The Civil Rights History Project: Survey of Collections and Repositories

[African American artists oral histories]

Repository: Smithsonian Institution. Archives of American Art

Collection Description (CRHP): This distinct subset of the Archives of American Art oral history collection includes interviews with nearly 70 African American artists, including Gordon Parks and Jacob Lawrence. These interviews deal with difficulties that black artists experienced in a white-dominated art world as well as civil rights activism, among other topics.

Collection URL: http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/topic/african-american-38

Digital Status: Partial

Extent: circa 68 interviews (sound recordings; transcripts)

Language: English

Related Archival Items: Among the papers in the Archives of American Art are more than 150 collections pertaining to African American painters, sculptors, and print-makers from the late 19th century to the present. Included are Horace Pippin's illustrated memoir of his military service in France in World War I, Palmer Hayden's sketchbooks of his studies abroad, William H. Johnson's scrapbook of clippings, photographs of Alma Thomas, and the correspondence and writings of Henry Ossawa Tanner, Romare Bearden, and Charles White.

The William Christopher Papers, in particular, deal with civil rights and Martin Luther King, Jr.

At the Archives of American Art the struggles, accomplishments, and contributions of African American artists are revealed in the records of galleries and organizations and in artists' papers. Such subjects as the expatriate experience, racial discrimination in the arts, the exploration of an ethnicity, mainstream success, and the impact of New Deal art patronage are well documented.

See the African American subject guide at: http://www.aaa.si.edu/guides/site-africanamerican/.

Rights (CRHP): Contact the repository which holds the collection for information on rights

Title (CRHP): African American artists oral histories

Subjects:

African American artists
African Americans--Civil rights
Art
Race discrimination
Race relations

Genres:

Interviews
Manuscripts
Sound recordings