In 1996, SMU honored one of the greatest American artists of the twentieth century, Jacob Lawrence (1917–2000), with the Algur H. Meadows for Excellence in the Arts Award. The prize and week-long campus events highlighted his prolific and extensive career as a painter, muralist and storyteller.
Jacob Lawrence started his artistic career by painting a biographical series of heroic figures in the African American community, such as Toussaint Louverture, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass and John Brown. This series chronicled the lives of revolutionary leaders, an endeavor providing viewers with important history lessons while amplifying those who committed themselves to the struggle for African American freedom.
Jacob Lawrence and the Great Migration
Lawrence is most well-known for “The Migration of the Negro” or “The Migration Series” (1940–1941). The 60-panel historical narrative depicts the Great Migration (1910–1970), the mass movement of 6 million African Americans from southern states to urban metropolises of Chicago, Washington, DC and New York City. The series details the motives for which migrants left the South, such as agricultural disruption, racial discrimination, and racialized violence in the form of lynching. Tragically, it is documented that over 4,400 African Americans were lynched between Reconstruction and World War II.
The main accelerant of the Great Migration was abundant employment opportunities available to African Americans due to industrial jobs vacated by European Americans, a dramatic reduction in European immigration, and the expansion of defense manufacturing brought forth by World War I and World War II. Lawrence himself was a product of the Great Migration. His parents were from the South and migrated to Atlantic City, New Jersey, where he was born and later settled in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City.
The urban destinations that migrants found themselves in were often predetermined by the railroad infrastructure at that time. The railroad lines were designed to transport people and goods to a specific urban destination, which explains why migrants from Texas and Louisiana found their way to Los Angeles and San Francisco, migrants from Mississippi and Alabama found their way to Chicago and Detroit, and migrants from the southeastern Atlantic (e.g., Georgia and Florida) states found their way to New York City and Washington, DC. This interesting caveat of railroad history is fertile ground for many African Americans interested in genealogical research.
The Migration Series was received with great acclaim. First shown at the Edith Halpert Gallery in New York City, the collection was published in Fortune magazine and purchased by the Museum of Modern Art and the Phillips Collection. The 60-panel series was divided in half, with the odd-numbered panels for the Phillips Collection and the even-numbered panels for the Museum of Modern Art.
During a public discussion facilitated at the Meadows Museum as part of week-long award festivities, Lawrence mentioned that he was always inspired by movement, and The Migration series represented movement on a larger scale. The subject was natural for him because “he lived through it.” The work symbolizes his role as an insider looking outward, recognizing that his family history is intertwined within a larger communal and social history of the United States.
Jacob Lawrence, the Harlem Renaissance and His Legacy of Art Education
Lawrence is too young to be officially apart of the Harlem Renaissance (c. 1920–1935), but he is a direct descendant. Much of his art instruction came from Harlem Renaissance artists, including painter Charles Alston (1907–1977), sculptor Augusta Savage (1892–1962), and artist Henry Bannarn (1910–1965). This instruction was delivered at the Harlem Community Art Center (1937–1942) funded by the Federal Art Project (Works Progress Administration), the Harlem Art Workshop/306 Workshop, and the Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts. He went on to continue his education at the American Artist School, also in New York.
Lawrence, in turn, eventually continued this educational tradition becoming an instructor himself. He started at Black Mountain College (at the invitation of influential art educator Josef Albers) and continued in a long string of teaching roles at multiple institutions, including the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Art Students League and ultimately as a full-time faculty member at the University of Washington in Seattle where he worked from 1971 until his retirement in 1985. Lawrence’s legacy at the University of Washington lives on in a namesake campus gallery, an artist residency, and a student and library partnership in the publication of “Jacob Lawrence in Seattle,” amongst other cultural projects.
While at SMU in 1996, Lawrence viewed works of Meadows Art majors and shared his thoughts on their works and on the artistic process.
Jacob Lawrence and Me
My own personal experiences with works by Lawrence include the great pleasure of seeing Lawrence’s work up close by living in and traveling to Great Migration city destinations of Washington, D.C. and Chicago. In 2016, while residing in Washington, DC, I had the opportunity to view the Migration Series in its entirety at the Phillips Collection when the exhibit “People on the Move: Beauty and Struggle in Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series” was on display.
In 2022, I took a private tour of the National Gallery of Art Library, where a small display featured an archival photograph of a young Lawrence.
This photograph was most likely taken at the opening of his exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art where his Migration Series and Coast Guard paintings were shown. Drafted into the armed forces in October 1943 he was assigned work as a combat artist on the USS Sea Cloud, the first racially integrated ship in the United States Navy and Coast Guard. During his military service, he created over 50 works, many of which art historians have deduced are now lost. Lawrence served his nation honorably until he was discharged in December of 1945.
In the same year, I also toured the Harold Washington Library, the flagship location of the Chicago Public Library. In the library’s entrance is a mosaic mural by Lawrence, “Events in the Life of Harold Washington” (1991). The mural is a semi-abstract depiction of the life of Harold Washington (1922–1987), the namesake of the library who was the first African American mayor of Chicago and an avid supporter of libraries and literacy. In these in-person viewings, I have thoroughly enjoyed the artistic brilliance and the historic grounding that Jacob Lawrence produced in all of his works.
Jacob Lawrence and You
The SMU honor of bestowing Lawrence with the Meadows Award demonstrates an awareness that artistic excellence originates from a multitude of racially and ethnically diverse communities. Lawrence, when referring to his work in 1943, stated, “I do not look upon the story of the Blacks in America as a separate experience to the American culture but as a part of the American heritage and experience as a whole.” The legacy of Jacob Lawrence’s career should inspire us all to migrate towards a social destination where excellence from all of America’s diverse communities is acknowledged and celebrated as equal parts of our American story.
This post was written by James Glenn, access services manager at Hamon Arts Library. Before coming to Hamon in 2023, James was the Pollock Intern in Art Librarianship at the Dallas Museum of Art Mayer Library.
This post is the fourth in a four-part series called Celebrating Black History in the Arts.
References
- Dickerman, Leah, and Elsa Smithgall. Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series. The Museum of Modern Art, 2015.
- Irving, David. Jacob Lawrence: The Glory of Expression. L&S Video Enterprises, 2006. 28 min.
- Nesbett, Peter T., and Michelle DuBois. Jacob Lawrence: Paintings, Drawings, and Murals (1935-1999): A Catalogue Raisonné. University of Washington Press, 2000.
- Turner, Elizabeth Hutton, and Auten Barron Bailly (eds.). Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle. Peabody Essex Museum, 2019.
- Van Keuren, Philip. After Vesalius: Drawings by Jacob Lawrence. Division of Art, Southern Methodist University, 1996.
- SMU’s subscription to ArtStor includes high-resolution images of 210 works by Lawrence.
- National Archives. (n.d.). The Great Migration. U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
- Equal Justice Initiative. (n.d.). Lynching in America. Equal Justice Initiative.
- Sanahori, Sheeka. “Tracing my ancestors’ Great Migration by train.” The Philadelphia Tribune, February 16, 2023.