Jacob Lawrence was a widely acclaimed African-American artist of the 20th century. He was born in
Atlantic City, New Jersey, on September 7, 1917. At the age of 2, Lawrence and his siblings were sent to
foster care by their mother while she went to work in New York City, then by the age of 13, Lawrence
went to live in Harlem with his mother. Attending an after-school program, Lawrence was introduced to
art while attending the Utopia Children’s Center. By the age of 16 he dropped out of school to begin
taking classes at the Harlem Art Workshop. In 1937, Lawrence won a scholarship to the American Artists
School in New York. When he graduated in 1939, he received funding from the Works Progress
Administration Federal Art Project. He completed his best-known series, Migration of the Negro or
simply The Migration Series, in 1941. The series was exhibited at Edith Halpert’s Downtown Gallery in
1942 which made Lawrence the first African-American to join the gallery. At the start of World War II,
Lawrence was drafted into the United States Coast Guard. He was assigned to be the Coast Guard artist
aboard a troopship, documenting the experience of war around the world. He eventually produced 48
painting but all were lost. When his tour of duty ended, Lawrence received a Guggenheim Fellowship
and painted his War Series. In 1971, Lawrence worked as a professor at University of Washington in
Seattle, where he taught until 1986. He spent the rest of his life painting commissions, producing
limited-edition prints to help fund nonprofits like the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Children’s Defense
Fund and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. He also painted murals for the Harold
Washington Center in Chicago, the University of Washington and Howard University, as well as a 72-foot
mural for New York City’s Times Square subway station. Lawrence died on June 9, 2000.