Art and the Great MigrationA Webinar for American Transitions from Rural to Urban Life

Tracy TeslowUniversity of Cincinnati

July 7, 2011

The Great Migration1916-1930

A segregated railroad depot waiting room in Jacksonville, Florida, 1921. State Archives of Florida

Black Family Arrives in Chicago from the South, ca. 1919Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

Macon, Ga April 2, 1918To the Bethlehem Baptist Association reading in the Chicago Defender of your help securing positions I want to know if it is any way you can oblige me by helping me to get out there as I am anxious to leave here + everything so hard here I hope you will oblige in helping me to leave here ans[wer] at once to 309 Middle St. Mrs. J. H. Adams

“Times is Getting’ Harder” by Lucious Curtis, 1940

Times is gettin' harder,Money's gettin' scarce.Soon as I get my cotton and corn,I'm bound to leave this place.

White folks sittin' in the parlor,Eatin' that cake and food,black person’s way down to the kitchen,Squabblin' over turnip greens.Times is gettin' harder,Money's gettin' scarce.Soon as I get my cotton and corn,I'm bound to leave this place.

Me and my brother was out.Thought we'd have some fun.He stole three chickens.We began to run.Times is gettin' harder,Money's gettin' scarce.Soon as I get my cotton and cornI'm bound to leave this place.

Cotton Pickers, Pulaski County, Arkansas, Ben Shahn, 1935

Art and the Paradox of African American Identity

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, ca. 1918

“One ever feels his twoness—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body” ~ The Souls of Black Folk, 1903

Photographs of African Americans:Paris Universal Exposition, 1900

Types of American Negroes, Georgia, U.S.A., 1900

W.E.B. Du Bois

Displayed at the UniversalExposition, Paris, 1900

Bazoline Estelle Usher

Types of American Negroes, Georgia, U.S.A., 1900

W.E.B. Du Bois

Displayed at the UniversalExposition, Paris, 1900

The home of an African American lawyer, Atlanta, GeorgiaPhoto by Thomas E. Askew

David Tobias Howard, an undertaker, his wife and mother, Atlanta, Georgia

The New Negro Movement:Art and the Great Migration

"...Our problem is to conceive, develop, establish an art era. Not

white art painting black...let's bare our arms and plunge them

deep through laughter, through pain, through sorrow, through

hope, through disappointment, into the very depths of the souls of

our people and drag forth material crude, rough, neglected. Then

let's sing it, dance it, write it, paint it. Let's do the impossible. Let's

create something transcendentally material, mystically objective.

Earthy. Spiritually earthy. Dynamic."

~ Aaron Douglas

Aaron Douglas

An Idyll of the Deep South, Aspects of Negro Life Series, 1934

Aaron Douglas

Song of the Towers, Aspects of Negro Life Series, 1934

Aaron Douglas

Life Up North:Archibald Motley, Jr. & William H. Johnson

Black Belt, 1934

Archibald Motley, Jr.

Nightlife, 1943

Archibald Motley, Jr.

Jitterbug V, 1941-42 Street Life, Harlem, 1941-42

William H. Johnson

Jacob Lawrence

#1 -- During the World War there was a great migration North by Southern Negroes

The Migration Series, 1940-41, by Jacob Lawrence

The Migration Series, 1940-41, by Jacob Lawrence

#3 -- In every town Negroes were leaving by the hundreds to go North and enter into Northern industry

The Migration Series, 1940-41, by Jacob Lawrence

#29 -- The labor agent also recruited laborers to break strikes which were occurring in the North.

The Migration Series, 1940-41, by Jacob Lawrence

#49 -- They also found discrimination in the North although it was much different from that which they had known in the South.

The Migration Series, 1940-41, by Jacob Lawrence

#57 -- The female worker was also one of the last groups to leave the South.

ResourcesBooks, for kids:The Great Migration: An American Story, paintings by Jacob Lawrence, New York: HarperCollins, 1993 (ages 8 & up)

John Duggleby, Story Painter: The Life of Jacob Lawrence, Chronicle Books, 1998 (ages 6-12)

The Harlem Renaissance, compiled by Karen Kuehner, Nextext, 2001 (grades 9-12)

Websites:Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series, The Phillips Collection

~ http://www.phillipscollection.org/migration_series/index.cfmThe Jacob and Gwen Knight Lawrence Virtual Resource Center

~ http://www.jacobandgwenlawrence.org/Art and Life of William H. Johnson: A Guide for Teachers, Smithsonian Institution

~ http://americanart.si.edu/education/guides/whj/index.cfmHistory Matters (music, letters from the Great Migration)

~ http://historymatters.gmu.eduGreat Migration: Documents for the Investigation

~ http://www.uic.edu/educ/bctpi/historyGIS/greatmigration/gmdocuments.html

Video:“Up South: African American Migration in the Era of the Great War,” American Social History Productions, Inc., CUNY, 30 minutes

~ http://ashp.cuny.edu/ashp-documentaries/up-south/“Jacob Lawrence: an intimate portrait,” Public Media Home Vision, 1993

~ online at: http://www.artbabble.org/video/lacma/jacob-lawrence-intimate-portrait