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​​​​​​​Barriers to Black Artists

Bar and Grill; Smithsonian Art Museum

"It was a tough time to be a black person . . . what a tough time it was to be a black artist."

                                                                                                                                              ~ Kinshasha Conwill, The Great Migration Series

Socioeconomic Barriers

  • 90% of African Americans had little schooling, focused on obtaining necessities

  • Recreational luxuries like art were not an option, especially as a vocation​​​​​​​

  • Restrictive laws and lack of socioeconomic independence barred blacks from intellectual pursuits including the arts

"And if you don't have the intestinal fortitude, in other words, if you don't have the guts to hang in there and meet a lot of - well, I must say a lot of disappointments, a lot of reverses - and I've met them - and then being a poor artist, too, not being colored but being a poor artists, it makes it doubly, doubly hard."
                                            ~ Archibald Motley Jr., Smithsonian Archives of American of Art

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Cotton Pickers; Art of Black America

“. . . among these people there was no leisure class."                                                                           ~ W.E.B DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk

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The Stereotypical Character Jim Crow; The New York Times

Stereotypes

  • African Americans - seen as too unsophisticated to partake in the fine arts 

  • Most art schools didn’t accept blacks

  • Often barred from art competitions and galleries 

  • Black artists - unseen minority of the fine arts community and black society.

". . . it couldn't approach the creative results of whites, but as a novelty, well, it didn't need standards. The very fact that these blacks had the temerity to produce so-called Art, and not its quality, made the whole fantastic movement so alluring. The idea of being similar to the applause given a dancing dog. There is no question of comparing the dog to humans; it needn't do it well . . . merely to dance at all is quite enough . . ."
                                                                                                                            ~ Levi C. Hubert, The Whites Invade Harlem

 Harlem  The Renaissance Blossoms