The Great Migration:
Harlem Artists Guild, and the 306 Group
TASHEKA ARCENEAUX-SUTTON
The harsh impact of Jim Crow laws in the South of the United States triggered a mass exodus of Southern Black Americans to northern cities seeking equality and economic opportunity. Cities like Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia were well known magnets for what is now known as The Great Migration. Less populous cities like Baltimore, St. Louis, and Kansas City also built up thriving Black neighborhoods, though the journey north was not an easy road.
This talk will focus on designers and artists from New York and Chicago, and highlight the work of Charles Alston, Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, Gwendolyn Knight, Louise E Jefferson, that form a multi-generational network of Black Excellence.
RESOURCES
BOOKS
- Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series - Paperback
- The Decorative Arts of Africa by Louise E Jefferson
- Dark Space: Architecture, Representation, Black Identity by Mario Gooden
- The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein
- When Ivory Towers Were Black: A Story about Race in America's Cities and Universities by Sharon Egretta Sutton
- Design As Learning: A School of Schools Reader
ARTICLES & LINKS
- Édouard Glissant writing on Relation Identity
- USS Doris Miller
- Charles Seifert, Collector of Black History born
- THE POSITION OF THE UNTHOUGHT by Saidiya V. Hartman and Frank B. Wilderson, III
- "When Ivory Towers Were Black: Lessons in Re-imagining Universities and Communities" Lecture: Sharon Egretta Sutton,
- Epic of Gilgamesh
- The Rediscovery of Florence Price: How an African-American composer’s works were saved from destruction.
- W.E.B Dubois visualization on migration
- How Decades of Racist Housing Policy Left Neighborhoods Sweltering
- White Flight in Networked Publics? How Race and Class Shaped American Teen Engagement with MySpace and Facebook by danah boyd
- Segregated By Design, film by Mark Lopez et al.
- There Goes the Neighborhood Series
- Jack Travis and the Search for a Black Architecture by Blaine Brownell
- Undesign the Redline
ARCHITECTURE & SOCIAL DESIGN
COLLECTIVES & INSTITUTIONS
COLLECTIONS & ARCHIVES
TALKS, INTERVIEWS, PODCASTS
- Ethels Club
- Blacks Who Design
- Black Artist Collective
- The Blackivists
- Hiphop Archive & Research Institute at Harvard
- Black Contemorary Art
- Where Are The Black Designers
- Nure Collective
- Stony Island Arts Bank in Chicago founded by Theaster Gates
- Rebuild Foundation runs Stony Island Arts Bank
- Colloqate
- Black Artists and Designers Guild
- Arch Office Hours
- African American Graphic Design
- Hue Design Summit
- black beyond.xyz
- Afrotectopia
- Harvard GSD’s Black in Design annual conference
- Designers Negres no Brasil DNBR
- Preta Lab
- Pulp Artists
COLLECTIONS & ARCHIVES
- PITTSBURGH RECOLLECTIONS, 1984 – ROMARE BEARDEN
- Charles L Blockson Afro-American Collection
- Maryland Institute Black Archives
- The Cornell Hip Hop Collection
TALKS, INTERVIEWS, PODCASTS