we're in the Phillips Collection in
Washington DC and we're looking at a
series of small paintings by Jacob
Lawrence this is actually a series of
paintings there are sixty of them half
are here in the Phillips Collection the
other half are in the Museum of Modern
Art actually MoMA has the even numbers
and the Phillips has the odd numbers and
that was an arrangement that the artist
agreed to because these were so
sought-after he was young when he
painted these and so it's a remarkable
achievement for a very young artist and
they document one of the most important
historical events in American history
the migration of african-americans from
the agricultural south into the
industrial north at the end of the 19th
and especially in the first half of the
20th century
so what precipitated this was not only
the extreme racism in Jim Crow laws in
the south but also a dearth of labor in
the north that is northern industrial
companies had jobs to fill 6 million
people are estimated to have moved
during these waves of migrations and
Lawrence's family it was one of them so
people moved to New York just like
Lawrence's family did but people also
moved to Chicago to st. Louis to
Pittsburgh to all these industrial
centers you have to imagine that life
was really bad in the south for people
to pick up take all their belongings
move their families and there must have
been the hope of a much better life in
the north and I think there was in many
cases but there was also significant
hardship and racism in the north as well
and the great thing about this series is
that Lawrence captures the complexity of
what happened to people's lives when
they moved he does that not only by this
brilliant use of color and very stark
composition using tempera on hardboard
but he also does it through his titling
which is almost a kind of poem that
weaves its way throughout these images
when we look at the paintings we see
geometric shapes we see flat areas of
color and there's something spare about
the words and the images that's a big
part of their power well he was really
careful when he produced this he had
done a tremendous amount of research at
the Schomburg Center in Harlem this
entire series really is about movement
it really is about change
the very first panel and the very last
panel have to do with train stations and
the movement of people so since this was
conceived as a series let's take a
moment to go through all sixty and to
look at the panels in relationship to
their titles which are so crucial during
the world war there was a great
migration north by Southern Negroes the
world war had caused a great shortage in
northern industry and also citizens of
foreign countries were returning home in
every town Negroes were leaving by the
hundreds to go north and enter into
northern industry the Negro is the
largest source of labor to be found
after all others had been exhausted the
Negroes were given free passage on the
railroads which was paid back by
northern industry it was an agreement
that the people brought north on these
railroads were to pay back their passage
after they had received jobs the trains
were packed continually with migrants
the Negro who had been part of the soil
for many years was now going into and
living a new life in the urban centers
they did not always leave because they
were promised work in the north many of
them left because of southern conditions
one of them being great floods that
ruined the crops therefore they were
unable to make a living where they were
another great ravager of the crops was
the boll weevil they were very poor in
many places because of the war food had
doubled in price the railroad stations
were time so over packed with people
leaving that special guards had to be
called in to keep order due to the south
losing so much of its labor the crops
were left to dry and spoil among the
social conditions which were partly the
cause of the migration was the injustice
done to the Negroes in the courts
another cause was lynching it was found
that where there had been a lynching the
people who were reluctant
leave at first left immediately after
this
although the Negro was used to lynching
he found this an opportune time for him
to leave where one had just occurred the
migration was spurred on by the
treatment of the tenant farmers by the
planter the migration gained in momentum
there had always been discrimination in
many of the communities the Negro press
was read continually because of its
attitude and its encouragement of the
movement families arrived at the station
very early in order not to miss their
train north another of the social causes
of the migrants leaving was that at
times they did not feel safe or it was
not the best thing to be found on the
streets late at night they were arrested
on the slightest provocation and the
migration spread child labor and a lack
of education was one of the other
reasons for people wishing to leave
their homes after a while some
communities were left almost bare and
people all over the south began to
discuss this great movement many men
stayed behind until they could bring
their families north the labor agent who
had been sent south by northern industry
was a very familiar person in the Negro
counties the labor agent also recruited
laborers to break strikes which were
occurring in the north in every home
people who had not gone north met and
tried to decide if they should go north
or not after arriving north Negroes had
better housing conditions the railroad
stations in the south were crowded with
people leaving for the north people who
had not yet come North received letters
from their relatives telling them of the
better conditions that existed in the
north the Negro press was also
influential in urging the people to
leave the south they left the south in
large numbers and they arrived in the
north in large numbers they arrived in
great numbers into Chicago the Gateway
of the West the Negroes that had been
brought north worked in large numbers in
one of the principal industries which
was steel they also worked in large
numbers on the railroad luggage crowded
the railroad
forms the migrants arrived in great
numbers the South that was interested in
keeping cheap labor was making it very
difficult for labor agents recruiting
southern labor for northern firms in
many instances they were put in jail and
were forced to operate incognito they
also made it very difficult for migrants
leaving the south they often went to
railroad stations and arrested the
Negroes wholesale which in turn made
them miss their trains in a few sections
of the south the leaders of both groups
met and attempted to make conditions
better for the negro so that he would
remain in the south living conditions
were better in the north they arrived in
Pittsburgh one of the great industrial
centres of the North in large numbers
industries attempted to board their
laboring quarters that were oftentimes
very unhealthy labor camps were numerous
as well as finding better conditions in
the north the migrants found very poor
housing conditions in the north they
were forced into overcrowded and
dilapidated tenement houses housing for
the Negroes was a very difficult problem
they also found discrimination in the
north although it was much different
from what they had known in the south
let's stop for a moment and take a look
at this image well this is one of my
favorites because one really has a
palpable sense of the effects of racism
and discrimination we have this gold
barrier you have this rope that
separates the people on the right from
the people on the left in a spare field
which is upended refusing a linear
perspective giving us this exterior
bird's-eye view that gray background is
entirely flat and the figures are
silhouetted in these dark colors there's
a real sense of isolation between the
figures well the figures on the Left the
whites are really separate the figure at
the top left is facing away from the
people on the other side of the barrier
and he looks rather haughty to me in the
way that he looks up and out and the man
below him is clutching his newspaper
ignoring the play setting before him and
he seems to be completely lost in his
own thoughts
more than that because of the size of
his hands he seems to be almost
clutching that newspaper defiantly
refusing to acknowledge anybody else in
his environment there's a real economy
to everything here in terms of the
shapes and the lines and yet there's so
much expressiveness and because Lawrence
makes the figure on the upper right so
small we get a real sense of distance
and a sense of the isolation of that
figure look at the way that the artist
leads our eye from top to bottom our
eyeballs down with a kind of increasing
momentum and he brings us almost like a
pinball machine back and forth
zigzagging following the line of the
barrier but also alternating between the
figures on either side of that barrier
and if we follow that barrier down all
the way to the lower right look how much
we can tell about that figure from such
economy of form we can tell that this is
a female figure that she's older
Lawrence has painted her head lower than
her shoulders so she seems stooped over
the table as she eats her food and the
hat that she wears covers her so
completely her head is almost out of a
bell it's interesting that the white
figures are the only people who have
their facial features depicted the
African Americans are given form and
personality really by the contours of
their bodies I feel so much more
sympathy for the figures on the right
for the african-american figures those
figures on the Left really do seem aloof
and almost menacing let's go back to the
series race riots were very numerous all
over the north because of the antagonism
that was caused between the Negro and
white workers many of these riots
occurred because the Negro was used as a
strike breaker in many of the northern
industries in many cities in the north
where the Negroes have been overcrowded
in their own living quarters they
attempted to spread out this resulted in
many of the race riots and the bombing
of Negro homes one of the largest race
riots occurred in East st. Louis the
Negroes who had been north for quite
some time met their fellowmen with
disgust and aloofness one of the main
forms of social and recreational
activities in which the migrants
indulged occurred in the church the
Negro is being suddenly moved out of
doors and crammed into urban life
contracted a great deal of tuberculosis
because of this the death rate was very
high among one of the last groups to
leave the south was the Negro
professional who was forced to follow
his clientele to make a living
the female worker was also one of the
last groups to leave the South in the
north and Negro had better educational
facilities in the north and Negro had
freedom to vote and the migrants kept
coming what's fascinating is that
Lawrence is bringing a visual vocabulary
that is clearly well versed in modernism
to a subject that in the United States
really is an expression of the modern
condition of this modern migration of
industrialization of real upheaval and
by the vocabulary of modernism you're
referring to the flatness of the forms
the reductive mnestheus II here but we
normally think about modernism as
dispensing with subject matter with
narrative and yet here subject matter is
beautifully woven into these stark
images