Great Artists
Jacob Lawrence
During the civil rights movement in the mid-1950s, Jacob Lawrence, a leading Black artist of his time, painted a series of 30 panels re-examining early American history. In “Struggle: From the History of the American People,” left, Lawrence presented a different perspective of the nation's founding, highlighting the contributions of Black Americans in the building of democracy.
Lawrence (1917-2000) spent several years researching and documenting the unheralded role that Black people played in the nation's early days, including men who enlisted freely to join George Washington in the Revolutionary War. Each of the 30 panels in the "Struggle" series includes text that questions entrenched narratives of history. Lawrence was committed to educating and inspiring young people about art and American history.
Lawrence's master work from 1940-41, a 60-panel series called "The Migration Series," tells the history and stories of struggle of millions of Black Americans who migrated from the rural South to the urban North as part of the 1916-1970 Great Migration. The panels start in the South, where low wages and an unfair justice system drove people out. They moved to northern cities where they faced new threats of overcrowding, tuberculosis outbreaks, and — again— low wages and an unjust justice system.
[Top art credit: Jacob Lawrence, Panel 1 of “Struggle: From the History of the American People,” The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York]
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