Jacob Lawrence received a $1,500 scholarship in the year of 1940. After receiving this fellowship from the Rosenwald Foundation Jacob Lawrence had to create a series of sixty-one panels based on the Great Migration. At this time the Great Migration was the movement of African Americans from the South to the North after World War 2. This was considered the biggest movement for African Americans after slavery ended. The Great Migration series that Jacob Lawrence created were suppose to be kept together as one whole piece, but ended up being split due to the joint purchase from the Museum of Modern Art and Phillips Collection. In order to create these series of paintings Jacob Lawrence conducted his research at the Schomburg Collection located in Harlem, New York. Jacob Lawrence ended completing these paintings in the year of 1941 (Whitney Museum of American Art).
Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series depicts African Americans seeking out a better life for them and their families after slavery. These sixty-one panels could be split in half; one half of life for African Americans while still living in the South during slavery, and then the other half was after slavery and African Americans living in the North particularly Harlem, New York. The first half, when African Americans were still living with life in the South during the influence of the KKK, was depicted in Jacob Lawrence’s paintings as being an unwelcoming, depressing, and a country style landscape, where for example segregation, lynching’s, discrimination, hunger, and poverty would prevail. After migrating to the North in Harlem, New York, Jacob Lawrence showed through his paintings of the other half of the movement that African Americans now had something to look forward to. African Americans were dreaming, imagining, and had hope. These words did not exist in their vocabulary when living in the South under all of those negative influences (Whitney Museum of American Art).
People believe that Jacob Lawrence’s paintings of the Migration Series gave African Americans of that time period hope. Hope that things will turn around for the interior black community. That African Americans will have more opportunities of that of a white person. The Migration Series marked the potential and the start for African Americans to grow, and be more than just a “negro”, a “black person”, but just a person.
Works Cited
Whitney Museum of American Art. Whitney. 2001. 28 October 2008 < http://www.whitney.org/jacoblawrence/art/migration_series.html>
Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series depicts African Americans seeking out a better life for them and their families after slavery. These sixty-one panels could be split in half; one half of life for African Americans while still living in the South during slavery, and then the other half was after slavery and African Americans living in the North particularly Harlem, New York. The first half, when African Americans were still living with life in the South during the influence of the KKK, was depicted in Jacob Lawrence’s paintings as being an unwelcoming, depressing, and a country style landscape, where for example segregation, lynching’s, discrimination, hunger, and poverty would prevail. After migrating to the North in Harlem, New York, Jacob Lawrence showed through his paintings of the other half of the movement that African Americans now had something to look forward to. African Americans were dreaming, imagining, and had hope. These words did not exist in their vocabulary when living in the South under all of those negative influences (Whitney Museum of American Art).
People believe that Jacob Lawrence’s paintings of the Migration Series gave African Americans of that time period hope. Hope that things will turn around for the interior black community. That African Americans will have more opportunities of that of a white person. The Migration Series marked the potential and the start for African Americans to grow, and be more than just a “negro”, a “black person”, but just a person.
Works Cited
Whitney Museum of American Art. Whitney. 2001. 28 October 2008 < http://www.whitney.org/jacoblawrence/art/migration_series.html>
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