(gentle dramatic music)
- [Beth] We're here in the Print Study Room
at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Mia,
and we're looking at a beautiful gouache
by great early-20th Century artist Romare Bearden.
- [Dennis] The title of the work is Factory Workers.
And it was commissioned to illustrate
an in-depth feature article in Fortune Magazine
on the plight of African Americans in the defense industry.
The purpose of the article was threefold,
discrimination in hiring and promotion
was bad for business, it was bad for the war effort,
and was bad for society at large.
- [Beth] The article says, the American Negro
is agitated not because he is asked to fight for America,
but because full participation in the fight is denied him.
He is humiliated as a Negro because he is not fully accepted
as an American, and of course the term Negro,
not one that we use anymore, but was obviously
very much in use in the early 20th Century.
And another quote, no serious review of the nation's status
could ever overlook the contradiction
between America's dream and the Negro reality.
- [Dennis] So what we're seeing
are two African American workers
who have been denied jobs at a steel factory
and trying to decide between themselves what to do next.
- [Beth] Their mouths are down turned.
It looks like a rather bleak landscape behind them
with the factory in the distance,
and then this pile of coal with a shed,
and that third figure who is somewhat mysterious,
a little bit in shadow, we're not sure
if he represents the employer.
- [Dennis] Or it could be a fellow worker
who's now looking at a newspaper
for additional job prospects.
- [Beth] We do feel sympathy for these men
who are looking for employment
and unable to find it because of discrimination.
- [Dennis] United States Armed Forces was segregated
at this time and much of industry was also segregated.
The article came out seven months after Pearl Harbor.
- [Beth] This is 1942, we're in the middle of World War II.
We're at the beginning of America's involvement.
The defense industries are gearing up
to serve the war effort and hiring millions of workers.
- [Dennis] Bearden was commissioned to do the frontispiece,
which is a very prestigious assignment.
- [Beth] So gouache is a water-based medium,
but it's opaque, it's not like a water color,
which can have levels of transparency.
So this does have the feeling of a monumental
serious work even though it's not oil on canvas.
- [Dennis] He's using these materials
for a number of reasons.
One reason is metallic pigments were not allowed
during war because of the war effort,
chromium red comes to mind.
So he uses earth tones, muted colors.
The figures are looking to our right
and the title and introduction to the article
would be on the right.
- [Beth] We think about Fortune magazine
and we might think about a publication
that is more conservative leaning,
something that is very pro-corporate America,
but at this point, Fortune magazine had
a more liberal bent.
- [Dennis] Fortune magazine had a progressive
editorial slant, it was founded by Henry Luce
who also produced Life magazine and Time magazine.
At this time Bearden made this picture,
approximately 51% of defense industry jobs
were not available to black workers.
- [Beth] And that's remarkable considering the importance
of the war effort and leaving these jobs unfilled,
of course, damaged that effort.
- [Dennis] President Franklin Roosevelt
signed executive order in June, 1941
expressly prohibiting racial discrimination
in defense industry and government.
- [Beth] In response to protests
from the African American community
about the tremendous discrimination that was taking place.
- [Dennis] And we believe
that the article in Fortune magazine
was the direct result of this order
and the attention it received, both in the press
and in the lives of African Americans.
- [Beth] The law said specifically,
there shall be no discrimination
in the employment of workers in defense industries
and in government because of race, creed,
color, or national origin.
This is the first order by the government
about discrimination since the Emancipation Proclamation.
We often think about discrimination in the Jim Crow south.
We don't often think about the great extent of it
in the north, too, in more industrial cities.
- [Dennis] The great migration from the rural
and small town south to industrialized centers
and big cities in the north,
Romare Bearden was part of that.
He was born in North Carolina,
was brought to New York City by his parents,
both social activists, and they invited prestigious
writers, musicians, and artists.
This was the milieu that Bearden grew up in,
so he was very familiar with the cultural expression
of African American community, African American life,
and that was one of his principle goals in his art.
- [Beth] This was something that was not just happening
in Harlem with black artists, but something
that was happening broadly in the beginnings
of the 20th Century among artists.
We can think of the Mexican muralists, for example.
- [Dennis] The Mexican muralists' social purpose
was paramount, and for Bearden as well,
social purpose as well as social critique.
It wasn't the only aspect of his art.
He was very much interested in modernism,
but at this time, 1942, he is coming out of his experience
with the social realists in the 1930s,
many who were involved with the WPA
which was a federal government program
to support the livelihood of artists.
And he's influenced by a number of his fellow artists,
Jacob Lawrence comes to mind.
Ben Shahn was an important social realist
also working in New York.
Social realism was meant to tell a story
and that's what Bearden is doing
in this picture, Factory Workers.
- [Beth] We're still really at the beginning
of Bearden's very long and remarkable career
when we look at this painting.
- [Dennis] One of the most important modern artists
in the United States, and certainly
one of the most important African American artists as well.
(gentle dramatic music)