Jacob Lawrence

Jacob Lawrence has painted figurative and narrative pictures of the black community and black history for more than 60 years in a consistent modernist style, using expressive, strong design and flat areas of color. Jacob Lawrence was a great artist. During Harlem Renaissance, he helped establish African American artists. He gave lectures at Washington University, and he enjoyed working with students of all ages.

Jacob Lawrence was born in Atlantic City on September 7, 1917. His parents Jacob Armstead Lawrence and Rose Lee were part of the Great Migration of Black Americans (1916-1930). One million people left the rural South for the urban North during this period. He moved with his family for Easton, Pennsylvania. After his parents separated, he moved with his mother to Philadelphia. In 1927, his mother moved to New York and placed Lawrence and his siblings in foster homes. In 1930, Lawrence, age 13, and his brother and sister moved to Harlem to live with his mother.

During Lawrence's childhood, his family was forced to relocate many times as his parents looked for work. Steady jobs were hard to find, especially for African Americans. Racial prejudice prevented them from pursuing certain jobs or professions.

Harlem was a crowded, teeming place, and the public school Lawrence attended was considered among the roughest in the area. But Harlem in the 1930s was also the center of what became known as the Harlem Renaissance. To keep her son out of trouble Rose Lawrence enrolled him in an after-school arts and crafts program at a local community center. It was taught by a young African American artist named Charles Alston. Alston liked the serious, quiet Lawrence and made sure he had lots of materials for his efforts. He found that drawing geometric designs in bright colors satisfied him greatly. He soon moved on to elaborate patterns and developed his own method of painting in which particular shapes were rendered in corresponding colors, one at a time. Lawrence continued in this mode through much of his career. The notable consistency of color is apparent in the artist's later series of story panels.

Lawrence got many of his ideas from the books and magazines he found at the center where the classes were held. Lawrence had Alston show him how to mix paper-mache, and he went on to create many colorful, life-size masks. He also used cardboard boxes to fashion three-sided scenes, depicting locales in Harlem- stores, barbershops, houses and newsstands.

During the Great Depression, and jobs were extremely scarce. Lawrence was able to earn only meager funds by selling old bottles and running errands. Then, in 1936, Lawrence was accepted into the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a government program designed to get young men out of the cities to work on projects such as planting trees and building roads and dams. Lawrence's CCC service taught him many new skills and made him think that perhaps painting should be only a hobby.

He again began attending art classes at various community centers, including one offered by the acclaimed sculptor Augusta Savage. Like Alston, Savage recognized Lawrence's talent and took him under her wing. She soon realized that Lawrence was having difficulty earning money. She took him to a government office to enroll him in a project that helped support artists. But Lawrence was not eligible because he was only twenty years old and not the required twenty-one. Savage did not give up, however. She waited a year and on Lawrence's twenty-first birthday, she took him back to the government office to sign him up. He was accepted and offered $25 a week, a comfortable living in those days. Lawrence later stated, "If Augusta Savage hadn't insisted on getting me on the project, I would never have become an artist. It was a real turning point for me."

For about a year and a half, Lawrence was able to take classes, hone his painting skills, and put concerns about money out of his mind. Through the funding project he met many other artists and writers.

During these years Lawrence regularly attended a discussion group focusing on African American history held at the local public library. It was led by a prominent scholar, Charles Seifert. Seifert applauded Lawrence's interest and encouraged him to study American history in depth, especially the role of African Americans. The artist had never learned this history in school. Now he uncovered many critical events and heroes forgotten by the public school system.

Lawrence was particularly drawn to the life story of Francis Dominique Toussaint, known as Toussaint L'Ouverture, the military leader of eighteenth-century Haiti, who overthrew the slave system and liberated the Caribbean island nation form French domination. Lawrence read everything he could about Toussaint and decided to paint a record of his achievements. But one painting was not enough. Lawrence ultimately unveiled a series of forty-one panels, beginning with Christopher Columbus's "discovery" of Haiti and then outlining Toussaint's childhood, battles, and death in a French prison.

Lawrence was only twenty-two when he completed the Toussaint L'Ouverture series in 1938. It received much attention for its unusual subject matter and praise for its artistry. Two acquaintances of Lawrence prominent in the art world arranged for the panels to be included in