Don't Talk About Racism

Picture by Vectorportal
     There are times when I will ask my mother’s opinion on the way an outfit may look if I am feeling uncertain about whether or not I like it or if looks nice. Or sometimes I will seek for her advice on a particular issue like an argument that I may be experiencing amongst my friends; but if her sentiments don’t agree with mine, I will sometimes dismiss them. Similarly, when Fortune Magazine and Edith Halpert commissioned Jacob Lawrence to generate paintings pertaining to the South, they edited the expletive pieces that were demonstrative of the evident racial segregation in the South. They silenced his artistic voice and interpretation of the conditions he witnessed in his visits to the southern states. For example, of the several paintings that Lawrence produced in New Orleans, “Halpert [merely] included The Green Table and Catholic New Orleans in her show [and] she showed Rampart Street in a group exhibition of watercolors in January 1942. She did not include Bar and Grill, with its scene of racial segregation.” In In the Heart of the Black Belt: Jacob Lawrence’s Commission From Fortune to Paint the South, Patricia Hill argues that as Lawrence’s awareness of the predicament of blacks in the South increased and he produced art that epitomized their struggle, his sponsors were more apprehensive about publishing his work.
     Foremost, the greatest appreciation for Jacob Lawrence’s work occurred when his series of paintings on The Great Migration of that era were published. When Lawrence commenced painting these works, though they were to be a depiction of black’s emigration from the South, Lawrence had not visited the South to formulate an informed and respective interpretation of the subject. He merely “relied instead on stories told by relatives and neighbors and on his own library research on the migration of African Americans from the South to the North in search of job opportunities and better living conditions during and following World War 1. His Harlem perspective drove the narrative; many of the scenes focused on the collective experiences of African Americans recently arrived in northern cities.” Ironically, however, the Migration series is what launched his career, almost as if people preferred the ignorant bliss with which he painted rather than delving into the horrors that initially prompted the migration. Consequently, Fortune Magazine reproduced 26 of the paintings in color in its November issue in 1941, and Halpert put this entire display on exhibit in December of 1941. Also, half of the paintings were purchased for the Museum of Modern Art and the other half for the Phillips Memorial Gallery in D.C, all of which culminated in a national tour.
     However, it was after his sojourns to South that Lawrence’s work acquired a more provocative nature, exposing what he saw to be the truths of the South, which curators began to censor. For example, before being commissioned by Fortune to generate another series of paintings that would become a picture essay depicting the South post World War II, Lawrence had already made three trips to the South: Louisiana, Virginia, and North Carolina. Of the ten paintings that he produced, Fortune only used three because their virulent racism countered their agenda to present the South as a place where industry could flourish. Likewise, when Halpert summoned Lawrence to create paintings for her exhibition American Negro Art: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, as previously mentioned, she neglected to incorporate Bar and Grill. This painting displays the distinction between the furnishings in a “separate but equal” bar, but in the bar set aside for blacks, there is no ceiling fans, bartender, plates, or even straws in contrast to the lively “white” bar. There are many other paintings that Lawrence produced that endured similar treatment due to their relentless honestly and realism that opposed popular thought like Starvation, Bus, and Killing the Incurable and Aged, all of which Hill includes in her article. “Instead, the venues for Lawrence's imagery that comment on racial issues were the left liberal magazines of the late 1940s, such as New Republic and Masses and Mainstream, as well as Langston Hughes's book of poetry One-Way Ticket (1948), and those published images were invariably drawings, not paintings.” One might argue that maybe those paintings were just not where the patron’s interests lied, but even when they did publish some of his more controversial works, they would amend the titles/captions to be more befitting for business purposes.
     In the Heart of the Black Belt: Jacob Lawrence’s Commission From Fortune to Paint the South, like a historian, presents Lawrence’s paintings and drawings as progressively forthcoming of the predicament in the South. “The more compelling of [Jacob Lawrence’s] southern images were more than on-the- spot views of southern scenes; they expressed the shock and moral outrage that he - a northern African American - felt as a personal witness to southern racism.” However, during his time, a time characterized by discrimination, and prejudice, his candid paintings were not as valued as they are today. Rather than capturing the raw essence and nature of the South, institutions like Fortune Magazine and persons like Edith Halpert, wanted to skate over the moral dilemma of segregation in the South. Nevertheless, “he perceived the problems clearly, even if his patrons suppressed them,” and would continue to do so throughout his career.

Works Cited-
Hill, Patricia. "In the Heart of the Black Belt: Jacob Lawrence’s Commission From Fortune to Paint
     the South." Internation Review of African American Art 19.1 (2003): 29-36. Print.