By Ellen C. Caldwell
For JSTOR Daily
Jacob Lawrence’s “Great Migration” series returned to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) this spring for the first time since 1995. Described as a modernist and social realist, Lawrence painted this 60-panel series at the young age of just 23, thus launching his lasting career until his death in 2000.
In “The Migration of the Negro,” Lawrence painted 60 panels in 1940-1941 to visually depict the Great Migration (1915-1960) when an estimated six million black southerners leaving the rural South to flee persecution, migrating northeast in search of opportunity, better lives, and protection of the law. Lawrence gave each painting a short caption that served as a verbal cue and title.
In Richard J. Powell’s essay for American Art, he examines the caption for panel 60, And the migrants kept coming, saying: “The title, like the image it designates, is intentionally open-ended, eternal, and playfully suggestive of more to come.” This is true throughout Lawrence’s migration series with captions that offer a narrative hint at the subject he explores so boldly with his paint…