The Great Migration

Humanities 110 looks at the art of Harlem Renaissance painter Jacob Lawrence.

This spring, students in Humanities 110 studied the Migration Series by Jacob Lawrence in a unit on the Harlem Renaissance. Completed in 1941, the series consists of 60 panels, each measuring 12 by 18 inches, depicting scenes from the Great Migration, when millions of African Americans fled intolerable conditions in the rural south for the industrial north. Lawrence painted all the panels simultaneously, working color by color to tell a story that had until then received scant public attention. The caption for this panel, Number 28, is: “The labor agent sent south by northern industry was a familiar presence in the black communities.”

Tags: Academics, Courses We’d Love To Take, Diversity/Equity/Inclusion, Object of Study