With booming economies across the North and Midwest offering industrial jobs for workers of every race, many African Americans realized their hopes for a better standard of living—and a more racially tolerant environment—lay outside the South. By the turn of the 20th century, the Great Migration was underway as hundreds of thousands of African Americans relocated to cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, Philadelphia, and New York.

 The Harlem section of Manhattan, which covers just three square miles, drew nearly 175,000 African Americans, giving the neighborhood the largest concentration of black people in the world. Harlem became a destination for African Americans of all backgrounds. From unskilled laborers to an educated middle-class, they shared common experiences of slavery, emancipation, and racial oppression, as well as a determination to forge a new identity as free people.*

*For more information visit:  A New African American Identity: The Harlem Renaissance https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/new-african-american-identity-harlem-renaissance

Jacob Lawrence Great Migration Series @ MOMA Free: To children 16 and under & Uniqlo Friday Nights 5:30 – 8:30 pm**

Jacob Lawrence Great Migration Series @ MOMA

MoMA Floor 5 - Room 520 |The Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Galleries | For more info: https://tinyurl.com/58kmzzmp

 These thirty paintings constitute half of the sixty-panel Migration Series, shared between MoMA and the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. Lawrence took as his subject the exodus of African Americans from the rural South to Northern cities during and after World War I, when industry's demand for workers attracted them in vast numbers. As the son of migrants, Lawrence had a personal connection to the topic. He researched the subject extensively and wrote the narrative before making the paintings, taking seriously the dual roles of educator and artist. 

Lawrence was influenced by the work of the Mexican muralists and earlier artists such as Goya, but he drew his stylistic inspiration primarily from the Harlem community in which he lived. The vivid pattern and color—created in tempera paint as Lawrence worked on all the panels at once—reflect an aesthetic that itself had migrated from the South. (Gallery label from 2012.)

**See discounts page for other Free & Discounted MoMA tickets: https://www.moma.org/visit/discounts

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Upcoming HNBA events

February HNBA Meeting
Date: Wednesday, February 12, 2025
Time: 7pm - 8pm
Location: Salvation Army, 2306 3rd Avenue, 2nd Floor, NYC

The next 25th precinct community meeting
Date: Wednesday, February 19, 2025
Time: 6pm - 8pm
Location: 25th Precinct, 120 E 119th St, between Park & Lexington Avenues.