Editing Jacob Lawrence (section)

==== ''The Migration Series'' ====
Lawrence completed the 60-panel set of narrative paintings entitled ''The Migration of the Negro'' or ''And the Migrants Kept Coming'',<ref name=umich>{{cite web | url = https://exchange.umma.umich.edu/resources/24681 | title = Jacob Lawrence, ''Hiroshima Series'' | website = [[University of Michigan Museum of Art]] | access-date = 30 October 2020 }}</ref> now called the ''[[Migration Series]]'', in 1940–41. The series portrayed the [[Great Migration (African American)|Great Migration]], when hundreds of thousands of African Americans moved from the rural South to the urban North after [[World War I]]. Because he was working in [[tempera]], which dries rapidly, he planned all the paintings in advance and then applied a single color wherever he was using it across all the scenes to maintain tonal consistency. Only then did he proceed to the next color. The series was exhibited at the [[Edith Halpert|Downtown Gallery]] in Greenwich Village, which made him the first African-American artist represented by a New York gallery. This brought him national recognition.<ref>{{cite web | url = http://www.phillipscollection.org/collection/migration-series |title= Migration Series | access-date = August 18, 2020 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20140613045134/http://www.phillipscollection.org/collection/migration-series |archive-date=June 13, 2014 |publisher = Phillips Collection}}</ref> Selections from this series were featured in a 1941 issue of ''[[Fortune (magazine)|Fortune]]''. The entire series was purchased jointly and divided by the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., which holds the odd-numbered paintings, and New York's Museum of Modern Art, which holds the even-numbered.

Another biographical series of twenty-two panels devoted to the [[Abolitionism in the United States|abolitionist]] [[John Brown (abolitionist)|John Brown]] followed in 1941–42. When these pairings became too fragile to display, Lawrence, working on commission, recreated the paintings as a portfolio of silkscreen prints in 1977.<ref name=smith>{{cite web | access-date = August 26, 2020 | url = https://americanart.si.edu/education/oh-freedom/jacob-lawrence-john-brown | website = Smithsonian American Art Museum | title = Oh Freedom! Jacob Lawrence | archive-date = September 28, 2020 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20200928093349/https://americanart.si.edu/education/oh-freedom/jacob-lawrence-john-brown | url-status = live }}</ref>

In 1943, [[Howard Devree]], wrote for ''[[The New York Times]]'', that Lawrence in his next series of thirty images had "even more successfully concentrated his attention on the many-sided life of his people in Harlem". He called the set "an amazing social document" and wrote:<ref>{{cite news | work = The New York Times | url = https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1943/05/16/issue.html | date = May 16, 1943 | access-date = August 25, 2020 | title = From a Reviewer's Notebook | first = Howard | last = Devree | archive-date = September 28, 2020 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20200928093350/https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1943/05/16/issue.html | url-status = live }}</ref>
{{Blockquote|Lawrence's color is fittingly vivid for his interpretations. A strong semi-abstract approach aids him in arriving at his basic or archetypal statements. Confronting this work one feels as if vouchsafed an extraordinary elemental experience. Lawrence has grown in his use of rhythm as well as in sheer design and fluency.}}