Jacob Lawrence, Migration Series

Henry Louis Gates Jr: One of the most important historical events in the history of the African American people was the massive shift in population from the country to the city, and from the South to the North, between 1900 and 1930. 

Narrator: Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. 

Henry Louis Gates Jr: Now what’s curious about it is that despite this massive social upheaval which it caused and which it reflected, almost no one wrote about it in the creative arts. Instead, it was an artist who told the story. And that artist was Jacob Lawrence. 

He was the first African American painter to combine sophisticated, experimental visual technique with the narrative tradition, or storytelling. He’s our first narrative painter. Storytelling is one of the fundamental components of the African American tradition. And what Jacob Lawrence did was to translate that tradition of oral storytelling into another medium, a new medium, and that medium was painting. 

Narrator: Lawrence took a deep interest in the Mexican muralists, whose art was also often narrative. He especially admired Orozco for his bold approach to color and form.