I am not sure when I first saw a Jacob Lawrence painting. At a certain moment in time, I became conscious of him as a painter and historian, and I have often had the feeling that other people experienced Jacob Lawrence in a similar way.

Jacob Lawrence, the famous painter of the black experience, lost his battle with cancer June 9, 2000. A resident of Seattle, he was in many respects a resident of wherever black America was to be found. Jacob Lawrence, whose work became known to a national audience in the 1940s, came to be openly embraced by the U.S. trade union movement only in the past 20 years. This is probably a reflection of the changing mood within the union movement and its greater sensitivity to experiences within the working class hitherto ignored.

Lawrence was most widely known for his series on the Great Migration, the trek of millions of African Americans from the South to the Northeast, Midwest and, ultimately, the West Coast. This mass movement of people had been largely ignored or marginalized by artists and historians alike. Lawrence captured this experience in his various paintings and told a visual story of this exodus.

The Great Migration, which commenced when World War I cut short the flow of European labor to the United States, changed black America in its fundamentals. Up through World War I, the African American workforce largely had been limited to agriculture, domestic service and, to varying degrees, the railroads and some crafts. With the Great Migration, millions of African Americans entered the industrial working class, a fact that changed the dynamics of cities and changed the complexion—literally and figuratively—of the U.S. working class. This migration served to fuel a large part of the base for the Garvey movement (the so-called Back to Africa movement, led by Marcus Garvey, which was the largest mass movement of African Americans). It also served to lay the foundations for the pivotal role that black workers were to play in the formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in the 1930s and 1940s.

Lawrence’s paintings looked at this experience not from the standpoint of the disinterested observer, but as a son portraying his family. His paintings exhibited a richness and flavor that made them easily recognizable and equally easy with which to identify.

The recognition of Lawrence’s work by increasing sections of the union movement is an important development. This recognition helps our movement understand that the U.S. working class is far from monolithic, but is a composite of various strands and patterns tied together in an unusual quilt. For this alone, our movement owes him a great debt.

Although he has left us, we should be thrilled that he breathed, worked, laughed and struggled among us.

—Bill Fletcher Jr.
George Meany Center for Labor Studies
Vice President for International Trade Union Development Programs