The Migration Series, originally titled ''The Migration of the Negro'', is a group of paintings by

African-American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...

painter

Jacob Lawrence Jacob Armstead Lawrence (September 7, 1917 – June 9, 2000) was an American Painting, painter known for his portrayal of African-American historical subjects and contemporary life. Lawrence referred to his style as "dynamic cubism", although by ...

which depicts the migration of African Americans to the northern United States from the South that began in the 1910s. It was published in 1941 and funded by the

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. Lawrence conceived of the series as a single work rather than individual paintings and worked on all of the paintings at the same time, in order to give them a unified feel and to keep the colors uniform between panels. He wrote sentence-long captions for each of the sixty paintings explaining aspects of the event. Viewed in its entirety, the series creates a narrative in images and words that tells the story of the Great Migration.

Background

Lawrence moved to

Harlem Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and Central Park North on the south. The greater Harl ...

when he was thirteen years old, having lived in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. His mother was born in Virginia and his father in South Carolina, so he would have been familiar with the migration from his own family members. Lawrence created the sixty paintings in the series in 1940–41 when he was twenty-three years old. He did so with the help of funding from the

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, in ...

, one of President

Franklin D. Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...

's New Deal agencies. The series is based on the Great Migration of African Americans from the rural south to the urban north that began in the 1910s. The early part of the migration ran through 1930 and numbered some 1.6 million people. The panels depict the dire state of black life in the South, with poor wages, economic hardship due to the

boll weevil The boll weevil (''Anthonomus grandis'') is a beetle that feeds on cotton buds and flowers. Thought to be native to Central Mexico, it migrated into the United States from Mexico in the late 19th century and had infested all U.S. cotton-growing ...

, and a justice system rigged against them. The North offered better wages and slightly more rights, although was not without its problems; living conditions were much more crowded in the cities, which led to new threats such as

tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by ''Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, in w ...

outbreaks. The final panel notes that the migration continues. Migrants were still moving north in the 1950s and 1960s. The series was collected and exhibited in Washington D.C. in 1993 and retitled from "The Migration of the Negro" to "The Migration Series" and almost all of the captions were rewritten. Notably,

negro In the English language, ''negro'' is a term historically used to denote persons considered to be of Black African heritage. The word ''negro'' means the color black in both Spanish and in Portuguese, where English took it from. The term can be ...

, a neutral term in 1941, had since fallen out of favor. Most of the new captions were shorter and use either "black" or "African-American".

Technique

The works consist of casein tempera paint applied to hardboard panels, atop a traditional gesso layer of rabbit-skin glue and whiting. Lawrence made his own casein tempera, purchasing the dry pigments from Fedanzie Sperrle and using them unmixed so that the colors would not vary between panels. With the panels laid out, he worked systematically to apply one color to each, starting with black and moving on to the lighter colors. Lawrence was influenced by Mexican muralism of the 1920s–1940s, and The Migration Series is something of an American offshoot of the school.MoMA
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Ownership

The sixty panels are shared between

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in New York and the

Phillips Collection The Phillips Collection is an art museum founded by Duncan Phillips (art collector), Duncan Phillips and Marjorie Acker Phillips in 1921 as the Phillips Memorial Gallery located in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Phillips was the ...

in Washington, DC, a split that happened in 1942.People on the Move
/ref> Each has thirty panels, except when the collection is on loan (usually together).

Background

Technique

Ownership

See also

References

Further reading