Jacob Lawrence: The Fredrick Douglass and Harriett Tubman Series of 1938-1940 in Hampton on Jan 27, 2012 12:00 AM

Ellen Harkins Wheat, Art Historian, describes Jacob Lawrence's Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman series from the late 1930s present as the dramatic biographies of two American abolitionists who lived around the time of the Civil War. Taken together, the paintings have an extraordinary conceptual unity and visual eloquence. Although completed very early in Lawrence's career, these two series embody some of the artist's strongest work. The sixty-three paintings were part of a gift to Hampton University in 1968 from the private foundation, The Harmon Foundation, an organization that supported African American art.