The 1920s...The Migrants Arrive and Cast Their Ballots
Date1974
MediumScreenprint on paper
DimensionsPlate: 32 × 24 1/4 inches (81.3 × 61.6 cm)
Sheet: 32 7/8 × 25 1/2 inches (83.5 × 64.8 cm)
Portfolio/Series"Migration" series and Kent Bicentennial portfolio, "Spirit of Independence"
Credit LineGift of Lorillard, a Division of Loew’s Theatres, Inc.
Object number1977.19
Copyright© 2023 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
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Label TextIn this work, created for a print portfolio in honor of the U.S. Bicentennial, Jacob Lawrence revisits the subject matter of his famous series of paintings entitled the Migration of the Negro. That series of 60 panel paintings tells the story of African Americans leaving the overt racism and segregation perpetuated through Jim Crow laws of the South and moving north in the first half of the 20th century in search of better opportunities. Born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Lawrence witnessed firsthand the influx of African Americans to New York. The Migration series became part of Lawrence’s 1941 exhibition at Downtown Gallery, the first solo exhibition by an African American artist at a commercial gallery in New York. In this print, Lawrence depicts black Americans in the 1920s exercising the right to vote in a northern city, a scene almost unthinkable in the South during that time.
