The crops were left to dry and rot. There was no one to tend them. | Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series

During World War I there was a great migration north by southern African Americans.
The war had caused a labor shortage in northern industry. Citizens of foreign countries were returning to their native lands.
From every southern town migrants left by the hundreds to travel north.
All other sources of labor having been exhausted, the migrants were the last resource.
Migrants were advanced passage on the railroads, paid for by northern industry. Northern industry was to be repaid by the migrants out of their future wages.
The trains were crowded with migrants.
The migrant, whose life had been rural and nurtured by the earth, was now moving to urban life dependent on industrial machinery.
Some left because of promises of work in the North. Others left because their farms had been devastated by floods.
They left because the boll weevil had ravaged the cotton crop.
They were very poor.
Food had doubled in price because of the war.
The railroad stations were at times so crowded with people leaving that special guards had to be called to keep order.
The crops were left to dry and rot. There was no one to tend them.
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13 The crops were left to dry and rot. There was no one to tend them.
1940–41, Casein tempera on hardboard, 12 x 18 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, Acquired 1942
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Curatorial Comparison

Jacob Lawrence, The Migration Series, Panel no. 13

Arthur G. Dove, Morning Sun, 1935

Arthur G. Dove, Morning Sun, 1935, Oil on canvas, 20 x 28 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, Acquired 1935

Arthur G. Dove, Electric Peach Orchard, 1935, Wax emulsion on canvas, 20 1/4 x 28 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, Acquired 1935
Arthur Dove (1880–1946) and Lawrence were both represented by Edith Halpert’s Downtown Gallery, and they shared a commitment to a new American modernist style. Dove's Morning Sun and Electric Peach Orchard and Lawrence’s Panel 13 illustrate the similarities and differences between the two artists’ styles.
In these representative works, both artists utilize modernist sensibilities—the simplification of form and compositional elements such as line and color to produce an almost musical rhythm. In Morning Sun and Panel 13, both artists play with the sun’s rays and how they reflect on the landscape below, with Dove’s being a warm glow cast on the field while Lawrence’s stylized rays highlight the barren landscape. Similarly, the trees in Electric Peach Orchard and dying crops in Panel 13 are overly simplified, with just a hint of form and color to identify them. Both artists use wavy lines to covey the undulating terrain, giving the ground heightened rhythm and musicality.
While Dove’s compositions are resplendent with color, fertile fields, and a seemingly endless energy and upward movement, Lawrence’s landscape is more subdued, due to the fact that he is depicting an untended, rotting field—a victim of the migration North. Stylistically, Dove’s rays seem more natural and ebullient as they spew from the sun every which way, while Lawrence’s are more geometric, calculated, and cubist-inspired, creating a studied, somber effect. However, Lawrence imbues a bit of hope, with flashes of green, yellow, and red earth in the central golden ray. This small, fertile patch could be a glimpse into what once was, or a look to the future for those who had previously tended the fields. Throughout the panels, Lawrence tries to invoke a sense of optimism even in the most bleak of landscapes or situations.
For African Americans there was no justice in southern courts.
There were lynchings.
After a lynching the migration quickened.
Tenant farmers received harsh treatment at the hands of planters.
The migration gained in momentum.
There had always been discrimination.
In many of the communities the black press was read with great interest. It encouraged the movement.
Families arrived at the station very early. They did not wish to miss their trains north.
Migrants left. They did not feel safe. It was not wise to be found on the streets late at night. They were arrested on the slightest provocation.
The migration spread.
Their children were forced to work in the fields. They could not go to school.
They left their homes. Soon some communities were left almost empty.
And people all over the South continued to discuss this great movement.
Many men stayed behind until they could take their families north with them.
The labor agent sent south by northern industry was a familiar presence in the black communities.
The labor agent recruited unsuspecting laborers as strike breakers for northern industries.
In every southern home people met to decide whether or not to go north.
The migrants found improved housing when they arrived north.
The railroad stations in the South were crowded with northbound travelers.
Letters from relatives in the North told of the better life there.
The black press urged the people to leave the south.
They left the South in great numbers. They arrived in the North in great numbers.
Migrants arrived in Chicago, the gateway to the West.
Many migrants found work in the steel industry.
They also worked on the railroads.
Railroad platforms were piled high with luggage.
The migrants arrived in great numbers.
The South was desperate to keep its cheap labor. Northern labor agents were jailed or forced to operate in secrecy.
To make it difficult for the migrants to leave, they were arrested en masse. They often missed their trains.
In a few sections of the South leaders of both black and white communities met to discuss ways of making the South a good place to live.
But living conditions were better in the North.
The migrants arrived in Pittsburgh, one of the great industrial centers of the North.
Industries boarded their workers in unhealthy quarters. Labor camps were numerous.
As the migrant population grew, good housing became scarce. Workers were forced to live in overcrowded and dilapidated tenement houses.
Housing was a serious problem.
They found discrimination in the North. It was a different kind.
Race riots were numerous. White workers were hostile toward the migrant who had been hired to break strikes.
African Americans seeking to find better housing attempted to move into new areas. This resulted in the bombing of their new homes.
One of the most violent race riots occured in East St. Louis.
African Americans, long-time residents of northern cities, met the migrants with aloofness and disdain.
For migrants, the church was the center of life.
The migrants, having moved suddenly into a crowded and unhealthy environment, soon contracted tuberculosis. The death rate rose.
The African American professionals were forced to follow their clients in order to make a living.
The female workers were the last to arrive north.
In the North the African American had more educational opportunities.
In the North they had the freedom to vote.
And the migrants kept coming.

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