Johnson's Paintings
William H. Johnson often painted scenes of this community’s everyday life in America.
What is the African American community?
This region of the United States was the origin point for most African Americans who participated in the Great Migration
What is the South?
Johnson explored African American life and heritage through this creative medium.
What is art (or painting)?
Even in Northern cities, Black workers were often excluded from these organizations meant to protect workers’ rights.
What are labor unions?
The painting "Boys Sunday Trip" was made this these materials!
Tempera and pen and ink on paper
This 1939–1940 painting shows a couple in a stylish setting and combines African artistic elements with the fashion of the big band era.
What is Café?
The Great Migration helped African Americans move away from these discriminatory laws that enforced segregation.
What are Jim Crow laws?
He passed away in this U.S. state in 1970 after spending many years in a hospital.
What is New York?
This movement in the 1920s, centered in Harlem, helped popularize jazz, poetry, and literature, and gave a platform to African American artists and writers.
What is the Harlem Renaissance?
American photographer who “captured intimate moments of American life”
Who is Dorothea Lange?
This painting, created around 1943, depicts a family amid a disaster, highlighting social injustice and emotional trauma in Black communities.
What is Burned Out?
For many African Americans, the move North meant the possibility of doing this civic duty for the first time.
What is voting?
While living in this country, Johnson was influenced by modernist movements and began experimenting with expressionist techniques.
What is France?
In the North, African Americans were surprised to be faced with this struggle regarding jobs.
This is place where Johnson's paintings are kept!
Smithsonian art museum
In Harlem Street, Johnson captures the energy of urban African American life by showing people engaged in this type of daily environment.
What is a bustling city street scene?
The first wave of the Great Migration occurred between these two years.
What is 1915 to 1930?
William H. Johnson is especially known for his later works depicting African American life using this distinctive artistic style.
What is folk art (or a primitive/naive style)?
More than this number of people died in Northern urban riots in 1919, showing how racial violence was not limited to the South.
What is more than 250?
During the Great Migration, about this many African Americans moved from the rural South to cities in the North, Midwest, and West.
What is six million?
In Art Class, Johnson reflects his experience teaching in a center funded by this program that supports public works and the arts.
What is the New Deal?
The second wave of the Great Migration was largely driven by this global conflict (and the jobs it created).
What is World War II?
Artist William Johnson recieved this destinguishing award.
What is Harmon Foundation Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Fine Arts?
Though many African Americans moved North during the war, this group actually moved in even greater numbers.
Who are white Southerners?
In this year, William H. Johnson moved to Seattle, where he focused on the theme of “builders” and human labor.
What is 1971?