Jacob Lawrence was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey in 1917, raised in Pennsylvania until he was thirteen, and settled with his family in Harlem about 1930. For all intensive purposes, Jacob Lawrence “grew up” in Harlem during the Depression and his career owes much to that situation. At that time, Harlem was recognized as the “international capital for the black race”.
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Alain Locke, a philosophy professor and a leading figure of that period, exhibited a major influence on blacks, encouraging them “to turn to their heritage in a search for cultural identity, guiding them to recognize black contributions to the folk traditions of America, and to explore them artistically.” Lawrence drew upon Harlem scenes and black history for his subjects, portraying the lives and aspirations of black Americans.
By 1936, Lawrence had established himself with many great figures of the Harlem Renaissance. He shared an art studio with painter Charles Alston at 306 West 141st Street—a famous meeting place for luminaries such as Langston Hughes, Alaine Locke, Claude McKay, and Aaron Douglas. His early work continued to be influenced by painters Romare Beardon, Ronald Joseph, and his future wife Gwendolyn Knight as well as sculptor Augusta Savage. His earliest works date from around 1936 and these were typically scenes of the Harlem community.
As a teenager, Lawrence spent much of his time at the Metropolitan Museum of Art studying the techniques of Renaissance painters such as Botticelli and Crivelli. He also studied abstract painters and he shared Harlem community interest in African art and African culture. Through these influences his style became one of brightly-colored images, concerned with the drama of the human struggle. A distinctive feature of Lawrence’s paintings is his usage of a narrative, historical documentary. He was inspired by the Harlem community to develop a keen interest in the stories of early black leaders and to read about their struggles and their deep convictions. Because of his deeply-rooted search for cultural identity, Lawrence’s paintings adapted a narrative style to teach Black History to better convey the emotions and the ideas in the stories which he wished to tell. “I have always been interested in history, but they never taught Negro history in the public schools. . . . I don’t see how a history of the United States can be written honestly without including the Negro. I didn’t do it just as a historical thing, but because these things tie up with the Negro today. We don’t have a physical slavery, but an economic slavery. If these people, who were so much worse off than the people today, could conquer their slavery, we certainly can do the same thing. They had to liberate themselves without any education. Today we can’t go about it in the same way. Any leadership would have to be the type of Frederick Douglass. . . . How will it come about? I don’t know. I’m not a politician, I’m an artist, just trying to do my part to bring this thing about.”
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Frederick Douglass was born in 1818, in Talbot County, Maryland, the son of a Caucasian father whom he never knew and an enslaved mother who was separated from him while he was just a babe. He lived on a plantation as a slave and, in his autobiography, he details the harsher than normal treatment that he received due to his mixed parentage. At the age of eight, he was sent to Baltimore, to the Auld family, to work as a houseboy. This turn of events proved very fortunate for Douglass because he was taught to read under the kind tutelage of Mrs. Auld.
In 1833, Douglass was returned to Talbot County to work as a laborer. Because of his rebellious nature, he was soon assigned to a Mr. Covey, a man who had a reputation as a slave breaker. Having thwarted a second attempt by Mr. Covey of being flogged, Douglass was again sent to Baltimore, this time to work in the shipyards. Soon after learning a shipping trade and being able to read, Douglass succeeded in escaping and making his way to New York City. There he married Anna Murray and they settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts, eventually having five children. Later in life Douglass joined the forces of William Lloyd Garrison and the abolitionist movement, lecturing throughout the Northeast, narrating his life as a slave, detailing the cruelty and the inhumane treatment of the slaving system.
Harriet Tubman, like Douglass, was born a slave in Maryland around 1820. She was one of eleven children and she was forced to begin work at age five. When she was about fifteen, she felt her first sting of slavery when an over-seer struck Harriet on the head with an iron bar, which left her with a dented skull and a kind of seizure that plagued her the rest of her life. Because of her field work, Harriett developed great strength and endurance through plowing, cutting and loading wood. In 1844, she married John Tubman, a free black man, and in 1849 she escaped to a free Pennsylvania, guided mainly by the North Star.
In the North, Harriet worked as a domestic, saving her monies to liberate other slaves. From the beginning, she was guided by spiritual visions and her strong belief in God. In 1850, she returned to the South, freeing over three hundred slaves by means of the Underground Railroad. During a period of ten years, she became one of the most notorious “conductors” on the Railroad, with a reward of $40,000 offered for her head due to her daring and elusive nature. She was able to rescue most of her brothers and sisters as well as her parents. Because of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, Harriet was forced to bring her peoples to Canada to avoid recapture.
Harriet Tubman was also a friend of Frederick Douglass and John Brown, and she became active in the abolitionist movements of the North. She was well known for her moving speeches on the abolition of slavery and for women’s rights. During the Civil War, Tubman served the North, especially as a nurse and as a spy. Her services were invaluable. After the war she settled down in Auburn, New York, continuing to work with her people. When she died in 1913, a large mass meeting was held in her honor and a bronze memorial was erected on the county courthouse.