A Favorite Painting 16

Aaron Douglas, Slavery Through Reconstruction Aspects of Negro Life, 1934

During the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, for the first time, creative work done by African-Americans was given a degree of attention and respect as a legitimate expression of American culture. Up until that point, black artists had little opportunity to display their work before the broader public. But following the first world war, in which African-American servicemen and workers proved for the umpteenth time their claim on full citizenship, there was a flowering of both output and patronage that finally paid tribute to the wealth of talent within the black community in everything from poetry to sculpture. Not too surprisingly, much of the work that surfaced in this period commented back on the earlier generations, and Aaron Douglas' painting is a good representative of that tendency. In it, we see the prevailing historical perspective that too often suggested that black folk were incidental to their own experience. In the foreground, the white cotton bolls signify its prominence in defining southern culture, even as the people who worked the crop and guaranteed its economic primacy are cast in shadows. Still, even from that marginal and indistinct place, their actions take on the appearance of accomplishment and even celebration. This painting strikes me as an assertion that despite mainstream ignorance, blacks were ready to claim their rightful place in the nation's historic social hierarchy, a place defined not by those who sought to enslave or dismiss them, but rather by their own contributions to the success and prosperity of the nation. In this way, it's a great American story, representing the promise of our core national values and how they resonate across any arbitrary racial or class divisions.