Skip to main content
Work with the NEU
‘I am part of the black community, so I am the black community speaking’
Christine Lindey pays tribute to the great Afro-American artist JACOB LAWRENCE who throughout his painting promoted the interests of his class and race
(L to R) Ironers; Wounded Man

JACOB LAWRENCE (1917- 2000) was precocious and prolific and his early critical success continued throughout his long life.

Yet, compared with his white US peers such as Jackson Pollock or Willem de Kooning, who has heard of him?

He was seven years old when his mother became a single parent and, after a few years in a foster home, he moved to Harlem with his mother and siblings where she earned her living as domestic help. The sights, sounds, dramas, joys and hardships of Harlem life would become the main subject of his paintings.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
arnolfini
Exhibition review / 3 March 2026
3 March 2026

SIMON PARSONS applauds an artist who rescues and rehumanises stories of women, the victims of violence, from a feminist perspective

(L to R) Claudia Jones on the cover of the Young Communist Weekly Review (US), October 1938, Claudia Jones and Betty Gannett (CPSU theoretician) arrested after their bail was revoked July 17, 1951 / Pics (L to R) YCL/CC, Public domain
Features / 21 February 2026
21 February 2026

On the 121st anniversary of communist Claudia Jones’s birth ROGER McKENZIE looks at political events that shaped her, and those she helped shape

WARNING FROM HISTORY: Communists Robert Thompson and Benjamin Davis leave the Federal Courthouse in New York City during the 1949 ‘Foley Square Trial’ / Pic: CM Stieglitz/World Telegram & Sun/Library of Congress/CC
New York / 6 November 2025
6 November 2025

After Zohran Mamdani’s electoral win, BHABANI SHANKAR NAYAK points to the forgotten role of US communists in New York’s radical politics

malangatana
Book Review / 30 September 2025
30 September 2025

JOHN GREEN welcomes a remarkable study of Mozambique’s most renowned contemporary artist