The homecoming of Jacob Lawrence

American Visions, April-May, 1995 by Sharon Fitzgerald

"Whenever my wife and I come to New York and are driving through Harlem," says the 77-year-old artist Jacob Lawrence, "I think this was the inspiration of much of my work. The pattern, the texture, the people from the Caribbean, the Puerto Rican stores, it's all a part of that. As you ride along, you see the signs, the people on the street. ... I don't want to overromanticize it, because there are a lot of things that you don't want, but there are a lot of things that you do. A part of my growth, my early paintings, dealt with this kind of form. I have never forgotten that."

To attend the recent opening of "Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series" at the Museum of Modem Art, Lawrence traveled 3,000 miles from his present home in Seattle to New York City, which was his home base for 41 years. Neither he nor his wife of 54 years, artist Gwendolyn Knight, displayed the slightest bit of jet lag. They are as at home in the limelight that follows artists at candlelit receptions as they are on the extroverted island of Manhattan. Their sustained warmth--sincerity combined with attentiveness--transcends the miles and accomplishments and years.

At the entrance to the exhibition, there is a black-and-white photograph of the artist as a young man. Despite the collegiate attire, this portrait of Lawrence appears, in size and significance, much larger than fife. He is seated at a drawing table, applying brush to paper. Behind the gaze of this 24-year-old resides a story that he is destined to articulate. On the plain white surface before him, he has begun to do so with clear, corcise strokes.

In 1940 and '41, the years during which Lawrence painted his "Migration of the Negro" series, little attention was being paid to the narrative power of art, and even less consideration was given to the epic relocation of America's black citizens. Lawrence's creation changed all of that. His sequence of 60 paintings guided viewers along the journey--fraught with disappointment, hope and courage--that African Americans took from the rural South into the North's urban quagmire.

The stories Lawrence had been told of black people's struggles united masterfully with his vision of their strength and determination. He considered the series to be in fact one painting beheld at separate stages; in his hands, this exodus of his people became a tour de force.

"During the World War, there was a great migration north by Southern Negroes," reads the artist's caption to the first panel. Beneath three signs, marked "Chicago," "New York" and "St. Louis," a seamless throng of chocolate brown people presses forward, separating only at the passageways that indicate their destinations. Their faces are without discernible features; individuality is conveyed by the shape, tilt or carriage of a head, the curve of a bosom. Most are dressed in earth tones, and, of course, there are hats: black bowlers, a red baseball cap, a black top hat, a red turban. Only behind the railway station's latticed fence one glimpse the pale blue promise of sky.

"I don't think in terms of history in that series; I think in terms of contemporary life," Lawrence has said, "If it was a portrait of something, it was a portrait of myself, a portrait of my family, a portrait of my peers. In that way, it was like a still life with bread, a still life with flowers; it was like a landscape."

It has been 54 years since the impassioned griot Jacob Armstead Lawrence Jr. sallied forth into the spotlight of modem artists. From the start, he astonished critics with his virtuosity. He inspired audiences, who immediately recognized the purity of his artistic talent and purpose. He took a life slated for anonymity and created a world in which not only he, but all African Americans, would have a powerful identity.

Lawrence was born in Atlantic City, N.J., on September 7, 1917. His mother, Rose Lee, had departed from her Virginia birthplace to live in New Jersey, where she met and married Jacob Lawrence, a railroad worker from South Carolina. Shortly after their first child, Jacob, was born, the couple moved to Easton, Pa., where their daughter, Geraldine, and second son, William, were born.

Hard times followed the family. The marriage ended, and Rose Lawrence set out with the children for Philadelphia. Unable to make ends meet, she placed Jacob and his brother and sister in temporary foster homes and went to New York to find work. She brought them to live with her in Harlem in 1930. "We were a part of that migration," Jacob Lawrence recalls.

Folks expected the world of Harlem. The name alone suggested a fusion of hustle, style, achievement and survival. This crowded, fast-paced community provided Rose Lawrence with neither economic security nor a safe haven in which to raise her children. Especially concerned that Jacob, a quiet teenager, would be susceptible to the dangers of street life, she enrolled the children in the Utopia Children's House, a local settlement that provided an after-school program of meals and activities. It was here--under the tutelage of the artist Charles Alston, then a graduate student at Columbia University--that Jacob Lawrence began to create.