Art in the Harlem Renaissance: Jacob Lawrence’s The Migration Series | BRIdge from the Past

0:04 Hi everybody. Welcome to another episode of Bridge from the Past. Art Across U. S history. I’m Mary Patterson, and I am back with more Primary source fun for us to explore here at the Bill of Rights Institute. Stories are kind of a big deal. And today’s Primary Source Visual, is an epic visual story of the great migration. In 60 scenes, the artist,

0:25 Jacob Lawrence tells the stories of approximately 1.6 million African Americans who headed north in the first three decades of the 20th century. When these African Americans fled the tyranny of the south, what new challenges did they face? How did they meet them? And most importantly, how does this story continue today?

0:45 Let’s jump in. The title of our primary source today is the Migration Series. And it is just that. It’s a series of 60 panels or scenes that’s almost meant to be read as if it’s a story. We’re not going to be looking at. All 60 scenes, just a selection. But you can look at all 60 scenes on the Phillips Collection website, which is linked to below in the Phillips Collection Museum that houses this work of art.

1:09 Our artist, again, is named Jacob Lawrence. He completed the Migration Series when he was only 23 years old, which is someone who is well past 23, I can tell you, is rather humbling. And Lawrence was very much a part of the art scene in Harlem, New York. His family was part of this great Migration, and Lawrence spent his formative years in Harlem, so he really fed on

1:31 the energy and the vitality of the community of African Americans there. So let’s see what he had to say about the great Migration. Here is the first panel in the series. Right away, I’m drawn to all of the colors and the people and the movement. And I can see that they seem to be surging towards three particular places.

1:55 Chicago, New York, and St. Louis. So why are they heading up north to begin with? They can clearly see there’s a large group of people. I already know this is happening in the early 20th century. Why are these people on the move? Well, Lawrence has explained that in some of our following panels, we’ve talked about

2:20 migration before on Bridge From the Past. And we’ve talked about push and pull factors. And there were some significant push factors that were having African Americans consider leaving the south and their families and their communities and basically what they had known. So in this first panel, this is panel eight from the series you can see all of these blues.

2:41 We have a blue sky. You have to see some rain, and there’s a lot of water here. And these right here are dead crops. So many African Americans in the south were sharecroppers or poor farmers, and they were heavily dependent on the environment. So if you have flooding, that’s going to destroy your crops,

3:02 obviously, that’s a big factor pushing you out of your home. The Mississippi river flooded in 1927, and it was the greatest river flood in US history. It was an absolute devastation to many of these people. On top of the flooding in the second panel, this is panel nine here you can see again, a crop.

3:22 This is a cotton crop. And these nasty little guys right here are bull weevils. So on top of the flooding, you have a pestilence of the bull weevil ruining the cotton crop. And cotton is still a really important crop for many of these share croppers in the south. So you sort of have this double whammy pushing them in search of better opportunity in the north.

3:44 And this third panel here is going to be related to the fact that the crops have been ruined. If you’re a farmer and farming is your livelihood, your crops have been ruined, you probably go hungry. There’s not a lot of food. The cost of food is going to go up. So in this image here, you have this very sad looking child watching his mother,

4:04 who’s really leaning into cutting the food here as if it’s hard. It’s probably not a great cut of meat, so food is scarce. So we have a lot of push factors that are going to help African Americans make this decision to travel up the north. Panel 15 is another incredibly significant

4:25 push factor for many of these African Americans. So this panel is very stark. There’s just one figure, and you can see a noose on the tree, and the caption for this panel is there were lynchings. So lynchings are basically a mob kill someone, typically by hanging for an alleged offense. So this is something that was very common in the south in the Jim Crow era,

4:49 and African American men were basically at the mercy, typically men, but not exclusively at the mercy of these white mobs. It’s just this horrific, awful mob violence, and there’s no recourse. So discrimination, segregation, and lynching, this horrible violence is all going to be a part of these push factors.

5:10 Pull factors included, basically jobs. So in this panel here, you have a white man. So someone who has come from the north to recruit black workers. And a lot of times these recruiters were recruiting black men to work as strike breakers, which was not going to be a terribly popular thing for these men once they got to the north.

5:32 But a lot of times they didn’t know that until they got there. You also have this figure over here reading a newspaper. The black press is encouraging people to come. They’re talking about what life is like up in the north, and African Americans in the south are thinking, maybe this is worth making the trip up north once they get up north,

5:52 is it what they hoped it would be? Well, there’s a lot of problems. So in this panel here, 47, you can see that housing was a big concern. So you have people sort of crowded together in tenement housing. Very unpleasant. Panel 49 here is very telling. Lawrence has depicted segregation of a different type.

6:12 So even though it’s not exactly the same as the south, you still have the separation of blacks and whites. And this last panel here, panel 52, is depicting a race riot, which were common in a lot of these cities. So this is a particular one in East St. Louis that was very violent. And this was another thing that these African Americans who came

6:36 from the south had to deal with once they came up north in search of jobs. You’ve left everything you’ve known, you have a new job, you have a new home. How do you address these challenges? How do you build community? Where is the resilience? And there is so much resilience to be had in these northern cities.

6:57 The church, you can hear this picture on the left. And faith was a huge part of providing that community and that strength for these African Americans. This image here, 58, I love education and the hope, this hope out there, that this is going to be a better life for our children. And Lawrence himself talked about this

7:18 because his parents were both born in the south, came north, and Lawrence felt he benefited from his parents making that decision. What I love about this image is you can see that it’s going upward. Two three four. And the girls are reaching higher and higher, so there’s the promise of something better. So in spite of all of the hardship and the violence continues in their

7:42 segregation, there is a promise that things will get better. This is the final panel, panel 60, and it’s titled Or Captioned. And the migrants kept coming. So again, we’re back to the crowd. I see the colors again, I can see it’s very similar in a way to the first image, where you have lots of colors and the crowd and movement.

8:04 So it’s almost as if the story has come full circle. And Lawrence said of this particular panel, to me, migration means movement. There was conflict and struggle, but out of the struggle came the kind of power and even beauty. And the migrants kept coming as a refrain of triumph over adversity. If it rings true for you today,

8:26 then it must still strike a chord in our American experience. So now I’m going to toss it out to you. What do you think? What would panel 61 look like? The migrants kept coming. They are still coming. We’re still part of this story of people moving and building communities and facing hardships.

8:48 So what does that look like to you today? If you go to the Phillips Collection website, you can actually submit your panel 61 and maybe they’ll publish it. That’s all we have time for today on today’s episode of Bridge for the Past. But thank you so much for tuning in. If you like this video, be sure to like and subscribe to our channel. We put out new Bridge to the Past videos

9:09 every other Thursday, helping you with all things you history. And you can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all the places for updates on student contests, programs and other ways to get involved. We’d love to hear from you. I’d love to see your panel 61s. So until next time, everyone. Take care.