REILLY DAVIDSON | DATE 2/23/2019

Tapping in to Jacob Lawrence’s seminal series on the #GreatMigration for Black History Month 2019

In honor of Black History Month—which carries the highly-relevant additional hashtag of #GreatMigration this year—we are featuring MoMA’s classic study of Jacob Lawrence’s iconic Migration Series. Replete with 77 color reproductions, 25 black-and-white documentary images, a complete deconstruction of each panel, critical commentary from MoMA curator Jodi Roberts and a collection of response poems from writers such as Rita Dove and Crystal Williams, this essential paperback delves into the cultural and political context of both the Great Migration itself (beginning 1915) and America of the 1940s, when Lawrence produced the work, in line with today’s related issues around racial boundaries and institutional oppression. Panel 3 in the series, featured here, carries the 1941 caption, “In every town Negroes were leaving by the hundreds to go North and enter into Northern industry.” Though the migrants carry heavy loads of personal belongings and struggle under the weight of obvious physical and emotional burdens, they are accompanied by a flock of birds soaring alongside them, reminding the viewer of the importance, and possibility, of social change—then and now.