The Migration Series

The Migration Series is a landmark sequence of sixty tempera paintings by Jacob Lawrence completed in 1940–1941 that narrates the mass movement of African Americans from the American South to Northern and Western cities during the early 20th century. The series interweaves visual narrative, color, and text captions to chronicle social change affecting communities tied to locations such as Richmond, Virginia, New York City, Chicago, Detroit, and Philadelphia. Presented as a unified narrative, it established Lawrence among contemporaries like Romare Bearden, Alma Thomas, Aaron Douglas, and institutions including The Museum of Modern Art and The Phillips Collection that later acquired the series.

Background and Historical Context

Lawrence conceived the cycle against the backdrop of the Great Migration (African American), the demographic shift driven by conditions shaped by the aftermath of Reconstruction, the enforcement of Jim Crow laws, and the economic transformations associated with World War I and World War II. Influences on Lawrence included study of works by Mexican muralists such as Diego Rivera, the sociological writing of W. E. B. Du Bois, and visual precedents in the art of Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. The series was developed amid debates in cultural institutions like The Whitney Museum of American Art and publications such as Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life that foregrounded African American life. Lawrence’s project also dialogues with migration narratives in literature by Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston and political contexts involving leaders such as A. Philip Randolph and organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Composition and Individual Panels

The sixty panels are uniform in size and executed in a simplified, angular idiom that emphasizes line, flat color, and rhythmic repetition. Each panel carries a caption in Lawrence’s hand that records a sentence or two of narrative—recalling textual practices used by Gunnar Myrdal and the social documentation of photographers like Gordon Parks and Lewis Hine. Notable panels depict scenes of departure, train travel, urban labor, housing shortages, and racial violence, referencing cities including Atlanta, New Orleans, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis. The sequence’s organization follows a loose chronological arc: origins in Southern locales such as Charleston, South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia, transit through rail hubs linked to companies like Pennsylvania Railroad, and arrival in Northern destinations such as Harlem in New York City and industrial centers like Gary, Indiana and Buffalo, New York.

Themes and Symbolism

Lawrence explores themes of displacement, aspiration, labor, racism, community, and resilience. Symbolic motifs recur across panels: trains and tracks evoke both escape and continuity with histories of transportation embodied by firms such as Pullman Company; crowd formations and domestic interiors recall civic rituals associated with churches like First Corinthian Baptist Church (Boston) and fraternal orders such as United Order of True Reformers. Color functions as semantic device—contrasting ochres and blacks to indicate danger or anonymity, and vibrant blues and reds to signal hope or movement—echoing color experiments by Stuart Davis and Henri Rousseau. The series also engages with legal and political touchstones including the ongoing effects of the Plessy v. Ferguson precedent and migration pressures exacerbated by policies like the National Industrial Recovery Act, which shaped labor markets in cities such as Detroit and Cleveland.

Creation Process and Techniques

Lawrence painted the sequence in quick succession using casein tempera on hardboard, a material choice that allowed flat fields of color and precise linear arrangements reminiscent of printmaking practices found in works by Käthe Kollwitz and Honoré Daumier. He developed a limited palette and executed the panels in numerical order, maintaining continuity in composition and narrative flow. Lawrence wrote captions concurrently, integrating textual narrative strategies similar to those practiced by visual chroniclers such as Jacob Riis and graphic storytellers like Will Eisner. The paintings’ economy of means reflects training at programs and spaces including the American Artists School, Harlem Community Art Center, and mentorship from figures such as Augusta Savage and Charles Alston.

Reception and Legacy

Upon their first museum exhibition, the panels attracted critical attention from reviewers in outlets like The New York Times, and scholars in fields connected to the series included historians such as Isabel Wilkerson and curators at institutions like The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Migration Series has influenced generations of artists—Faith Ringgold, Kehinde Wiley, Kara Walker—and informed public history projects at organizations like the Smithsonian Institution and academic programs at Howard University and Columbia University. Its dispersal—half the panels acquired by The Museum of Modern Art and half by The Phillips Collection—spurred dialogues on display, preservation, and repatriation across museums including Tate Modern and Art Institute of Chicago. The series remains central to studies of visual representation, urban history, and African American cultural production, cited in scholarship by critics such as Richard J. Powell and historians engaged with migration narratives like William Julius Wilson.

Category:Paintings by Jacob Lawrence