Born in New Jersey and raised from the age of 13 in Harlem, this Northeast native had southern roots. He was the child of migrants who moved, together with millions of other African Americans, from the rural South to urban, industrialized Midwestern and Northeastern cities during the mass relocation known as the Great Migration(1915–1950s). Lawrence maintained that he was “a child of the Great Migration,” which shaped the course of his own and his fellow African Americans’ lives.
If the Great Migration provided him with geographical advantages, it was Harlem, then in the midst of the cultural and intellectual outpouring known as the Harlem Renaissance (1920s–1930s), that inspired him to make art. As he once described his beloved neighborhood: “All these people on the street, various colors, so much pattern, so much movement, so much color, so much vitality, so much energy.”
The textures of Harlem, and the narrative dynamism of the songs, Bible stories, sermons, and tales of his neighbors’ journeys north that he witnessed in church, shaped Lawrence’s approach to art making. He realized that through painting he, too, could give voice to the experiences of his people.
In the early 1930s, he enrolled in his first art classes. By the time he was 23, he had completed five narrative series on major people and events in Black history, including Toussaint L’Ouverture, the leader of the Haitian Revolution, abolitionist Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Tubman, the former slave and abolitionist who smuggled others to freedom on the Underground Railroad. He used descriptive titles, vibrant patterns and blocks of color, and simplified, angular figures and forms to distill epic narratives into powerfully direct images. This style, applied to topics ranging from neighborhood life to the experiences of Black industrial laborers to the Civil Rights Movement, characterized his work throughout his career.