Jacob Lawrence
By: Alex, Hannah, Annabel, Ryan, Allison, and David
About Jacob Lawrence
- Born in Atlantic City in 1917
- Parents moved from the South to the North, seeking a better life
- Moved to New York in 1930
- Discovered Art in an after school program at the Utopia House
- Attended lectures on black culture and exhibition of African art at a public library which was the intellectual hub of the community he lived in
- Received a scholarship to the American Artists School
- Gained recognition for dramatic and lively portrayals of African American life and historical events
- Known for crisp shaped, bright, clear colors, dynamic patterns, and revealing posture and gestures
- Received a grand from the Rosenwald Foundation to create a series of images on the migration of African-Americans from the South which became known as the Migration Series
The Migration Series
- The Migration Series is a sequence of 60 paintings by Jacob Lawrence.
- It depicts the mass movement of African Americans from the South to the North.
- Paintings depicted Harlem community: change between life on the farm to urban apartments/tenements
- The time period the painting depicts is the time between WWI and WWII.
- Lawrence’s vision of poverty, crime, racial tension, police brutality was shown in these paintings.
- It was painted in 1940-1941.
- These paintings brought important historical events to life by drawing upon emotional responses to them.
Panel 3: From every southern town migrants left by the hundreds to travel north
Panel 1: During World War I there was a great migration north by southern African Americans
Panel 19: There had always been discrimination
Works Cited
"Great Migration." History.com. A&E Television Networks, n.d. Web. 08 Sept. 2015.
"Jacob Lawrence: Exploring Stories." Jacob Lawrence: Exploring Stories. Whitney Museum of American Art, 2002. Web. 8 Sept. 2015.