Toussaint attitudes toward, 135–36, 137, 141, 143, 166, 183

Truman, President Harry S., 148, 158

Lawrence’s trips to, 135, 141–43, 145–46, 150–2, 157–63

Tubman, Harriet, 57, 76–77, 84–93; see also under Lawrence,

see also Jim Crow segregation; Lawrence, Jacob: The Migration of the Negro series

Jacob, works Tuppences (Lawrence relatives in Lenexa), 145

Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), 236, 243

Turner, Elizabeth Hutton, 13, 14, 263, 265

Southside Community Art Center, Chicago, 46, 47

Turner, Mary, 138

Space, Kenneth F., photo of Lawrence, 8 Spiral, 202, 260

12 Million Black Voices, 46, 98, 120–26, 177–79, 302n37,

Sports Illustrated, Sport in Art (1956 cancelled exhibition), 207

304n59

Sprigle, Ray, 158 Springarn, Mrs. Arthur B., 244

Underground Railroad, 90

St. Augustine, Florida, 150, 151, 157, 163, 187, 309nn65–66

United Neighborhood Houses, 16

Stacey, Rubin, 137, 138

University of Washington, 259

Stange, Maren, 301n14, 301n17

Uptown Art Laboratory, 284n63

Steele, Elizabeth, 194, 267

Urban League, 16, 17, 18, 243

Steinbeck, John, 300n7

U.S. Postal Service, 166

Sternberg, Harry, 139

U.S. State Department, 248

Stevens, May, 262 Stott, William, 301n19

Advancing American Art (1946 cancelled exhibition), 207 “usable past,” 24

index  353

USS General Wilds P. Richardson, 152

Whitfield, Andrew, 314n66

USS Sea Cloud, 152, 153, 309n78

Whitney Museum of American Art, 263, 265

Utopia Children’s House, 11, 13, 15, 16, 58, 280n6

Whitten, Jack, 262, 319n70 Wilkins, Roy, 148, 293

Vachon, John, 121 Courtroom Scene, Virginia, 128–29, 128

Williams, Bert, 218 Williams, William T., 251

Van Gogh, Vincent, 214

Wilson, Alona Cooper, 303n58

Van Vechten, Carl, 5, 50, 52, 153, 293n95

Wilson, John, 305n11

Jacob Lawrence, 50, 51

Wilson, Sol, 5, 35

Veeney, James, 140

Wilson, President Woodrow, 59

Vendryes, Margaret Rose, 297n34

Windmill Books, 93

Venice Biennale of 1956 (American Artists Paint the City),  

Winslow, Vernon, 47

199, 315n86 ventriloquism, 226 vernacular culture, 99, 170, 185, 209, 210, 217, 229; see also minstrelsy

Wo-Chi-Ca (Workers Children’s Camp, New Jersey), 262, 308n51 Wolfe, Bernard, 220 Woodruff, Hale, 41, 48, 138, 202, 251, 260

Vietnam War, 249

Woodson, Carter G., 58, 99, 114

Vytlacil, Vaclav, 284n63

Woodward, Beulah, 212 Woodward, Ellen S., 30

Walcott, Derek, 221

Worcester Art Museum, 183

Walker, Alice, 209

World War II, 131

Walker, Grayson, 25 Walker, Wyatt T., 236 Wallace, Henry, 165–66 Warhol, Andy, Red Race Riot, 243, 243 Washington, Booker T., 267 Waters, Ethel, 219 Watts, Richard, Jr., 166

African American attitudes toward, 147–48 entry of United States into, 52, 147 Wright, Richard, 5, 23, 46, 52, 97, 120, 121, 209 and Communist Party, 303n50 and Marxism, 120, 126, 128 —w ritin g s “Blueprint for Negro Literature,” 231

Weaver, Robert, 157

Native Son, 46, 121, 175, 238

Webster, Daniel, 76

12 Million Black Voices, 46, 98, 120–26, 177–79, 302n37,

Wechsler, Samuel, 38 Weill, Kurt, 189

304n59 Uncle Tom’s Children, 121

Weinstock, Herbert, 169 Welles, Orson, 59

Yaddo Foundation, 232

Wells, James Lesesne, 11, 20, 211

Yeargens, James, 34

West, Pemberton, 31

YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association)

West, Sarah, 31 Wheat, Ellen Harkins, 263

classes, 19, 284n65 exhibitions, 3, 17, 19, 20, 25, 36

Whipper, Leigh, 23

Young, Whitney, Jr., 243

White, Charles, 51

YWCA (Young Women’s Christian Association), 29

White, Josh, 52

Artists and Models (1935 exhibition), 18–19

White, Walter, Rope and Faggot, 136

Negro Art (1935 exhibition), 25

354  index

text  8.25 / 13 Benton Gothic display  Benton Gothic Regular, Sackers Heavy Gothic sponsoring editor  Stephanie Fay assistant editor  Eric Schmidt project editor  Sue Heinemann editorial assistant  Erica Lee copyeditor  Elisabeth Magnus designer  Claudia Smelser production coordinator Angela Chen compositor  Integrated Composition Systems printer and binder  Sheridan Books, Inc.