A Visual Tribute Lawrence Books Honor African-American Heritage

“Harriet and the Promised Land” by Jacob Lawrence (Aladdin, $5.99);

“The Great Migration: An American Story” by Jacob Lawrence (HarperCollins, $22.50)

Fortunately for art lovers, painter Jacob Lawrence is as prolific as he is acclaimed. Now Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington, Lawrence, over his lifetime, has created a body of work that is appealing on many levels.

His paintings hang in the world’s finest museums and they can be found as illustrations in children’s picture books. These books merit attention any time, but it may be especially meaningful to share them with our children during Black History Month.

Available for several years in hardback, “Harriet and the Promised Land,” is now available in a paperback edition. This book is a treatment of Harriet Tubman’s true-life adventures in the mid-19th century as she courageously led slaves out of the South and helped them escape to Canada and freedom.

Tubman’s story has inspired generations of children and in this book the narrative, presented in urgently rhythmic verse, is the perfect complement to Lawrence’s boldly stylized paintings. From the nativity scene on the first page, to the portrayals of plantation life and on to the scenes of the perilous flight, the artwork is deceptively simple.

I strongly recommend that adults join their children in reading and discussing this book, so that they can search for the subtleties together. A myriad of questions begins to pop up once one has taken the time to study each page: What did the babies in the story look like, and why? What kinds of different work did slaves perform? Why were some of the runaways barefoot? What dangers and what assistance did they encounter on their flight to freedom?

This is a powerful introduction to Harriet Tubman’s story and one that undoubtedly will pique your youngster’s further interest in this African-American heroine.

The second book I’m recommending is “The Great Migration,” an epic series of 60 paintings which depict the World War I exodus of African-Americans from the South to northern cities like Philadelphia, New York, Chicago and Detroit. These migrants sought greater employment opportunities and living conditions that had eluded them in the South as well as such intangibles as justice and dignity.

Drawing from his own family’s experience and supplementing that with extensive historical research, Lawrence spent a year painting scenes that illustrated this momentous journey taken by so many. Working with a consistently muted palette of browns, blues, greens and grays, occasionally enlivened with red and yellow. Lawrence portrays living conditions in the South, factories in the North, jails, churches, schools and homes. Again and again he returns to images of people on the move - in railway stations and on foot - inexorably pulled North by the hope of something better.

Accompanying this magnificent body of work is a text that manages to ramble in spite of its succinctness. No real harm done: it conveys some basic information.

With both books, however, the incontrovertible power lies in the lasting visual tribute Lawrence had created to African-Americans who have had the courage to pursue their dreams.