Document 5.13.4: Excerpts from Jacob Lawrence’s introduction to Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series, 1992

This is the story of an exodus of African Americans who left their homes and farms in the South around the time of World War I and traveled to northern industrial cities in search of better lives.  It was a momentous journey. . . . The great migration is a part of my life. . . . There was always talk in my house of other families arriving from the South. My family was part of the first big wave of migration, which occurred between the years 1916 and 1919. . . .It seemed almost inevitable that I would tell this story in my art.  I spent hours at the Schomburg Library in Harlem reading books about the great migration, and I took notes.

I started the Migration series in 1940, when I was twenty-two years old, and finished it one year later. . . . There are sixty panels in the series. . .

To me, migration means movement.  While I was painting, I thought about trains and people walking to the stations.  I thought about field hands leaving their farms to become factory workers, and about the families that sometimes got left behind. . . .

My family and others left the South on a quest for freedom, justice, and dignity.  If our story rings true for you today, then it must still strike a chord in our American experience.
Source: Lawrence, Jacob. The Great Migration: An American Story. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1993.