The Move: Two Worlds, One Reality
            Without a doubt, Jacob Lawrence's powerful portrayal of the migration communicate the struggle, strength, and perseverance of  who, between 1900 and 1940, moved from the agricultural communities of the South to the industrial cities of the North and Midwest in search of a better life.  Jacob Lawrence is obviously integral to the Great Migration because he was a painter who painted the migration of the blacks based on not just what he saw, but also what he heard from Harlem's oral historians and his own family's migration from the rural to the industrial North and Midwest. On the other hand, throughout history, painting an image not only let you see the art that print narratives don't show, it also tells you what kind of materials the painter used to paint the image and why. Undoubtedly, there have been many events in history that are better explained through art and observation.
            Jacob Lawrence is obviously integral to the Great Migration because he used painting as a way to point out the social issues relating to society as well as a narrative through the way the blacks migrated and lived through the hardships they have encountered. At the turn of the Great Migration, the blacks faced accommodation, integration and separatism from African American leaders, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey. They each had separate ideas on how the blacks should act when they came to the North and Midwest. Well, since the blacks had unfortunate lives from the South, Jacob Lawrence captured the intense and forceful reactions of how they were dealt with, treated, and handled by the whites. Not only were they unappreciated, they were also segregated from the rest of the people. On the other hand, life was much better in the North and Midwest than the South because during the blacks' lifetime in the South, they were cheated, jailed, whipped, beaten, and lynched. They had no rights in the South which caused the greatest influx of blacks of all time. "The decline of cotton production; flooding in rural areas of the South; an
increase in the number of lynching and other forms of racial violence and discrimination; recruitment of African-Americans by northern industries; and the influence of black newspapers in the North," John D. Baskerville (ND) states that the push of the North made the opportunities in the South even greater.
Jacob Lawrence showed this type of movement in his eighteen panel painting of his migration series, which states, "the migration gained in momentum." If you look to your right, this panel shows you that all the blacks are heading the same direction towards the North and Midwest, which show the plight of the migrants. As you can notice, the blacks were all carrying luggages and there are two specific vectors that point the same way as the blacks are traveling. On your left, is another panel that Lawrence painted, this is his forty first panel, and it states, "The south that was interested in keeping cheap labor was making it very difficult for labor agents recruiting Southern labor for Northern firms. In my instances, they were put in jail and were forced to operate incognito." This panel describes how the landlords don't want to let their sharecroppers go to the North, because if they did, they would have no more money.
In all of the sixty panel paintings he painted, he used cheap paint and cheap cardboard to do his paintings on, which shows you that he wanted to show the audience how poor and humble the blacks during the Great Migration. As a painter, he chose the materials based on how the movement was captured and told about by historians and what he saw.
            Evidently, he used painting to show that despite how the blacks moved to the North and Midwest, they were never welcomed; instead that's when separatism from blacks and whites occurred as more blacks arrived. Well, the blacks thought life would be better because they heard that in the Northern cities, it looked like "The Promised Land." The wages, it was three times higher that the amount of money they got in the South, they heard that there were no laws segregating the races and the blacks can actually vote. Well in the South, things turned back when the exodus of blacks decreased sharecropping, this turned the farms rotten. "African-Americans who traveled North during the Great Migration assumed that leaving the South meant leaving behind racial violence as well, but this was not the case. Because northern white workers feared economic and political competition from African-Americans, individual and group animosities sometimes escalated into acts of mob violence," Baskerville (ND) announces that the blacks assumed that life would be better and that
they won't get separated from the whites, but that's not what they encountered when they finally landed on the Northern parts of the world. On your top right is the forty second panel Lawrence did on the Great Migration, which states "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 train." This painting shows you how desperate the landlords of the South needed the blacks to plant and grow crops. So the landlords forbid the sharecroppers to migrate. From an editorial in the September 2, 1916 issue of the Chicago Defender it stated, "The exodus of labor from the South has caused much alarm among the Southern whites, who have failed to treat them descent. The men, tried of being kicked and cursed, are leaving by the thousands," which agrees with the idea that blacks are leaving and landlords are preventing them and since the massive depopulation of the blacks in the South, the landlords aren't making profit.
            Lawrence's powerful portrayal of the migration communicates the struggle, strength and perseverance of African American's because of the way he draws the blacks and the whites. The face expression is totally different because as you can see in the forty ninth panel of the migration series on your left, he demonstrates this by putting expressions on the whites face and nothing on the blacks indicating that the whites have more power. The panel states, "They also found discrimination in the North although it was much different from that which they had known in the South." Although the discrimination in the North wasn't as harsh as in the South, they were still segregated from one another. "Northern blacks also had apprehensions about the arrivals, Black workers, like their white counterparts, saw migrants as competitors for jobs and housing. Northern blacks also feared that rising black populations would prompt local governments to pass racially discriminatory laws. Middle class blacks were concerned that the rough rural manners of the migrants would perpetuate stereotypes of African Americans as ignorant
and unreliable," Yamasaki (1997) clearly state that, since the influx of blacks, the Northern blacks don't want the blacks to migrant to the North because they were afraid that the blacks would make all blacks unmannerly and weak.
            Jacob Lawrence used his paintings as a social commentary because he demonstrated the way the blacks believed in moving and having a better and clearer future. In his thirty fourth panel on the Great Migration on your left, it states that "the Negro press was also influential in urging the people to leave the South." This demonstrates the push because when many people read about the North, it pushes them to places that we're known to have a much better society and a much better community. Lawrence's painting each show a specific time when that action was made and each of his panels follow a specific time, each traveling to the North and Midwest.
            Well, obviously when the blacks traveled passed the South to the North and Midwest, things were just getting better. They now have more rights, no more separatism and no more lynching. The blacks were getting appreciated. On your left,
shows the last panel from the migration series, it states, "And the migrants kept coming." So that's why blacks are still coming the North and Midwest, because of the Northern opportunities.
            Evidently, Jacob Lawrence's sixty panel narrative, The Migration of the Negro, changed the way and life of how the blacks were treated. He reached the goal of independence for the blacks and, they finally gained respect. Before through the
portrayal of the migration, he showed how the blacks struggled through to get to the North and the Midwest. Through the strength of the blacks, they reached their goal and had gained political rights as well as freedom. As the Great Migration started, Lawrence captured the intense images through the eras of the migration of blacks to the North and Midwest through the types of expressions he placed on the blacks and whites faces. He described this through their reactions, their concerns, their emotions, the South left many undignified horrors dealing with labor, and this could be known as slavery. Everything in history are shown through some type of art, painting, portraits, and they all are able to show you what the true reaction is. You should obviously consider what are the faults of the Great Migration and if the blacks are truly free, then why is their still slavery going on?
Jacob Lawrence Bibliography:
Baskerville, John D. "THE RURAL TO URBAN BLACK "GREAT MIGRATION." A BRIEF HISTORY." ND. Last Retrieved March 24, 2003. http://ci.coe.uni.edu/facstaff/zeitz/museum/migrate.html
Emmett J. Scott. "Letters of Negro Migrants of 1916-1918, " Journal of Negro History 4  (July and November 1919)
http://www.people.memphis.edu/~kenichls/WA4Letter.htm
Katzman, David M. "African American Migration; Black Exodus, 1872; The Great Migration." ND. Last Retrieved March 24, 2003.
http://www.arthes.com/community/exdus/migrations.htm
Katzman, David M. "GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT: BLACK MIGRATION." Houghton Mifflin Co." January 1, 1997.
http://www.workingfilms.org/onthejob/teachers/article_detail.asp?ID=31
Yamasaki, Mitch, Ph.D., "Movin' On: The Great Migration North." Discovery Enterprises, ztd., Carlisle, MA 1997.
Picture Credits:
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