Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series

Between World War I and about 1970 more than 6 million African Americans left the South in what came to be known as The Great Migration. They were pulled by the lure of better jobs and pushed by the oppression of Jim Crow. The son of two of the earliest migrants, Jacob Lawrence was born in 1917 in Atlantic City. In 1940-41 he painted 60 panels depicting the realities of this migration. Thirty of those panels are in the Phillips’s collection.

In partnership with the Wilmington Memorial Library, Erica Harper, Head of the K-12 Initiatives, will give a tour of the 30 panels and help us learn more about one of the most important painters in this country’s history.

IMAGE: Jacob Lawrence, The Migration Series, Panel no. 23: The migration spread., 1940-41, Casein tempera on hardboard, 12 x 18 in., The Phillips Collection, Acquired 1942