COLLECTING AFRICAN AMERICAN ART: FROM THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE TO THE OBAMA ERA

 CONTRIBUTED BY: PATRICIA BANKS

In the following article sociologist and African American Studies professor Patricia A. Banks describes the rise of private art collectors and collections among African Americans. Her article also shows the growing acceptance of African American art and artists in major museums and galleries across the nation.

On October 16, 1943 Henry Ossawa Tanner’s painting Flight into Egypt (see illustration) was hanging in the entrance hall of a home located at 127 Randolph Place in Washington, D.C. The occasion was the opening of the Barnett-Aden Gallery which was founded by James Herring, an artist and art professor at Howard University along with Alonzo Aden, curator of the University’s Gallery of Art. Works such as Jacob Lawrence’s watercolor Trees, Aaron Douglas’s painting Alta Knitting, and Lois Mailou Jones’s painting Still Life with Green Apples, were also displayed in the inaugural exhibition. During the next two decades Aden and Herring held gallery shows in Aden’s Washington home and purchased works from each exhibition for the Barnett-Aden Collection. Herring and Aden were part of a long tradition of African Americans who individually, and in partnership with black and non-black family members, collected work by African American artists. They were also among a distinct group of collectors who acquired work by African American artists and shared it with the public. These publicly oriented collectors presented their chosen treasures to the community by opening their homes, loaning works for exhibitions, and making donations to museums. In doing so they played an important role in shaping the value of African American art.

While many observers believe that the value of art is determined by its intrinsic properties, in reality what separates great art from less valued art is partly influenced by societal arrangements. Rare and unusual talent is not enough to vault an artist from obscurity to the spotlight. For art to be recognized as worthy it must have champions, such as collectors, who nudge it forward to be granted entrance into the canon. For several decades, the public patronage of African American collectors has played a critical role in the valorization of art by African American artists. Their commitment to these artists took on added significance because race has often made the path to consecration especially challenging for artists of African descent.

Collectors such as Arturo Alfonso Schomburg (aka Arthur Schomburg) helped to sustain and memorialize visual art from the Harlem Renaissance. During this period of cultural flowering and emergent racial consciousness in the 1920s, Schomburg amassed a large collection of artifacts and art. Like other collectors of this and future eras, Schomburg was determined to excavate and preserve the historical and cultural contributions of African Americans. Concerned about the financial prospects of black artists, Schomburg purchased prints by artists such as Albert Alexander Smith and William Ernest Braxton. Combining his passion for history with his interest in art, he commissioned Braxton to create etchings of historical figures like Frederick Douglass. Schomburg’s private collection became public patrimony in 1926 when the Carnegie Foundation agreed to purchase the collection for the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library. The collection was housed in the Harlem library’s Division of Negro Literature, History, and Prints. The Division of Negro Literature, History, and Prints would in 1940 be renamed the Schomburg Collection of Negro History and Literature in honor of this early collector.  In subsequent decades the library was given its current name of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.  Other collectors such as poet Countee Cullen also helped to sustain the visual production of the Harlem Renaissance. A central literary figure in this cultural movement himself, Cullen collected the work of his friends such as Augusta Savage, Palmer Hayden, and Hale Woodruff.

Through the 1940s and 1950s, African American collectors continued to support African American artists. While the Federal Arts Project of the Works Project Administration (WPA) was an important source of government patronage for African American artists during its run from 1935 to 1946, opportunities for African American artists continued to be restricted by racial barriers. Indeed, it was racial segregation in 1940s Washington, D.C. that partly led Aden and Herring to establish the Barnett-Aden Gallery. They hoped to redress racial segregation in the city’s art world by showing the work of African American artists alongside white artists and artists from other racial and ethnic groups.

In the 1960s and 1970s the political forces that were transforming all other sectors of American life also rocked the art world.  The African American museum movement was in its infancy and institutions such as the Studio Museum in Harlem, founded in 1968, began to appear in major cities across the United States. Protesters also picketed outside major museums like the Whitney Museum of American Art to publicly contest the lack of diversity in exhibitions and acquisitions. Black artists in groups such as Spiral created work that responded to shifts in the sociopolitical order. Detroit, Michigan gallerist George N’Namdi, who started his personal collection in the 1960s, describes how the political spirit of the day informed his collecting ethos: “One of the reasons I started collecting was that the rebellion of the 60s induced in me this strong desire to preserve the culture of African-American people and I began to wonder specifically how I could preserve the culture through supporting and preserving visual arts, theater, dance and so on.”

Paul Jones of Atlanta, Georgia first started acquiring art in 1967. He made a commitment to focus on African American artists after noticing that they were rarely represented by galleries and their work had scant representation in museum exhibitions and collections. Among Jones’s first acquisitions were works that he selected from the Atlanta University Annual Exhibition of Paintings, Sculpture and Prints by Negro Artists. The Atlanta Annuals, which ended soon after Jones started collecting, was one of the few juried art shows for African American artists during the course of its run from 1942 to 1970. In the 1970s The Barnett-Aden Collection, which was then under the care of Adolphus Ealey, was shown at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. The Collection was also exhibited at two institutions that were part of the first wave of the black museum movement—the Anacostia Neighborhood Museum in Washington, D.C. and the Afro-American Historical and Cultural Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

By the 1980s and 1990s multicultural values, though still contested, infused all sectors of the art world. Museums presented exhibitions that highlighted racial and ethnic minority themes. Acquisitions at non-ethnically specific museums also became more diverse as support groups like the African American Art Alliance at the Milwaukee Art Museum in Wisconsin and the African American Art Advisory Association at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston were established. African American collectors both influenced and were influenced by this newfound level of institutional diversity.  In 1986/1987, Hidden Heritage: Afro-American Art, 1800-1950 showed at the San Antonio Museum of Art in Texas. After seeing the show, Harriet and Harmon Kelley were inspired to begin collecting African American art in their home city of San Antonio. Almost a decade later their collection was presented in a touring exhibition, The Harmon and Harriet Kelley Collection of African American Art, that showed at the San Antonio Museum of Art in 1994. In the 1990s the acquisitions of other major collectors of African American art also toured the United States. The collection of David Driskell, an artist, curator, and art historian who was then a professor at the University of Maryland, was presented in the exhibition Narratives of African American Art and Identity: The David C. Driskell Collection. The exhibition showed at museums such as the University of Maryland Art Gallery and the Colby College Museum of Art in Maine.

The increasingly growing field of African American museums was also bolstered through private collections in the 1980s and 1990s. As part of the growing yet still stalled effort to establish a national African American museum in Washington, D.C. in the 1990s, the Smithsonian Institution renewed efforts to exhibit African American culture and history in existing buildings. In 1995, an exhibition of the Kelley’s collection—The Harmon and Harriet Kelley Collection of African American Art—was shown as part of the National African American Museum Project in the Arts and Industries Building. African American museums also acquired major private collections of African American art. In 1986 the Hampton University Museum purchased the Countee Cullen Art Collection. At that time the collection not only included works selected by Countee Cullen before his death but also those by his wife, Ida Cullen Cooper, who further developed the collection.

In the late 1990s John and Vivian Hewitt sold their collection of African American art to NationsBank (which in 1998 merged with Bank of America). The bank pledged the collection to the Afro-American Cultural Center (now the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture) in Charlotte, North Carolina. In the years prior to the cultural center’s re-opening the Hewitt collection toured nationally. The Barnett-Aden collection was also the leading collection for a newly founded African American museum. In 1989 the Florida Education Fund purchased the collection for the Museum of African-American Art in Tampa, Florida. After the museum closed, Washington D.C. entrepreneur Robert L. Johnson, co-founder of Black Entertainment Television (BET), bought the collection in 1998.

Significant public patronage by collectors of African American art continued into the 21st century. For over a decade the African American art and artifacts collection of Bernard and Shirley Kinsey of Los Angeles, California has toured nationally. The Pamela J. Joyner and Alfred J. Giuffrida Collection in San Francisco will embark on a national tour in Fall 2017. This collection is distinguished by its focus on abstract work by artists from the African Diaspora such as Norman Lewis, Alma Thomas, and Mark Bradford.

Major private collections of African American art have also been gifted to museums by African Americans in the first decades of the 21st century. The University of Alabama and the University Museums at the University of Delaware acquired work from Paul Jones’s collection; Walter O. Evans of Detroit bequeathed works from his collection of African American art to the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD); and Larry and Brenda Thompson of Atlanta gave works from their collection to the Georgia Museum of Art. The donations are part of broader efforts to institutionalize African American art at these institutions. The Paul Jones Initiative, which supports teaching and research about African American art, was launched at the University of Delaware. SCAD opened The Walter O. Evans Center for African-American Studies and the Thompsons funded an endowed curatorial position focused on art from the African Diaspora at the Georgia Museum of Art. In 2001, The David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora opened at the University of Maryland. The Center houses The David C. Driskell Archive of African American Art.

On September 24, 2016 efforts to establish a national African American museum were realized when President Barack Obama presided over the grand opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) in Washington, D.C. A year earlier, Robert L. Johnson, a member of the museum’s council, donated works from the Barnett-Aden Collection to the museum. Among the works finding a new home at NMAAHC was Tanner’s Flight into Egyptwhich was hanging in the entrance hall when the Barnett-Aden gallery opened almost a quarter-century prior.

CALIFORNIA THE HISTORY OF ALLENSWORTH (1908- )

CONTRIBUTED BY: ROBERT MIKELL

In the article below retired California State University, Fresno historian Robert Mikell explores the history of the only all-black town created in the Golden State.  He traces that history including the role of its principal founder, Colonel Allen Allensworth, from 1908.

Allensworth, the first town in California established exclusively by African Americans, was founded in 1908 by a group of men led by Colonel Allen Allensworth. Born a slave in Louisville, Kentucky in 1842, Allensworth became the highest ranking black officer in the U.S. Army when he retired in 1906.

As a boy, Allensworth was punished for learning to read and write which was unlawful for enslaved people in Kentucky and across the South.  During the Civil War, he escaped and sought refuge behind the Union line, where he worked as a civilian nurse in the Army Hospital Corps.

From 1863 to 1865, Allensworth served in the U.S. Navy and afterwards became an ordained Baptist minister. In 1871, Allensworth met Josephine Leavell, a school teacher, organist and pianist. They were married on September 20, 1877. Josephine Allensworth worked diligently with her husband to promote his educational and religious works. The couple had two daughters, Nellie and Eva.

In 1882, Allensworth discovered that of the four black Army regiments (the Buffalo Soldiers), there were no black chaplains.  He immediately sought that appointment.  On April 1, 1886, President Grover Cleveland appointed Rev. Allensworth as chaplain of the 24th Infantry at the rank of Captain, with the responsibility for the spiritual health and educational well-being of black soldiers in the regiment. At the time of his appointment he was only the second African American, after Henry Plummer, named to serve as a U.S. Army Chaplain. Allensworth retired as a lieutenant-colonel on April 7, 1906, having achieved the highest rank of an African American in the U.S. Armed Forces.

After his retirement, Allensworth traveled widely throughout the United States lecturing on the need for self-help programs which would enable African Americans to become more self-sufficient. In 1904, the Allensworth family decided to settle in Los Angeles.  One of Allensworth’ s goals was to identify a town-site in the state of California where African Americans might start a new life together outside the restrictions of the Jim Crow South.

In 1906, Allensworth met Professor William Payne who was born in West Virginia in 1885, but was raised in Ohio where his father worked in the coal mines. After completing high school, Payne attended Dennison University In Granville, Ohio, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in 1902.  Just before his graduation he met and married Zenobia B. Jones, who also attended Dennison University.

Payne served as Assistant Principal at Rentsville School in Rentsville, Ohio for seven years and later as a Professor at the West Virginia Colored Institute for two years. In 1906, Professor Payne and his wife moved to Pasadena, California where he hoped to be a “teacher of teacher.” Payne was not eligible to teach in Los Angeles because he lacked prior teaching experience in California. While in southern California, however, Payne met retired colonel Allensworth and the two men decided to pool their talents to create what was then termed a “Race Colony” for the improvement of African Americans across the nation.

Joining Allensworth and Payne to establish their race colony were three other men, Dr. William H. Peck, an AME minister in Los Angeles, J.W. Palmer, a Nevada miner; and Harry Mitchell, a Los Angeles Realtor. Allensworth selected a location in southwest Tulare County which had virgin soil and plentiful water. Together they created the California Colonization and Home Promoting Association and soon thereafter filed a township site legal plan on August 3, 1908 to form the town of Solito, which had a depot connection Los Angeles and San Francisco on the Santa Fe Railroad.  The town’s name was changed that same year to Allensworth, to honor its most prominent founder.

Town founders established the Allensworth Progressive Association as the official form of government to conduct its affairs. Townspeople elected officers and held town meetings to encourage the civic participation of all of its residents.  In 1912 Allensworth became a voting precinct and had its own school district encompassing thirty-three square miles. At its peak in the early 1920s, Allensworth had as many as 300 residents.

Once the school district was established in in 1912, the Allensworth School, costing $5,000, was built with funds donated by local citizens. It was the largest capital investment made by the community, epitomizing the importance of education for the town. The one-room schoolhouse included elementary, intermediate, and high school students. The school was governed by an elected body of three board members. The original trustees were Josephine Allensworth (who also served as the first teacher), Oscar Overr and William H. Hall.

Allensworth School also served as the town center for events and meetings.  The Allensworth Progressive Association, the Women’s Improvement League, the Debating Society, the Theatre Club, and the Glee Club all met in the building. The most memorable of the year, however, was commencement which took place in June at the end of each school year.

Allensworth was sanctioned a judicial district by the State of California in 1914, and soon afterwards Oscar Overr and William H. Dotson became the first African Americans to hold elected offices as Justice of the Peace and Constable, respectively. A branch of the Tulare County Library and a post office were established with Mary Jane Bickers serving as the first postmistress. On July 4, 1913, an official reading room was established in a separate library building.

Agriculture dominated the economy of Allensworth as several farmers moved in or near the township.  The town also had several businesses including a barber shop, bakery, livery stable, drug store, machine shop, and the Allensworth Hotel.

In keeping with Colonel Allensworth’ s idea of self-help and self-reliance programs, city leaders in 1914 proposed to establish a vocational education school based on the Tuskegee Institute model and the ideas of its founder, Booker T. Washington. Although it received support for a state funding appropriation from Fresno and Tulare County representatives in the California State Senate and Assembly, the proposal was defeated by the entire state legislature.

The town suffered a far greater loss later in 1914 when Colonel Allensworth died after being struck by a motorcycle while visiting Los Angeles. The town however continued to grow due to the leadership of Oscar Overr, the Justice of the Peace, and Professor William A. Payne, the school principal. New residents continued to arrive and the town continued to prosper until the early 1920s.

Allensworth’ s prosperity peaked in 1925 and after that date the lack of irrigation water begin to plague the town. Irrigation water was never delivered in sufficient supply as promised by the Pacific Farming Company, the land development firm that handled the original purchase.  As a result, town leaders were engrossed in lengthy and expensive legal battles with Company, expending scarce financial resources on a battle they would not win.

By 1930 the town’s population according to the U.S. Census, had dropped below 300 people, as residents and nearby farmers began to leave in search of other employment.  The deficient water supply would not sustain the agricultural and ranching enterprises at that time. The residents who remained behind attempted to keep the community alive by designing new methods of farming, creating other businesses, and drilling new water wells.

Yet through the early 1960s, the town continued to exist even if it did not thrive.  Then in 1966 the State of California discovered high levels of arsenic in the drinking water. Most residents left but 34 families remained, leaving Allensworth all but a ghost town.

One decade later, however, on May 14, 1976, the California State Parks and Recreation Commission approved plans to develop the Colonel Allensworth Historic Park on the central portion of the town. The process started in 1969 when Cornelius Ed Pope, an African American man draftsman with the Department of Parks and Recreation began a campaign to persuade State Park officials and the general public that the town-site had particular historic and cultural significance for California’s African American population. Pope related how as a boy he had lived in the house once owned and occupied by the Allensworth family. As a part of the restoration project, several buildings have been restructured to the likeness of the historic period of 1908-1918.

FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM, FIGHTING AGAINST THE BOMB: AFRICAN AMERICANS AND THE CAMPAIGN FOR A NUCLEAR-FREE WORLD, 1945-

CONTRIBUTED BY: VINCENT INTONDI

In the description of his 2015 book, African Americans Against the Bomb: Nuclear Weapons, Colonialism, and the Black Freedom Movement, historian Vincent Intondi describes the long but little-known history of black Americans in the Nuclear Disarmament Movement. His essay, which appears below, tells the compelling story of courageous black activists who connected the fight for racial equality with the campaign for the elimination of nuclear weapons.

In 2005, I made my first trip to Hiroshima and Nagasaki with American University’s Nuclear Studies Institute. Up that point, most of my career as an academic focused on African American history. Nuclear disarmament was simply not on my radar. However, that changed when I set foot in Japan. After meeting with atomic bomb survivors (hibakusha) and learning about what the United States had done to the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I knew I could not return home and ignore how I felt about nuclear weapons. I began thinking about how I could combine black history with nuclear disarmament. To begin, I asked one question: What did African Americans think about the U.S. dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Finding out the answer to this question began the journey that ultimately became the book African Americans Against the Bomb: Nuclear Weapons, Colonialism, and the Black Freedom Movement.

When I started this project, many expressed doubt that I would find much on the subject. Colleagues argued that African Americans were too focused on trying to gain their own freedom and equality and simply did not have the time to worry about nuclear weapons. However, a little-known story about Malcolm X was the first piece of evidence I found that proved they were wrong.

On June 6, 1964, three Japanese writers and a group of hibakusha arrived in Harlem as part of the Hiroshima/ Nagasaki World Peace Study Mission. Speaking out against nuclear proliferation, the group traveled to at least five other countries before reaching the United States. However, traveling to Harlem was the highpoint for the hibakusha, who were thrilled at the prospect of meeting Malcolm X.

Yuri Kochiyama, a Japanese-American activist, organized a reception for the hibakusha at her home in the Harlem Manhattanville Housing Projects. In an effort to make the hibakusha’s wish come true, Kochiyama contacted Malcolm’s office months before their arrival, but received no response and remained doubtful that Malcolm would attend the reception. Shortly after the reception began, there was a knock at the door. Kochiyama opened the door, and there stood Malcolm X. Malcolm told the hibakusha, “You have been scarred by the atom bomb.  You just saw that we have also been scarred. The bomb that hit us was racism.” He went on to discuss his years in prison, education, and Asian history. Turning to Vietnam, Malcolm said, “If America sends troops to Vietnam, you progressives should protest. America is already sending American advisers.” He argued that “the struggle of Vietnam is the struggle of the whole Third World: the struggle against colonialism, neo-colonialism, and imperialism.” Like so many before him, Malcolm X understood how these issues were related. He knew the issue was not civil rights, but universal human rights.

African Americans Against the Bomb examines those black activists who fought for nuclear disarmament, often connecting the nuclear issue with the fight for racial equality and liberation movements around the world.  Beginning with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, my book explores the shifting response of black leaders and organizations, and of the broader African American public to the evolving nuclear arms race and general nuclear threat throughout the postwar period.

As word got out that I was writing the book, many who were in the fields of nuclear studies and African American history asked why? I always looked at Black History as a giant brick wall that we are still trying to fill in. There remains much to discover, research, and write to complete the narrative. I viewed my work as one missing brick in this wall. For too long scholars have failed to appreciate the black freedom struggle’s international dimensions, viewing slavery, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights Movement as national phenomena. Because of the understandable focus on African Americans’ unique oppression, historians have often entirely ignored them when addressing other important issues, such as the nuclear threat.

This has begun to change. The past two decades have seen a rise in new scholarship that challenges the accepted narrative of the black freedom movement. Historians have begun to rediscover the forgotten history of black Popular Front groups, CP and labor organizers, as well as anticolonial and peace activists. A number of these studies suggest that the black freedom movement’s origins date back to the 1930s and 1940s, were much more global in scope, and were influenced by those who consistently combined their plight with those seeking peace and an end to colonialism. While scholars have provided a valuable service by shedding light on these connections, many fail to appreciate the role of nuclear weapons. From 1945, the bomb is what, in many cases, connected various groups and individuals inside the black community. Nuclear disarmament was a main part of the platform at the Bandung Conference in 1955.  In the middle of the Civil Rights Movement, Bayard Rustin led a team in Ghana to stop the French from testing a nuclear weapon in the Sahara. A year later, Kwame Nkrumah, joined by African American activists, held the “World Without the Bomb” conference. Dr. King began connecting the nuclear issue to black freedom as early as 1957.  Therefore the role of the bomb is essential when examining the length and scope of the black freedom movement.

Setting out to research this topic, I found myself spending countless weeks in the basement of Swarthmore College’s library with its Peace Collection. I began to look for answers to a number of questions: Did African Americans respond differently to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki than did other Americans and, if so, to what extent was this related to the fact that the first victims were non-white? Did African Americans’ discrimination-induced estrangement from American life allow for a more critical attitude toward the Cold War in general and U.S. nuclear policy in particular? Did the left-oriented social and political activism inspired by black Popular Front groups translate into a broader critique of U.S. militarism and foreign policy, both of which were undergirded by the American nuclear arsenal? As I researched the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the work of Bayard Rustin, I would be pushed towards the War Resisters League then to Women Strike for Peace and so on.

A challenge of this project was making clear that nothing was monolithic. I was examining leaders: both men and women, ordinary individuals, members of various organizations and religions. Therefore, while African Americans immediately condemned the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not all of these activists protested for the same reason. For some, race was the issue. Many in the black community agreed with Langston Hughes’s assertion that racism was at the heart of Truman’s decision to use nuclear weapons in Japan. Why did the U.S. not drop atomic bombs on Italy or Germany?  Hughes asked. Black activists’ fear that race played a role in the decision to use atomic bombs only increased when the U.S. threatened to use nuclear weapons in Korea in the 1950s and Vietnam a decade later. For others, mostly black leftists ensconced in Popular Front groups, the nuclear issue was connected to colonialism. From the U.S. obtaining uranium from the Belgian-controlled Congo to the French testing a nuclear weapon in the Sahara, activists saw a direct link between those who possessed nuclear weapons and those who colonized the non-white world. However, for many ordinary black citizens, fighting for nuclear disarmament simply translated into a more peaceful world. The bomb, then, became the link that connected all of these issues and brought together musicians, artists, peace activists, leftists, clergy, journalists, and ordinary citizens inside the black community.

As I wrote the book I was always conscious of readership. I sought to thread the needle between the academy and mainstream readers. I thought of a student who would read this book because of their love for African American history only to learn about the intersection of race and nuclear weapons. Conversely, I hoped someone interested in the peace movement or nuclear disarmament would learn about those who are rarely discussed outside of Black History and see that they too were fighting on this front. In a broader sense, all too often we are taught that humanities and science are mutually exclusive, which could not be further from the truth.

African Americans Against the Bomb explains how the fight for freedom, coupled with the desire to avoid nuclear annihilation, blended together and united human beings. Connecting racial equality to nuclear disarmament and colonialism broadened the black freedom struggle, specifically the modern Civil Rights Movement. The black freedom struggle cannot be properly understood without exploring antinuclear campaigns. African Americans’ views of nuclear weapons directly influenced their response to other international issues. My hope in writing this book was that I not only added to the rich body of scholarship dedicated to African Americans and global affairs, but altered the way in which we discuss these subjects.