Copyright

by

Letitia Hopkins

2014

The Thesis committee for Letitia Hopkins

Certifies that this is the approved version of the following thesis:

For My People ~ Margaret Walker ~ Lithographs by Elizabeth Catlett: A Consideration

APPROVED BY

SUPERVISING COMMITTEE:

Supervisor: ______

Edward Chambers

______

Cherise Smith

For My People ~ Margaret Walker ~ Lithographs by Elizabeth Catlett: A Consideration

by

Letitia Hopkins, B.S.; M.A.

Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Arts

The University of Texas at Austin

May 2014

Abstract

For My People ~ Margaret Walker ~ Lithographs by Elizabeth Catlett: A Consideration

Letitia Hopkins, M.A.

The University of Texas at Austin, 2014

Supervisor: Edward Chambers

This thesis examines the 1992 Limited Edition Collection prints artist Elizabeth

Catlett (American, 1915 – 2012) created to illustrate Margaret Walker's poem, For My

People. The author analyzes Catlett’s images in terms of the ways in which they both document as well as reflect on the Black experience, and the ways in which her practice both anticipated and chimed with, the Black Arts Movement. Alongside a consideration of Catlett and her work, the author discusses the related significance of Margaret Walker

(American, 1915 – 1998) and her poem, For My People, and the ways in which it was in so many ways the perfect poem for Catlett to illustrate.

iv

Table of Contents

Chapter One: An Introduction...... 1

Chapter Two: The Lives of Elizabeth Catlett and Margaret Walker, in Brief.....8

Chapter Three: Catlett’s Images for Margaret Walker’s For My People Folio...18

Chapter Four: Elizabeth Catlett, the Black Arts Movement, and its Legacies....57

Chapter Five: Conclusion...... 68

Appendix: For My People...... 74

Bibliography...... 76

v

Chapter One – An Introduction

This thesis will examine prints made by American artist Elizabeth Catlett (1915 –

2012) for Margaret Walker’s For My People. The portfolio of prints I will be examining is one of eighteen signed artists’ portfolios in the Limited Editions Club Collection at the

Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin. According to the Harry

Ransom Center’s description of the prints, and the website for the Limited Edition Club, they were commissioned specifically to illustrate Margaret Walker’s For My People, a critically acclaimed volume of poetry first published in 1942 by Walker (1915– 1998), an

American poet and writer.

The Limited Editions Club was founded in 1929 by George Macy to publish fine, illustrated books in limited editions for member subscriber.1 When Sidney Shiff purchased the Limited Editions Club in 1979, he raised the overall quality of the books and began offering signed artist portfolios to members. The prints I will be studying are part of this later tradition.

From 1929 – 1985, the Limited Editions Club published 10 – 12 titles a year, most titles being illustrated classics, of which 1500 copies were published. From the mid-1980s to 2009, drastic changes were enacted and the Limited Editions Club restructured its output to 3 – 4 titles a year, with a relatively modest print run of several hundred. Walker’s illustrated text was issued during this later time period. Due to this

1 Description of Limited Editions Club Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin

1 decrease in publication output, the prices of folios such as these increased dramatically.2

It was during this time that the publications issued by the Limited Editions Club also became much larger. This illustrated edition was a 50th Anniversary Publication Edition, commemorating the half-century since Walker’s For My People had first been published.3

Elizabeth Catlett created 5 lithographs for the illustration of the text but the portfolio contained 6 prints. My thesis sets out to argue that Elizabeth Catlett used these prints to make a political statement by turning the indexical experiences of Margaret

Walker’s poetry into iconic images.

Walker’s book of poetry, For My People, is broken into three different sections that vary in theme. The first section deals with home and belonging, the second with folklore and fables and the third with travel and exploration. The title poem is what has been illustrated in the Limited Edition Club publication. The prints correspond with the first, third, fifth, seventh, ninth and tenth stanzas of the poem.4

Although Catlett’s prints for this edition were made several decades after the

Black Arts and Black Power Movements, I intend to explore the intersection they have

2 For My People is currently selling for $1500 from the Limited Editions Club and ranges from $950 - $2024.22 on Abe Books. 3 It should be noted that several other prominent African American artists were commissioned to illustrate other folios issued by the Limited Editions Club. For example, Faith Ringgold illustrated Dr, Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter From Birmingham City Jail, with a series of eight serigraph prints; Lois Mailou Jones illustrated Léopold Sédar Senghor’s Poems with silkscreen prints. Such pairings however, were not always based on what one might describe as raced empathy. Benny Andrews illustrated Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor with etchings, and Ellsworth Kelly illustrated Un Coup de Dés Jamais N’Abolira Le Hasard by Stéphane Mallarmé with lithographs.

4 Singing Their Songs corresponds with the first stanza of the poem; Playmates, the third; To Marry, the fifth; Walking Blindly, the seventh; All the People, the ninth and A Second Generation corresponds with the tenth. 2 with the text and the tenets of the Black Arts Movement. It should be noted however, that various versions of a number of Catlett’s prints for For My People, were produced over the course of the preceding half a century or so. Black women artists, have, over the course of centuries, been engaged in making art that was both political and socially conscious in relation to the Black experience, and Elizabeth Catlett is an exemplary example of such an artist. By engaging this text (For My People) written in the mid 20th century, by a female poet and the subsequently illustrated with prints originally made in the decades of the mid 20th century by a female artist, I seek to advance a notable example of the ways in which Catlett demonstrated a profound empathy with both the

Black Arts and Black Power Movements.5

Ron Karenga6 stated that, “Black art must expose the enemy, praise the people and support the revolution.”7 This phrase is what will guide me in my analysis of

Elizabeth Catlett and the ways in which established a fascinating, but relatively unexplored, proximity to the Black Arts Movement. Though sentiments such as

Karenga’s had a particular application to the field of literature, they also had a notable application to the visual arts. Bold statements such as Karenga’s give rise to a number of

5 Walker’s For My People book of poems was published and re-issued a number of times and can be viewed in the tradition of social narratives that have shaped and defined much of African American literary practices.

6 Ron Karenga (now known as Maulana Ndabezitha Karenga) was born in 1941 and became one of the leading architects and exponents of what became known as the Black Arts Movement. Still active at the present time, he is perhaps best known as the creator of the pan-African and African-American holiday of Kwanzaa.

7 Ron Karenga, “Black Cultural Nationalism” The Black Aesthetic edited by Addison Gayle, Doubleday, Garden City, NewYork, 1971: 33

3 questions, which this thesis seeks to explore, by way of its examination of Catlett’s prints. Questions such as, “Who is defined as the enemy?” “How might artists set about praising the people?” and once the “revolution” is defined, “How might artists undertake to support the revolution?”

The purpose of the Black Arts Movement was to ensure that the artists of the

Black community played a crucial part in the African-American struggle in its various dimensions. I would like to follow in the tradition of August Wilson8 by saying that for my purposes, the Black community was birthed out of slavery and has experienced multiple and ongoing overt and institutionalized oppression. In this respect, the challenges and struggles faced by Black artists, over many decades, are part and parcel of a wider Black struggle.

Within her art, Catlett has taken the indexical and created iconic images that speak to the multitude of Black experiences in the United States of America. Margaret

Walker created a book of poetry based on her experiences as a Black person and the bringing together of the works of Catlett and Walker creates a dynamic representation of

Black struggle and redemption in America.

Social and racial activism was very much evident in Elizabeth Catlett’s practice.

Instead of creating “art for art’s sake,” she used many of her works for the uplift of her

8 See August Wilson’s speech “The Ground on Which I Stand”, Theatre Communications Group, 2001. In this speech Wilson places his theatrical practices and productions within the concepts of Americaness, traditions of Black cultural expression and exclusion and oppression Black Americans have faced in this country. 4 people9 and to make social and political statements. At the time she created the plates for the Limited Edition prints, she was living in Mexico. Indeed, Catlett had made her home in Mexico many decades previously. The following chapter, consisting for the most part of a biographical sketch of Catlett, will touch on her involvement in American politics

(and the fallout) while she was living in Mexico. Interwoven through the narratives of this thesis are references to her own writings about the black aesthetic and how her philosophy was reflected in her practice. I seek to situate Catlett’s involvement in the illustration of For My People and her relationship with Margaret Walker.10

The third chapter is a close reading of the images. After contextualizing the events and publication of Walker’s book of poetry, the images themselves must be explored. I will offer a close reading of each print and explore the ways in which

Blackness and the Black experience is depicted in these works of art. The timeline of the making of Catlett’s prints is a critical aspect of this thesis. Melanie Herzog11 is one of a number of writers on Catlett who seek to describe and situate Catlett’s The Negro Woman series. Consequently, one is able to develop an enhanced understanding of the interplay between Catlett’s prints and Margaret Walker’s poem For My People. The imagery of

“And a special fear for my loved ones” (from Catlett’s The Negro Woman series of the

1940s) would become part of a lithograph Catlett created to illustrate Walker’s text

9 Many texts written about and by Elizabeth Catlett discuss the ways in which she viewed her work as activism and the fact that she specifically chose print as a medium because of the affordability and ease in which they could be disseminated.

10 The Amistad Research Center holds the papers of Elizabeth Catlett and numerous letters suggest a close working relationship and likely friendship between her and Margaret Walker. 11 Melanie Herzog, Elizabeth Catlett: An American Artist in Mexico, University of Washington Press (Jacob Lawrence Series on American Artists), 2005. 5 nearly 50 years after Catlett first made such a print. The way in which print and poem, both coming out of the 1940s, intersect, is an important consideration within this thesis.

In my fourth chapter I will attempt to critically situate Catlett within the Black

Arts Movement that manifested itself from the mid 1960s through to the mid 1970s. The black aesthetic, as well as being the name of a key volume of writings about the Black

Arts Movement, was also a notion that lay at the core of what advocates of the movement were arguing for. But Catlett’s works, from the start of her practice, right through to the final years of her life, embodied distinct and compelling manifestations of a Black aesthetic. Considerations of the Black aesthetic will allow me to analyze the way

Elizabeth Catlett used her prints to engage the viewer in her exploration of black subject matter.

As mentioned at the beginning of my Introduction, my thesis sets out to argue that

Elizabeth Catlett used her prints to make a political statement by turning the indexical experiences of Margaret Walker’s poetry into iconic images. This thesis will seek to situate my readings of Catlett’s work within the timeline of the art historical canon, particularly the aspect dealing with African American art. By way of an addendum, it should be noted that there were perhaps distinct elements of both Catlett’s prints and

Walker’s poetry that lent themselves to such collaborations. In 1992, the same year in which the folio of prints under discussion in this thesis was published, the University

Press of Mississippi, Jackson, published a photo essay commemorating Margaret

Walker's poem, “For My People”. Roland L. Freeman, a photographer and award- winning documenter of Southern folk culture and African-American quilters, illustrated 6

Margaret Walker’s “For My People”: A Tribute, with photographs. And in 1993,

Catlett’s mid 20th century prints were published alongside lines from Lift Every Voice and Sing, the celebrated song with lyrics by James Weldon Johnson, which became known as the Negro National Anthem. (Lift Every Voice and Sing: James Weldon

Johnson, with illustrations by Elizabeth Catlett, Walker and Company, New York, 1993)

7

Chapter Two - The Lives of Elizabeth Catlett and Margaret Walker, in Brief

Elizabeth Catlett was born on April 15, 1915 the youngest of three children, in

Washington D.C., just months after her father’s untimely death.12 Her father had been a mathematics professor at Tuskegee Institute and in the public school system of

Washington D.C. Her mother worked as a truant officer in order to support her children.

When Catlett decided to matriculate into higher education, she won a scholarship to

Carnegie Institute of Technology to pursue her studies in art. When Carnegie learned that Catlett was Black, the college rescinded her offer of admission. Despite this rejection, Catlett went on to study at Howard University and graduated cum laude. While at Howard, her art practice was molded and shaped by many famous names in the world of African American art. Art history was taught by James Herring, design by Lois

Mailou Jones and painting, and James Porter taught life drawing. Her first introduction to the linocut process was under the instruction of James Lesesne Wells. While linocuts and lithographs are the main focus of this thesis, it was James Porter who Catlett credits with teaching her the discipline necessary to become an artist and introducing her to the work of Mexican muralists. After receiving her Bachelor of Science degree in art, Catlett taught in the Durham, North Carolina school system for two years before moving to Iowa to pursue graduate studies.

12 At least one supposedly reputable biographical outline on Catlett has it that her father’s death occurred after, and not before, her birth. See http://www.amistadresearchcenter.org/beyond_the_blues/catlett.html (accessed April 27 2014) 8

The lives of Catlett and Walker shared particular commonalities. They were both born in 1915, they both expressed a pronounced embrace of social narratives within their respective practices, and they both attended the University of Iowa for graduate studies. It was in 1940 that Catlett earned the first MFA in sculpture from the University, having studied under Grant Wood. The subsequent fall, she began teaching at Dillard

University, a private, historically Black liberal arts college located in New Orleans,

Louisiana. One of the students particularly influenced by her teaching methods and instruction was Samella Lewis, who would go on to one the foremost art historians for

African American art, and indeed, would author an important monograph on Catlett13.

Catlett’s life experiences shaped her art-making practices, activism, and indeed, what we can now perhaps describe as her “artivsm” - a portmanteau word representing the conjoining of “art” and “activism.” Growing up as a child, she heard firsthand accounts of slavery from her grandmother, who had been born into slavery. It is perhaps no surprise that slavery, injustices and narratives of female agency and resilience appear so strongly in Catlett’s work. Her dedication led her to search for balance between her activism and time for art making. In North Carolina, Catlett worked with a young

Thurgood Marshall to push for equal pay for Black teachers. The effort was unsuccessful but lead her to realize that she should devote more time to her art. As a consequence of this, Catlett decided to continue her studies in Iowa.

While teaching at Dillard, Catlett did whatever was necessary to ensure that her students had the best education possible. One of Catlett’s biographers recalled that,

13 Samella Lewis, The Art of Elizabeth Catlett, Hancraft Studios, 1984 9

“While in Iowa, Catlett had gone with a group of students to see a large Picasso exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago. When this show came to the Delgado Museum

(now the New Orleans Museum of Art), she was determined that her students, the majority of whom had never been to an art museum, should see it. Though not itself closed to African Americans, the Delgado was nonetheless located in a city park where

African Americans were not allowed; undaunted, Catlett had her students bused directly to the museum’s door.”14 When she did this, the students were able to see an exhibition of work by an artist who had had a marked influence on her own art practice.

Catlett spent the summer of 1941 in Chicago studying lithography at the South

Side Community Art Center and ceramics at the Art Institute of Chicago while also resuming her work in sculpture. In Chicago, she lived with Margaret Burroughs (née

Goss), one of the founders of the South Side Community Art Center. This was a budding center of artistic production and interaction. Like New York’s Harlem, this area of

Chicago had a thriving community of Black visual artists, writers and playwrights. These artists were concerned with events such as the spread of fascism in Europe and the effects of the economic depression at home. Charles White, who would become Catlett’s first husband, was among this group of artists. This group consisted of people forming friendships and coalitions across racial divides while creating art challenging the linked racial and class oppression. This environment further charged Catlett’s political consciousness and dedication to use art as a means for social change.

14 Melanie Anne Herzog, Elizabeth Catlett: In the Image of the People, Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2005: 6

10

Catlett’s next place of residence would become New York. She moved with

White in 1942 and studied lithography with Harry Sternberg at the Art Students League and sculpture with Ossip Zadkine, a recent refugee from Nazi-occupied France.

According to Herzog, “the experience that had the strongest impact on Catlett during these years was her involvement with the George Washington Carver School, a community school for the working people of Harlem, where she taught sculpture and sewing and served as promotion director from 1944 until her departure for Mexico in

1946.”15 It was through working at the George Washington Carver School that Catlett confronted her own class biases. “Catlett’s students at the Carver School opened her eyes to the realization that her own middle-class background had until that time foreclosed her understanding of the daily existence of working-class and poor African Americans.”16

While working with the Carver School, she had little time for her own artwork and when her Rosenwald Fellowship was renewed for a second year, she realized she would need a change in location to complete the work that would become her celebrated The Negro

Woman Series.

In 1946, she moved to Mexico with her husband to engage with the art of

Mexican muralists and to save her by-then failing marriage. Catlett would prove to only be partially successful in this endeavor. While she found creative artistic engagement at the Taller de Gráfica Popular (People’s Graphic Arts Workshop), it was apparent that her marriage was not meant to last. Catlett returned to the United States to divorce Charles

15 Ibid 16 Melanie Anne Herzog, Elizabeth Catlett: In the Image of the People, Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2005: 6 11

White in 1947 then returned to Mexico to continue working. Although Catlett found ideological similarities with artists in the Taller de Gráfica Popular, she also thought it best to establish residency in Mexico due to the U.S. Government’s increased persecution of artists, activists and intellectuals after the end of World War II and the onset of the

Cold War. Danger of political persecution was a very real threat for Catlett since the

Carver School had itself been included on a list of “totalitarian, fascist, communist, or subversive” organizations created after President Harry Truman enacted Executive Order

9835 in March of 1947. Executive Order 9835 was sometimes referred to as the Loyalty

Order, which established the first general loyalty program in the United States, designed to identify and root out communist influence in the U.S. federal government. In part,

Truman sought to rally public opinion behind his Cold War policies with investigations conducted under the draconian authority of Executive Order 9835. Truman also sought to undermine his right-wing critics who caricatured his party, the Democrats, as being ‘soft’ on communism. Elizabeth Catlett, and many other individuals, found themselves caught up in this climate of intolerance, suspicion, and paranoia.

That same year, 1947, Catlett married Francisco Mora and continued working collaboratively with other artists at the Taller de Gráfica Popular. Between 1947 and

1951, Catlett and Mora had three children as they continued to work at the TGP. Catlett gave up her United States citizenship to become a citizen of Mexico in 1962. At this point the United States government listed her as an “undesirable alien” and barred her entry into the country of her birth and upbringing. Simultaneously, others found themselves caught up in these vindictive infringements of civil liberties. Paul Robeson, 12 for example, found himself barred from traveling outside of the US, during this period.

The bar on Catlett remained in place until 1971 when she was granted a visa to travel to the Studio Museum in Harlem, where she was featured in a one-woman exhibition.

Thereafter, Catlett was granted dual citizenship and spent the rest of her life traveling between Mexico, where she maintained a studio, and the United States, working and exhibiting in both countries.

While working in Mexico, Catlett remained steadfast to her sense of identity as a

Black woman and continued to make works referencing the challenges, aspirations and cultural identity of Black people in the United States. During the Civil Rights Movement and the era of Black Power, she made works referencing the iconic figures of Angela

Davis and Malcolm X. It was during this time in particular that Catlett’s work most strongly resonated with references to important historic figures and social issues.

Elizabeth Catlett’s career as a painter, sculptor, printmaker and professor would span over three-quarters of a century and she worked until her death in 2012. Her political and social activism shone through her artworks, and no end of admiring critics have penned sentiments such as, “[Catlett’s] ideas and vision of the role of the black artist and art itself have earned her a unique place in the history of American art. In her work and her thinking she addresses the colored peoples of the world – of African, Asian, and

Latin American countries – as well as all Americans.”17

17 Romare Bearden and Harry Henderson, “Elizabeth Catlett”, A History of African-American Artists from 1972 to the Present, Pantheon Books, New York, 1993: 418

13

Catlett continually pushed for art to have an impact beyond the exclusiveness of the art market. “In 1961, in a historic speech in Mexico City”18 she spoke about her beliefs on the place of the Negro people and American Art. In her provocative speech

“she called for [an] abandonment of the idea that all-black exhibitions necessarily meant accepting segregation. Calling for such exhibitions, study of black history, and the defining of black goals, she asserted there was “a difference between sitting in the back seat because you have to and because you want to.” ”19 Inspired by her work in the Taller de Gráfica Popular, where artists looked to the struggles of Black people in America and struggles of the native populations, to create work that made a statement, she believed that the narratives of Black Americans could be used to inspire populations across the world.

Catlett’s desire to create images that resonated strongly within the Black community and further afield was continually expressed in her printmaking, including those prints created for the Limited Editions Club. The collaboration with Margaret

Walker represented a decisive as well as a fruitful meeting of minds. Margaret Walker was born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1915. Her father was a Methodist minister, and as a child, Walker’s mother introduced her to poetry. Commentators have made much of this, stating that, “Her father was a minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church in

Alabama and Louisiana, and she learned that a good sermon could be a kind of poetry

18 Ibid: 419

19 Romare Bearden and Harry Henderson, “Elizabeth Catlett”, A History of African-American Artists from 1972 to the Present, Pantheon Books, New York, 1993: 419 Excepts from the speech, before the National Conference of Negro Artists, April 1 1961 are reproduced in “The Negro People and American Art at Mid- Century”, Samella Lewis, The Art of Elizabeth Catlett, Hancraft Studios, 1984: 97 - 101 14 and a good poem a kind of sermon.”20 Her childhood was spent in New Orleans where she attended school and college, before she moved to Chicago. It was there, in 1935, that

Walker received her Bachelor of Arts Degree from Northwestern University. The following year, Walker began work with the Federal Writers' Project under the Works

Progress Administration, of the President Roosevelt administration, during the Great

Depression.21 Walker was a member of the South Side Writers Group, which included the likes of Richard Wright (about whom Walker would eventually write a contentious biography) and Arna Bontemps. In 1942, Walker received her master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Iowa, returning there, nearly a quarter of a century later, to secure her doctorate. Shortly after gaining her master’s, Walker and her husband established their family home in Jackson, Mississippi. They were to have four children.

Both Catlett and Walker taught for periods of time at historically Black colleges. Whilst

Catlett, as mentioned, taught at Dillard, Walker became a literature professor at what is today known as Jackson State University, where she taught for three decades from 1949 onwards. In 1968, Walker founded the Institute for the Study of History, Life, and

Culture of Black People at Jackson State University, serving as Institute's director from

20 Richard Barksdale and Keneth Kinnamon, “Margaret Walker”, Black Writers of America: A Comparative Anthology, Macmillan, 1972: 635

21 For more on Black Artists’ involvement with the Works Progress Administration, see Ruth Ann Stewart, New York/Chicago: WPA and the Black Artist, Studio Museum in Harlem (exhibition catalogue), 1978

15 the mid 1970s onwards. The Institute now bears her name, and is known as the Margaret

Walker Center.

It was in 1942, when Walker was in her mid 20s, that she published the volume of poetry with which she was evermore associated. Walker's poetry collection For My

People won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition under the judgeship of editor

Stephen Vincent Benét. He penned a foreword to Walker’s 1942 volume, which was published by Yale University Press. Amongst other sentiments, he wrote,

“Straightforwardness, directness, reality are good things to find in a young poet. It is rarer to find them combined with a controlled intensity of emotion and a language that, at times, even when it is most modern, has something of the surge of biblical poetry.”22

Others have referred to the poem as having “the quality of sustained verbal zest as it tries to define in words the genius of Negro life in America. The Black man is presented throughout as victim – “distressed and disturbed and deceived and devoured” by the forces of oppression. In many ways it is a sermon on social justice.”23 Evidence of the enduring appeal and relevance of For My People can be seen from its multiple reprints and the ways in which it became the extraordinary folio under discussion within this thesis. The 1968 reprint of For My People featured a cover monochrome photograph of a

Black child emerging from shadow, taken by photographer Reginald L. Jackson. Walker died in Chicago, Illinois, in 1998. A sense of Walker’s significance can be gleaned from

22 Stephen Vincent Benét, Foreword, Margaret Walker, For My People, Yale University Press, 1942: 5

23 Richard Barksdale and Keneth Kinnamon, “Margaret Walker”, Black Writers of America: A Comparative Anthology, Macmillan, 1972: 636

16 sentiments such as, “In all her work, Walker incorporated a strong sense of her own humanistic vision, together with an autobiographical recall of her own past and cogent themes from Black history. Her artistic vision recognized the distinctiveness of Black cultural life and the values associated with it. She was outspoken on matters of political justice and social equality, for women as well as for men.”24 Furthermore, expressions such as “[Walker’s] work as a whole display[s] a pride in her African American heritage and interweave autobiographical elements with larger themes of black history”25 have an almost uncanny resonance with descriptions of Catlett’s work.

Walker’s poetry and Catlett’s printmaking were both crafted works of great empathy, and one complimented the other perfectly when they were brought together in the folio under discussion in this thesis.

24 “Walker, Margaret”, entry in Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, (Volume 5), Thomson Gale, 2006: 2261 25 “Margaret Walker”, Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Basic Civitas Books, New York, 1999: 1956 17

Chapter Three – Catlett’s Images for Margaret Walker’s For My People Folio

“Singing Their Songs”

For my people everywhere singing their slave songs repeatedly: their dirges and their ditties and their blues and jubilees, praying their prayers nightly to an unknown god, bending their knees humbly to an unseen power;26

The first image (fig. 1) in the illustrated text corresponds with the first stanza of the poem. This image is broken into four panels, which emphasize the types of different songs Walker references in her poem. The top left panel features the most prominent image of a person singing. The woman, who can be viewed as a gender-neutral person by today’s standards of femininity, is in profile facing the right; with her mouth wide open as if fervently singing a song. Her skin is dark, she is apparently without make-up, and her hair is ‘natural’. The face in this panel is the most prominent of the entire grid’s images, which emphasizes the importance of song in this stanza. The white background of the panel suggests blankness, or an empty space that the viewer can interpret as being filled by harmonies and melodies.

The top right panel features a kneeling woman, her hands clasped in fervent prayer. Her floral print dress and conservative shoes enact an air of respectability and

26 This is the first stanza of Margaret Walker’s poem, For My People. See the addendum for the complete poem. 18 modesty, so important during this age of seeming proliferation of caricatures of the Black woman filled with images of the Mammy, Jezebel, and Sapphire. The woman’s dress is of bold floral patterning, yet there is piety, not gaiety in this depiction. Behind the figure of the praying woman is a red, textured background. Interestingly, the figure of the woman is ranged right, allowing for the dramatic red background to be further revealed.

This juxtaposition of the penitent woman and the scarified red background suggests the healing and redemption present in the “Blood of the Lamb.”27 The kneeling woman’s closed eyes reinforce the idea of humility while “praying their prayers nightly to an unknown god.”

The bottom left panel features two male busts in profile. Like the woman in the top, right panel, their collared shirts (of which only the collar is visible), enact a presence of respectability. The textured blue background is again a cracked and scarified surface, though now, the idea of a fractured and troubled past is evoked. At first glance, these faces seem to be expressionless, existing only in contrast to the deep blue background, but upon further inspection, one can see their mouths open in plaintive and baleful song.

The presence of multiple people in this panel brings to mind the call and response aspect of many genres of music in Black culture. This panel in particular, references an earlier lithograph that Elizabeth Catlett created, specifically entitled Blues (fig. 2). This 1990 lithograph juxtaposes the two differing meanings of the “blues.” The first meaning of the blues, that melancholy state caused by heartache, heartbreak and strife, is featured most

27 The “Blood of the Lamb” is a reference to the crucifixion (and subsequent resurrection) of Jesus Christ. This Christian term is most commonly heard in Baptist churches and other protestant denominations. 19 prominently through color and the somber nature of the facial features of the three faces lining the left side of the print. Two scenes of dancing figures are featured stacked on the right side of the print. The upper set of figures are more abstract, showing figures doing popular dances, while the lower set of figures become more representational and show couples dancing together, the men in their suits and the women in fancy dresses. Once again, we see Catlett implying politics of respectability in her work. The bottom left panel of Singing Their Songs is also a reference to slavery and spirituals. The deep blue color of the panel suggests a darker time. Upon closer observation, the collars of the shirts worn by men can be seen as possibly representing shackles.

The bottom right panel is the only panel in which the figure’s face is presented to the viewer largely frontally. In this panel, a man sings with enigmatic eyes. Like the panel to the left, only his collar is visible, yet the color of this panel expresses further subtleties that contrast with those of the other three panels. The style of his clothing – evocative of green gingham check - places him in a more contemporary framework.

Taken together, the four panels can be seen to make a statement in regards to

American nationality. The red, white and blue backgrounds reference the American flag, while the gray background can reference the “gray area,” or uncertainty in the meaning of citizenship for the Black American.

In this image, we see the performance of Blackness through music. The historical context of slavery and religion in the Black community are referenced in addition to contemporary musical styles. Though Gospel music has been said to convey “religious

20 affirmation rather than an aura of social rebellion”28, Catlett’s evoking of gospel music succeeds in the perhaps unlikely task of inflecting her depiction of gospel with distinct and quite profound social narratives. Catlett well appreciated the significance and importance of Black music in America, including Gospel music, described as “a style of

African American sacred music that arose in the twentieth century, incorporating improvisation, blues harmonies, and a strong feeling of swing; gospel music builds upon long-standing traditions of black religious expression and stands as one of the most significant African American musical creations… gospel music reflects the core of

African American culture [and] mirrors the large contours of twentieth-century black history”29. These music-related aspects are specific to particular historical experiences of

Blackness. In particular, this fourth image allows for that historical definition and resonances to be enacted and performed.

References to music abound in Catlett’s work. In 1946-47, Catlett produced I

Have Given the World My Songs (fig. 3). This image references music and lynching/racial violence. Some of these themes appear in other images of that particular series (The Negro Woman). In this print, a woman sits playing a guitar while memories of racial violence are referenced in secondary images placed to the right of the figure.

28 James Clyde Sellman, “Gospel Music”, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Henry Louis Gates Jr. (eds.), Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Basic Civitas Books, 1999: 850

29 James Clyde Sellman, “Gospel Music”, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Henry Louis Gates Jr. (eds.), Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Basic Civitas Books, 1999: 850

21

The placement of these images implies that the songs offered to the world are specifically from the blues tradition that rose from the Black Southern culture. This linoleum block print comes, as mentioned, from The Negro Woman series, from whence Catlett drew inspiration for the multiple prints in her For My People series. After creating Singing

Their Songs, Catlett returned to the theme of music, guitars and blues in her 1995 print,

The Blues Player (fig. 4). This lithograph has a simple composition of a woman sitting in a chair and playing the guitar. The only explicit indication that the image is specifically referencing the blues is in the title, though a mournful feel resonates from the print, making its title even more literal. Catlett also referenced music in several sculptures titled Singing Head (figs. 5, 6 and 7). Although in a different medium, they relate to the print in the way in which Catlett presents only the head performing an action. Within her artwork, we see Catlett evoking song as plaintive cry, song as celebration of survival, song as witness, song as testimony, and song as declaration of faith, love, belonging, and togetherness. By evoking gospel music, as well as other forms of Black music, Catlett was in turn able to access profound histories of the Black American experience:

“The African-American religious music known as gospel, originating in the field hollers, slave songs, spirituals and Protestant hymn songs on southern plantations, and later at camp meetings and churches, has come to dominate not only music in black churches but singing and instrumental styles across the spectrum of American popular music, including jazz, blues, rhythm and blues, soul, and country. Exemplified in songs such as “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” and “Move On Up a Little Higher,” gospel music encourages emotional and jubilant improvisation on songs of thanksgiving and 22 praise as well as sorrow and suffering.”30 Catlett’s art, and indeed, Walker’s poetry, well captured this potent, heady, complex blending of thanksgiving and praise as well as sorrow and suffering.

The prominent reference to the color scheme of the American flag, mentioned earlier, can also be seen in Catlett’s serigraph, Roots (1976 - 79) (fig. 8). In this piece,

African textile patterns are presented in blue and red while a contemporary profile is juxtaposed with what can be considered a bust or profiled image rendered in a traditional

African style. Within Roots, Catlett presents us with a distinctly Afrocentric version of the American flag, positing that African Americans are united by a shared African heritage that should be a proud aspect of their contemporary cultural identity. The Black woman depicted in the foreground looks out, her features largely echoing the facial profile of the African mask’s silhouette that is such a dominant yet enigmatic part of the print. The Black woman resonates with a quiet resolve, determination, pride and sense of destiny. Her ‘roots’ make her what she is, and her ‘roots’ will guide her through the uncertain and often treacherous terrain of America. The print was made at a time when

Alex Haley’s book Roots was a bestseller and the television mini-series of the same name brought to the small screen compelling narratives of slavery and genealogy.

“Playmates”

For my playmates in the clay and dust and sand of Alabama backyards playing baptizing and preaching and doctor and jail and soldier and school and mama and cooking and playhouse and concert and store and hair and

30 Horace Clarence Boyer, “Gospel Music”, Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, Macmillan Reference USA, 2006: 928 23

Miss Choomby and company;31

Taken from the third stanza of the poem, Playmates (fig. 9) focuses on African American childhood. The brown and tan textured background evokes the dryness of dust, clay and sand. The children’s world is devoid of any outside influences. The girl appears to be older than the young boy she plays ball with. She faces front, and despite being depicted in an act of playfulness, her form seems static. Her eyes are closed or downcast, further reinforcing a perhaps perceptible sense of melancholy. The form of the boy is in profile as he faces left, and reaches for the ball during his game. Both children are clothed in primary colors that are full of texture, suggesting youthful exuberance. Their bare feet are an indication of poverty that contrasts with the neatness of their clothes. Even with the children, the politics of respectability are played out through the visuality of their clothing. The two figures in Playmates are in essence facsimiles of two of the children in a 1970 print by Catlett, titled Baile (Dance) (1970) (fig.10). Notwithstanding formal similarities, there is a certain jollity and exuberance that resonates through Baile (Dance), that is largely absent from Playmates. Time and again, Catlett has depicted children as quite literally representing the positive future of African Americans and other peoples of the world, notwithstanding the ominous forces ranged against them. Furthermore, no amount of social, economic and educational challenges faced by these children should detract from their right to play, to dance. For Suzan-Lori Parks, “The action goes in the

31 This is the third stanza of Margaret Walker’s poem, For My People. 24 line of dialogue”32 and Catlett has chosen to illustrate a scene not in the line of the poem but still suggesting the action of existing in a world of youthful imagination. It is in this instance that one sees the indexical lines of Margaret Walker’s poetry transforming into iconic imagery. In an interview with Charles H. Rowell, Walker explains that Ms.

Choomby is a character that she and her sister used to play. Miss Choomby, the Black lady, exists in contrast to Miss Ann, the white lady.

CR: In stanza three of “For My People,” you refer to “my playmates of

Alabama backyards playing hair and Miss Choomby and company.” Will

you explain that reference?

MW: Yes. People always ask what does “Miss Choomby” mean. “Miss

Choomby,” my father said, is an African word. Miss Ann is the white

lady, but Miss Choomby is the Black lady. My sister and I played Miss

Choomby.33

Catlett bypassed all instances of make-believe illustrated in Walker’s words and focused on the words “playmates” and “playing.” The contrast between Miss Choomby and Miss Ann is fascinating, and Walker reveals the extraordinary extent to which even the act of children’s play resonates with distinctly raced characters. And with raced

32 Deborah R. Geis, “Introduction”, Suzan-Lori Parks, University of Michigan Press, 2008: 19

33 Charles Rowell, “Poetry, History and Humanism: An Interview with Margaret Walker.” Conversations with Margaret Walker, Maryemma Graham (editor), University Press of Mississippi, 2002: 22 25 characters come notions of history and cultural heritage, personified perhaps, in the intriguing persona of Miss Choomby. Within Catlett’s print however, race is manifest not in make-believe difference, but in an affirming sameness of the racial and cultural heritage these playmates share. In this respect, encroaching notions of racial difference have only an invisible presence in the print.

Playmates and another print in the folio, To Marry (fig. 11) are in circular dialogue with each other. These images can both be viewed as representations of people from past Black experiences constantly reminding us of where we come from, and the experiences of those who have gone before us. As Catlett’s prints interact with each other, they become the embodiment of Suzan-Lori Parks’ notion of history as “time that won’t quit.”34 There is perhaps a profound dialogue between Playmates and To Marry in which married couples bring forth new life, represented in the playing children, who will, in turn, grow up to become husbands and wives themselves, thereby creating offspring and another generation of Black life. Catlett’s work allows for these images to become cyclical, at once referencing and foreshadowing the coming of its counterpart. Herein lies another profound point of synchronicity between the work of Catlett and the poem of

Walker. Walker’s was said to be “a ‘talking’ family, who discussed anecdotes and incidences of the past, issues and events of the present, and prospects and possibilities of

34 Shawn-Marie Garrett, “Figures, Speech and Form in Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom”, Kevin J. Wetmore Jr and Alycia Smith-Howard (eds.) Suzan-Lori Parks: A Casebook, Routledge, 2007:12

26 the future. Thus, she grew up in an atmosphere of racial awareness; Black history was all around her – good times and bad times, slave times and free times.”35

Catlett references children in many of her prints and as mentioned, some of these prints focus on the vitality that can be found in youth. In contrast, Catlett’s other prints that feature children – those prints that employ the Christian iconography of the Madonna and Child – have altogether different resonances. These images often recall the sobriety mothers had to face when sending their children into the world. This sobriety is emitted through the protective love one sees the mother in some of Catlett’s prints projecting onto her child or children through her embrace and both contrasts with, and resonates with, the awe, wonder and devotion strongly evocative of Renaissance paintings of the Madonna and Child. This sense of protective love is evidenced in one of Catlett’s best-known prints, beginning with its title – And a Special Fear For My Loved Ones (1946). The levity seen in Playmates is in marked contrast to Catlett’s depictions of childhood as a fragile state of being, in need of nurturing, safeguarding and protecting. One source describes Madonna (fig. 12) as equaling “the compassionate appeal of her other works.

The strong circular composition is made more powerful by the singular oval shapes, which reside within the whole. Each figure’s head delivers a message, a sermon of humility and peace. It becomes a matter of survival. The Madonna cradles the two

35 Richard Barksdale and Keneth Kinnamon, “Margaret Walker”, Black Writers of America: A Comparative Anthology, Macmillan, 1972: 635 27 youngsters; love of family is unmistakable. Catlett’s use of darks and lights is powerful and elicits an undeniable please for understanding and love.”36

Many of Catlett’s images have aspects of motion, but those with a sense of levity are reserved to her depictions of dancing figures. Among these prints are Baile (Dance)

1970, referenced above, and Dancing, 1990 (fig. 13). The young boy featured in Baile

(Dance) appears five years later in Catlett’s linocut titled Boys. In this print, the boy’s image is repeated to show multiplicity and universality in the carefree existence of a boy in childhood. In an interview for Samella Lewis’ 1984 monograph on her work, Catlett noted that she found the method of using repetition effective when trying to strengthen her ideas.37 A measure of Catlett’s willingness to have her art disseminated at modest cost can be ascertained from the first issue of Black Art an international quarterly, published in fall 1976. The issue included a substantial feature on Catlett, whose work also adorned the cover. A concertinaed version of Boys, folding out to 10 ¾ x 31 inches was included in the issue, enabling purchasers to detach the print and treat it as the artwork it was. A note in the corner of the print made it known that other copies were available.

“To Marry”

For the boys and girls who grew in spite of these things to be man and woman, to laugh and dance and sing and play and drink their wine and religion and success, to marry their playmates and bear children and then die

36 Robert Henkes, “Elizabeth Catlett”, The Art of Black American Women: Works of Twenty-Four Artists in the Twentieth Century, McFarland & Company, Inc., 1993: 75

37 Samella Lewis, “In Her Own Words: Work – Refining the Ideas”, The Art of Elizabeth Catlett, Hancraft Studios, 1984: 91 28

of consumption and anemia and lynching;38

This lithograph, previously mentioned, is unique in the series in that it juxtaposes two images, one positive and one unreservedly depicting great violence inflicted on Black people, thereby combining what could easily be two different prints. The top panel of the print has a couple in profile engaged in a kiss. This is a tender affirmation of Black love and a sentimental depiction of a mutually respectful, nurturing union of two equals. For good measure, the couples’ hands are raised and clasped together, thereby further emphasizing their perfect union. The bride’s apparel consists of the same texturing on the dress, headpiece and veil.

The bottom panel consists of a man sprawled on the ground. His arm is raised above his head and his legs are bent in a position that suggests he struggled before being overcome by the men that now stand over his dead body. The viewer only sees two pairs of shoes standing on the rope used to lynch the man, signifying the extreme violence and dehumanizing murderous intent of the oppress, while focusing on the humanity of the deceased man. The bright red background signifies the blood of thousands of men and women spilled through racial violence, particularly the thousands of lynching that occurred in this country. The figure of the lynched man is a facsimile of Catlett’s print,

And a Special Fear For My Loved Ones, mentioned earlier, and made in 1946 created for her The Negro Woman series. This print ultimately becomes a performance of memory and reflection.

38 This is the fifth stanza of Margaret Walker’s poem, For My People. 29

Time and time again in Catlett’s prints for the For My People folio, we see the artist reprising images taken from earlier periods of her practice. As she did with Singing

Their Songs, Catlett has referenced her repertoire for this image.

By juxtaposing a scene of great love with a scene of great violence, steeped in racism, Catlett seeks to humanize those people regarded as sub-human or regarded as the embodiment of criminality, deviance, and sociopathic barbarism – people such as those who fell victim to the lynch mob. The lynchers’ victims included loving husbands, and people born of unions such as those depicted in the upper part of the print.

Upon further inspection of Catlett’s repertoire, the circular motion of history becomes more evident within the prints Playmates and To Marry. Catlett made a number of prints that referenced racial violence, particularly lynching, and a strong desire to protect one’s loved ones. As mentioned in the previous section, many of her mother and child prints evoke a sense of protective love. Her 1949 linocut, Civil Rights Congress

(fig. 14), fits into the circular dialogue that is taking place between Playmates and To

Marry. In Civil Rights Congress, we see the murderous, hideous figure of a Klu Klux

Klansman being removed from the space occupied by an unsuspecting young African

American male. Were it not for the confident maneuverings of the older African

American gentleman representing the intervention of the Civil Rights Congress, the young boy would surely fall victim to the treacherous figured of Klan-cloaked death, always waiting in the shadows, with the terror of lynching as his tool to inflict death, pain and fear. The welcome and reassuring presence of the Civil Rights Congress, represented by an older African American gentleman of professional appearance, handles this 30 fiendish skeletal figure like a skillful puppet master, while the boy sitting in a chair and looking into a distance the viewer cannot see, suggests that this is a painful lesson he must learn or face. This sense of lessons to be learned are reflected in the young boy’s demeanor, as he is presented as a model class room pupil, eager to learn, though perhaps unsuspecting of some of life’s harsher lessons. To the left of the print, a ghostly, smaller

Klu Klux Klan figure waits, implying that the Civil Rights Congress must be ever vigilant, as the threat of murderous harm is a very real and ever-present possibility. Not for the first time, Catlett evokes the cross as a Klu Klux Klan symbol, thereby creating critical debates about the warped appropriation of the symbol of Christ’s suffering.

In 1970 Catlett created two prints referencing the possibilities of a violent death that Black males are constantly faced with. In The Torture of Mothers (fig. 15) a boy is seen within the head or thoughts of his mother, depicted as a lifeless body sprawled on the ground. This print has little color, save for the jagged red halo surrounding the body that references violence, flames and blood. The image and title imply that this fear is constant in a mother’s mind and she has no peace while this fear exists. The other image

Catlett created in 1970 references several seismic riots that took place across the United

States between 1965 and 1967 and the subject matter both implicitly and explicitly references racial violence. The importance of this image is primarily scene in the position of the figures. Several men – shot through acts of wanton violence, not at the hands of lynchers or civilian criminals, but dead at the hands of those supposedly there to protect them, the police or national guardsmen. These victims lay lifeless in the pods

Catlett created to reference the multiple cities in the title 31

(Watts/Detroit/Washington/Newark, 197039) (fig. 16). In the center of the image exist two riot police officers holding guns. On the right side of the image, a man grips the remains of a building destroyed by fire. Despite the element of direct and explicit imagery in her work, Catlett was a skillful employer of ambiguity and multiple readings within prints such as these. The man gripping the remains of a destroyed building also presented himself to the viewer as one of the many African American males wrongly incarcerated, or vengefully incarcerated by a society that had nothing but hate for them.

Like the previous image, this print is void of color, save shades of red. The red again references blood, fire and violence. On this occasion, the texture of the image references the discord evoked by rioting and the factors that gave rise to it.

When viewing all of these images together, it is clear that Catlett has used her repertoire as a continuing commentary and expression of the violence that follows or besieges the Black community throughout life. This thought is especially present in the dialogue between Playmates and To Marry and the interplay between the images in the

For My People folio. The images I referenced in the past two sections could easily be attached to stanzas in Margaret Walker’s poem40. These images are examples of Suzan-

39 1970, Linocut, 59 x 91.5 cm. This work sometimes appears with the title, Watts/Detroit/Washington/Harlem/Newark. In addition, the print has been reproduced in at least one authoritative publication with the Black man in the cage-like structure, to the left of the image, rather than to the right, as it appears in the images accompanying this thesis.

40 Civil Rights Congress can be loosely connected to the fourth and eighth stanzas of Margaret Walker’s poem. See Walker’s poem at the end of this thesis.

32

Lori Parks’ previously quoted and hugely compelling definition of history – “time that won’t quit” – and exist as the ghosts and shadows she refers to in her texts.41

“Walking Blindly”

For my people walking blindly spreading joy, losing time being lazy, sleeping when hungry, shouting when burdened, drinking when hopeless, tied, and shackled and tangled among ourselves by the unseen creatures who tower over us omnisciently and laugh;42

This print includes four figures but it is clear that the central figure is meant to be the focal point. The woman in the center is the only figure filled with color. Her relaxed and smiling face, along with a posture that suggests a way of moving similar to dance is a clear reference to the line “For my people walking/ blindly spreading joy.” She wears a pink cardigan over a white shirt of folds, and a green pencil skirt and smart casual shoes.

The other figures blend with the textured blue-grey background. The dismal color and texture that suggests an acid wash, gives this print a somber and melancholy feeling that the colorful central figure of a woman counterbalances. The three remaining figures illustrate the action of this stanza. The boy who sits dejectedly on a step is “losing time being lazy,” but his expression is a suggestion that his condition stems from a malaise deeper than laziness. His dejected body language suggests that he has lost all hope. The figure on the left of the lithograph is a woman in profile facing rightwards, who wears a skirt, jacket and hat and raises her arms as if speaking to one passing by. Her hat suggests piety or Christian reverence and her general apparel suggests that she is either

41 Shawn-Marie Garrett, “Figures, Speech and Form in Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom”, Kevin J. Wetmore Jr and Alycia Smith-Howard (eds) Suzan-Lori Parks: A Casebook, Routledge, 2007:12 42 This is the seventh stanza of Margaret Walker’s poem, For My People. 33 outside, participating in a form of protest, or possibly evangelizing. Or it could be that she represents the animated figure of a pious woman involved in church praise. The possibility that the woman could be shouting in church comes from the idea of laying one’s burden down at the altar when attending church service. This figure is the embodiment of the line “shouting when burdened.” The last figure is placed in profile facing the right edge of the print, but his back faces all the other figures, suggesting an air of resignation, disconnect and isolation. His eyes are closed and he holds a flask. The expression on his face indicates that he is battling with some type of inner demons, brought on by, or representing the alcohol to which he is addicted. He cuts a pathetic, broken, sorry, disconsolate figure. It seems as if the male figures have been conquered by the “unseen creatures/ who tower over us/ omnisciently and laugh;” since their heads are bowed in defeat. The female figure on the left is also battling the “unseen creatures” and has yet to be defeated while the colorful woman walks by, oblivious to (or refusing to be broken by) the forces that seem to be against her and her people. “Walking Blindly” is a critique of the institutional injustices that follow so many African Americans from childhood through to old age. We see in this image that it is possible for one to exist outside of the oppressed nature of the blue-gray melancholy environment of oppression.

It is in this image that one sees an active transformation of Blackness from a definition of oppressed peoples to a definition of endless possibilities, hope, happiness and fulfillment.

Thematically, this print fits into Catlett’s wider body of works. As mentioned earlier in this thesis, Catlett could be considered as an activist-artist, one who uses her works to illustrate and disseminate her political and social beliefs and as a method to 34 bring about change in the world. Catlett’s technique of creating silhouettes as background or secondary figures to the main or central figure is one that comes up often in her work. These figures act as shadows of imprinted memories or reminders of contemporary events. This method is seen in works such as “I have given the world my songs” and “In Phillis Wheatley I proved intellectual equality in the midst of slavery”

(fig. 18) both from The Negro Woman Series. Although the silhouette method of

“Walking Blindly” can be traced back to previous works, the way in which Catlett incorporated this method in “I have given the world my songs” is unique. “I have given the world my songs” juxtaposes quiet and creative contemplation with racial violence.

The alternative title, Blues (fig. 2), reminds the viewer that the central figure of this linocut has not necessarily risen above her circumstances, but has found a way to reconcile these experiences with her existence and has found a way to contribute to

American culture through her pain. The projected mood of “In Phillis Wheatley I proved intellectual equality in the midst of slavery” falls between the moods projected by Blues

(fig. 2) and Walking Blindly (fig. 17). Phillis Wheatley43 is prominently featured contemplatively creating her poetry against a backdrop of shackled female slaves. While the title and imagery suggest that she has risen above her expected station, her contemplation and the presence of the other women suggest that she is still bound by the

43 Phillis Wheatley (May 8, 1753 – December 5, 1784) is an iconic and inspirational figure from history, who was both the second published African-American poet and first published African-American woman. Wheatley was born in Senegambia, and was sold into slavery at the age of 7 and transported to North America, where the Wheatley family of Boston purchased her. Her owners taught her to read and write, and encouraged her poetry when they saw her talent. In 1773, her collection, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, was published.

35 circumstances that surround her. Both of these images are monotone and leave little room for the central figure to stand out, save their size and location in the print.

Conversely, Walking Blindly has elevated the main figure by location and color. This central figure also has been distinguished by a mood that is in extreme contrast to the rest of the image. Although this is not the first time Catlett has used color within a monotone image to distinguish figures, this is the first image in her repertoire that contains figures with vastly contrasting moods. This is clearly a nod to the text that she is referencing, but it is worthwhile to note that she both chose this particular stanza for illustration and chose to illustrate it verbatim, which is something that she did not always do with the other illustrated stanzas in this series.

In this image, we also see Catlett begin to move Walker’s 1940s poem into contemporary times through the visual application of the modern wardrobe of the central woman in Walking Blindly (fig. 17). It is through such strategies of moving through time that Catlett gives her images the ability to shift and project history, the passage of time, destiny, and so on.

“All The People”

For my people standing staring trying to fashion a better way from confusion, from hypocrisy and misunderstanding, trying to fashion a world that will hold all the people, all the faces, all the adams and eves and their countless generations;44

This image consists of nine faces in profile, near profile or presented frontally, all encapsulated in a brown textured circle. The faces have no differentiated color, so the

44 This is the ninth stanza of Margaret Walker’s poem, For My People. 36 only way to begin to distinguish them by race or culture is through their hair or eye shape. The faces have Catlett’s signature cubist or fractured style that is reminiscent of

African masks and plastic crafts. The diversity of the faces contained within the brown circle suggests a world with no borders or prejudices as stated by Walker’s lines reading

“a world/ that will hold all the people, / all the faces, all the adams and eves and their countless generations.” The diversity and inclusion of all people is further reinforced by the rainbow of vertical blocks of color that reach up to the lower half of the circle, and the bottom part of the lithograph. The blue “sky” at the top of the lithograph and the brown circle continue to tie in Catlett’s use of texture in this series. The lines in the sky are similar to ripples in water, stimulating the viewer to reflect on the powerful symbolism of water, examples of which include the Middle Passage, and baptism. Within this print, Catlett presents or evokes an unbroken circle, representing a wonderful and harmonious world of humanity, diversity and inclusion. This sense of the world being within reach was also evoked in Playmates (fig. 9), in which the red ball with which the children play is simultaneously evocative of the children having the whole world in their hands, or at least, within reach.

Taking cues from her training with Mauricio Lasansky45, Catlett used a combination of realism and abstraction in this image of All the People (fig. 19). This combination of elements of realism and abstraction were employed within both Catlett’s printmaking and her sculpture, to maximum effect, to emphasize facial expressions and

45 Mauricio Lasansky, along with Catlett, was one of the most influential artists and printmakers associated with the University of Iowa, where he taught for a number of decades from 1945 onwards. He was born in 1914 and died in 2012, aged 97. 37 features while maintaining a realistic form in the figure. In considering Catlett’s oeuvre, one can see the differing styles that Catlett employed and developed in her printmaking and sculpture. Catlett was highly skillful at creating or evoking a sense of hardship and struggle that seemed to be etched into the very faces of the women she visualized, thereby creating a strong sense of empathy in the viewer. In this regard, we can cite

Catlett’s Survivor a linoleum block print made in 1983. Based on a striking photograph by Dorothea Lange, Ex-slave with a Long Memory taken in Alabama in the late 1930s,

Survivor, like its photographic precedent, is a moving embodiment of dignity in the face of relentless hardship. In works such as these, Catlett paid homage to the countless numbers of people born into slavery, who faced decades of relentless abuse and hardship from Emancipation onwards, through the years of disappointment of Reconstruction and the years of grinding poverty of the Great Depression. This woman, recalled from history by Catlett, was indeed a Survivor.

Returning to considerations of All The People, it can be argued that this print also references African masks, as reflected in the physiognomy of a number of the faces depicted, particularly the face in the uppermost left corner, which I argue is similar to the

Forehead Mask of the Mambila people of Cameroon and Nigeria. The three- dimensionality of the mask is reduced to abstract form when rendering the woman in this image. This is a possible reading of the sources from which Catlett may have drawn her inspiration for the faces represented in this print.46

46 There might well be a need for circumspection in my reading of this work, as the wearing of masks (such I the ones I speculate to be reflective in one woman’s face in particular) was limited to the males of the Mambila society. 38

This abstraction of facial features is a device Catlett employed in the execution of many of her prints. By giving all of the faces in this print an abstract feel, Catlett has managed to intensify a sense of unanimity and inclusiveness. This sense of inclusiveness is also somewhat heightened by the rainbow that occupies the lower part of the image.

The use of the rainbow in flags has a long tradition, and has increasingly come to exist as a definitive sign of diversity, inclusiveness and tolerance/acceptance of difference. In this regard, Catlett’s print presents itself as a vision of progressive coexistence.

“A Second Generation”

Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let a bloody peace be written in the sky. Let a second generation full of courage issue forth; let a people loving freedom come to growth. Let a beauty full of healing and a strength of final clenching be the pulsing in our spirits and our blood. Let the martial songs be written, let the dirges disappear. Let a race of men now rise and take control.47

In this image, the heads of young people, which I read as a male and a female, are placed in profile, facing to the right. This is an indication of looking towards the future.

Their eyes are opened wide and faces hold expressions of expectation, determination and resolve. A flame surrounds and engulfs the figures, calling to mind fiery passions and powerful action. Beneath these figures, a group of people in striking blue silhouette can be seen marching and holding their arms aloft, as if in a gesture of the Black power salute. The lithograph has a black border, which creates a strong contrast with the bright

47 This is the tenth stanza of Margaret Walker’s poem, For My People. 39 colors of the print, most specifically that of the flame. This border suggests that revolution can come any time, even in the dark of the night.

This image brings immediate references to mind. One is Barbara Jones-Hogu’s

1971 image, Unite (fig. 21). In this image, the word “unite” is fractured throughout the multicolored background while a group of people dressed in black (which melds into an emphatic, unified space), all raising their arms into Black power fists which reach upwards, in dramatic vertical column. The gestures evoke aspiration, upward political mobility, and progress. With its dramatic assembly of people, evoking a depth of field,

Unite emphasizing the need for the community to embody the action of the word and create social and institutional changes that move towards equality and enfranchisement for the Black community. This sense of action and unanimity of purpose was captured in other works by African American artists, such as Reginald Gammon’s Freedom Now, of

1965. Another image that comes to mind is from Catlett’s own catalog. Black Unity (fig.

22) is a sculptural work in which Catlett carved a Black power fist on one side and two faces reminiscent of African masks on the other. Robert Henke noted that, Catlett’s

“sculptures are simple in structure and design”48 and that “Black Unity is a powerful piece and incorporates two works, two separate expressions, each literally viewed from opposite directions.”49 He goes on to say that Catlett “has exploited two ideas within a single sculptural form in Black unity. The front view exhibits two female heads – simple, direct, honest. The back view is a symbolic fist of Black power. Each survives on its own

48 Robert Henkes, “Elizabeth Catlett”, The Art of Black American Women: Works of Twenty-Four Artists in the Twentieth Century, McFarland & Company, Inc., 1993: 79

49 Ibid 40 merits. Yet, what a delight to have both in a single expression.”50 Black Unity was a work that drew much favorable comment, including this early appreciation by Elton Fax; “The meaning of her Black Unity is clear beyond any possible misunderstanding, a straightforward communication of a symbol and a truth. African sources are very noticeable in her work, which conveys something of the mood of ritual mystery one feels in the presence of African objects. In her sophistication and inventive primitivism, she stands apart from other sculptors. “A woman critic here [Mexico] once told me that whenever I do Mexicans in sculpture they always turn out to be black…. My art does, after all, speak for both my peoples.” ”51 Catlett also has other works that feature the

Black power fist prominently as a way to communicate unity in the struggle for revolution. By making these direct references, Catlett uses this lithograph to operate in a system of repetition and memory.

Time and time again, Catlett employs the device of presenting two faces – man/woman, mother/child, etc. in close proximity and relationship to each other, both in sculptural and in printed form. Her 1971 lithograph, Mother and Son (fig. 23), consists of the profiles of a young boy and woman looking towards the left. The boy’s head is slightly angled downward while his mother looks straight ahead. If we compare Mother and Son to A Second Generation (fig. 20), both pairs of heads/faces are looking out, whether towards their history, or towards their future and their destiny, though the two

50 Ibid.

51 Elton C. Fax, “Elizabeth Catlett”, Seventeen Black Artists, Dodd, Mead, New York, 1971: 31 41 different prints evoke different sensibilities. The device of the double profile is also seen in other works of Catlett’s

For My People

I have discussed the performances visible in the individual images of the For My

People series, but not the ways in which they perform together. As I stated before, these images were created for sale for the Limited Editions Club.

There are those who might disregard (or indeed, not be aware of) the existence of wider contexts in which Catlett’s images can be and indeed are located. But the context in which the images were created and published is as much of a performance as the existence of these prints and their content. Thus far in this chapter I have sought to analyze the images and discussed the performativity of their existence. For some images, their very existence served as a performance in which the legibility and multiplicity of

Blackness was enacted. In other instances, the action of the image (coupled with the viewer’s interpretation and whatever the viewer brings to their reading of the image) becomes a shifting performance. Considering these factors, I would like to discuss how these images perform as a group.

Together, these lithographs have illustrated six of the ten stanzas of Margaret

Walker’s poem. By focusing on certain stanzas and on particular words, Catlett has allowed for an animated reading of multiple manifestations of the Black experience in

America. Diverse images from this series are in continuous dialogue with each other and other works outside of this series. This idea of repetition occurs not (only) in the wording 42 of Walker’s poem but in the historical shadows of Catlett’s images. This “repetition with revision”52 accounts for the reader’s/viewer’s empathetic engagement with the work.

The issue then becomes: Who is this reader/viewer? The price range of the illustrated folio of Walker’s poem places them beyond access of the general population, which is in direct contradiction of the tenets of the Black Arts Movement. Catlett herself believed that images that supported the revolution should be accessible to the public. “Let us take our paintings and prints and sculpture not only to Atlanta University, to the art galleries, and to patrons of the arts who have money to buy them; let us exhibit where

Negro people meet – in the churches, in the schools and universities, in the associations and clubs and trade unions.”53 The lithograph was one of the methods she saw as a mean to reach this goal. Catlett spoke of the need for her art to be accessible; she also professed the need for Black art to become part of the world’s cultural history. In her speech, before the National Conference of Negro Artists, Catlett urged Negro artists to self-identify as a group, and thereby contribute to the world’s cultural history. “And have not all the historically proven art movements of the world been on a group basis? What of Greek art,

African art, Medieval art, and modern art? [We have] a whole new world of possibilities for expressing ourselves, with the Negro people as our principal source of inspiration.”54

A profound, empathetic and highly nuanced attached to humanity, to people, lay at the core of Walker’s poem and Catlett’s interpretations of it, as represented in the folio under

52 Suzan-Lori Parks, The America Play and Other Works, Theatre Communications Group, 1994: 9 53 Excepts from the speech, before the National Conference of Negro Artists, April 1 1961 are reproduced in “The Negro People and American Art at Mid-Century”, Samella Lewis, The Art of Elizabeth Catlett, Hancraft Studios, 1984: 99

54 Ibid: 100 - 101 43 discussion. The next chapter seeks to situate Catlett within the Black Arts Movement and to discuss the ways in which her work both anticipated the movement, decades before its birth, and simultaneously kept faith with its tenets, right up until her death, many years after the Black Arts Movement had dissipated and been eclipsed by other movements.

44

Images

45

ABOVE (fig. 1) - Elizabeth Catlett, ABOVE (fig. 3) - Elizabeth Catlett,

Singing Their Songs, [For My People], Blues Player, 1995, lithograph

1992, lithograph

BOTTOM LEFT (fig. 4) - Elizabeth

Catlett, I Have Given the World My

Songs, [The Negro Woman], 1946-47,

linocut

46

BELOW (fig. 5) - Elizabeth Catlett, ABOVE (fig. 2) - Elizabeth Catlett,

Singing Head, 1979, onyx, 32 cm Blues, 1990, lithograph

LEFT (fig. 6) - Elizabeth Catlett, Cabeza

Cantando (also Singing Head) 1968,

bronze on original wooden base, 17.7 cm

height, excluding base

47

ABOVE (fig. 7) - Elizabeth Catlett,

Singing Head, 1980, black Mexican marble, 40.7 x 24.2 x 30.5 cm.

ABOVE (fig. 8) - Elizabeth Catlett,

Roots, serigraph, 1976 – 9, 38 x 44.5 cm

48

ABOVE (fig. 9) - Elizabeth Catlett, Playmates, [For My People], 1992, lithograph

ABOVE (fig. 10) - Elizabeth Catlett, Baile (Dance), 1970, color linocut, 45.5 x 76 cm

49

ABOVE (fig. 12) - Elizabeth Catlett, Madonna, 1982, lithograph, 76 x 56 cm

ABOVE (fig. 13) - Elizabeth Catlett, Dancing, 1990

50

ABOVE (fig. 11) - Elizabeth Catlett, To Marry, [For My People], 1992, lithograph

ABOVE (fig. 15) - Elizabeth Catlett, The Torture of Mothers, 1970, hand-colored lithograph, 13 x 20 cm

51

ABOVE (fig. 14) - Elizabeth Catlett, Civil Rights Congress, 1949, linocut on cream wove paper

ABOVE (fig. 16) - Elizabeth Catlett, Watts/Detroit/Washington/Newark, 1970, linocut, 59 x 91.5 cm

52

ABOVE (fig. 17) - Elizabeth Catlett, Walking Blindly, [For My People], 1992, lithograph

BELOW (fig. 18) – In Phyllis Wheatley I proved intellectual equality in the midst of slavery, 1946, linocut on paper, 24.13 x 16.51 cm

53

ABOVE (fig. 19) - Elizabeth Catlett, All the People, [For My People], 1992, lithograph

ABOVE (fig. 20) - Elizabeth Catlett, A Second Generation, [For My People], 1992, lithograph

54

ABOVE (fig.21) - Barbara Jones-Hogu, Unite, 1971, silkscreen

ABOVE (fig. 22) - Elizabeth Catlett, Black Unity, 1968, 53.4 cm height (some sources state mahogany, some state cedar)

55

ABOVE (fig. 23) - Elizabeth Catlett, Mother and Son, 1971, lithograph

56

Chapter Four - Elizabeth Catlett, the Black Arts Movement, and its Legacies

As referenced previously in this thesis, Elizabeth Catlett made a powerful, impassioned speech in 1961, about the vital contributions that Black artists could make to the project of racial uplift, as well as to their own collective position in world history and culture.55 “On this occasion”, wrote Aaron Myers, “she encouraged artists to look to black people for inspiration and to exhibit in black community spaces. “I have always wanted my art to service my people,” she said, “to reflect us, to relate to us, to stimulate us, to make us aware of our potential… We have to create an art for liberation and for life.” ”56 This urging, this demand, “to create an art for liberation and for life” foretold the development of what became known as the Black Arts Movement. The movement has been described as “a loose network of Black Nationalist African American artists and intellectuals during the mid-1960s to the mid 1970s”57 Advocates of the Black Arts

Movement asserted that Black artists had a severe obligation to address the Black struggle and to address the Black community. In so doing, they were in some ways reprising sentiments that Catlett had articulated not only in 1961, but indeed, consistently throughout her career. This chapter sets out to show some of the ways in which Catlett

55 “The Negro People and American Art at Mid-Century” at the National Conference of Negro Artists. Extracts were reproduced in Samella Lewis, “In Her Own Words: Work – Refining the Ideas”, The Art of Elizabeth Catlett, Hancraft Studios, 1984: 97 – 101

56 Aaron Myers, “Elizabeth Catlett”, Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience: Kwame Anthony Appiah, Henry Louis Gates Jr. (editors), Basic Civitas Books, 1999: 394

57 James Smethurst, “Black Arts Movement”, Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience: Kwame Anthony Appiah, Henry Louis Gates Jr. (editors), Basic Civitas Books, 1999: 239

57 not only foretold the coming of the Black Arts Movement, but she was herself a compelling personification of what the movement deemed necessary of Black artists.

Though the Black Arts Movement emerged in the mid 1960s for a period of a decade or so, as mentioned, a figure such as Catlett had long emerged as an artist whose practice was consistently oriented towards her people. As such, Catlett ‘s embrace of the centrality of racial uplift in her work dated back at least to the 1940s and was echoed by

Margaret Walker, whose 1942 volume of poetry similarly anticipated and indeed embodied so many of the aspirations of the Black Arts Movement. Walker’s poem had first been published in 1937, and mention has been made, in literary circles, of some of the poem’s significance. “…even in 1937 the poem struck a new note; none of the Black poets of the Harlem renaissance had written like Margaret Walker. Not only does the poem vibrate with racial consciousness and social protest, but it also has a kind of verbal brilliance heretofore not seen in Black poetry… underneath the flow of words is order and coherence; it is all a celebration of “my people.”58 Just as Catlett’s urging and demand, “to create an art for liberation and for life” foretold the development of what became known as the Black Arts Movement, so too Walker’s poem embodied the “racial consciousness and social protest” beloved of the Black Arts Movement.

The uncompromising positions and fiery rhetoric of the Black Power Movement marked a dramatic shift away from the politics of integration and inclusivity of the civil rights movement that had preceded it. Black Power took the position that equal treatment

58 Richard Barksdale and Keneth Kinnamon, “Margaret Walker”, Black Writers of America: A Comparative Anthology, Macmillan, 1972: 635

58 under the law need not mean social and cultural integration. Elizabeth Catlett boldly and unapologetically staked out a similar position when she stated, in 1961, “We do not want to be in segregated exhibitions. We are through with segregation. There is a difference, however, between sitting in the back seat because you have to and because you want to. The first is segregation and the second is free choice on an equal basis.”59 Separate agendas, distinctly different non-white, agendas should be (Catlett and Black Power advocates argued) the order of the day. Larry Neal, in an essay entitled “Black Art and

Black Liberation”60 stated “We bear witness to a profound change in the way we now see ourselves and the world. And this has been an ongoing change. A steady, certain march toward a collective sense of who we are, and what we must now be about to liberate ourselves. Liberation is impossible if we fail to see ourselves in more positive terms. For without a change of vision, we are slaves to the oppressor's ideas and values - ideas and values that finally attack the very core of our existence. Therefore, we must see the world in terms of our own realities.”61 Neal went on to encapsulate the Black Power philosophy as, “Black Power, in its most fundamental sense, stands for the principal of Self- Definition and Self-Determination. Black Power teaches us that we must construct, through struggle, a world that is compatible with our highest visions.”62 In turn, pronouncements such as these led directly to the creation and championing of the term ‘Black art’ (replacing the equally bold, but by late 1960s rather

59 Samella Lewis, “In Her Own Words: Work – Refining the Ideas”, The Art of Elizabeth Catlett, Hancraft Studios, 1984: 101

60 Larry Neal, “Black Art and Black Liberation”, in The Black Revolution, An Ebony Special Issue, Johnson Publishing Company Inc., Chicago 1970: 30 - 53.

61 Larry Neal, “Black Art and Black Liberation”, in The Black Revolution. An Ebony Special Issue, Johnson Publishing Company Inc., Chicago 1970: 31

62 Ibid: 31 - 32

59 antiquated notion of ‘Negro Art’, championed by Catlett), as both an assertive and a defensive cultural component of the Black Power Movement. Black commentators and activists began to theorize and assert what agenda this new ‘Black art’ should set. Wrote Neal, “The Black Arts movement preaches that liberation is inextricably bound up with politics and culture. The culture gives us a revolutionary moral vision and a system of values and a methodology around which to shape the political movement.”63 He continued “… Black Art… should be about strengthening group unity and making radical change”64, and that furthermore, “It is the task of the Black artist to place before his people images and references that go beyond merely reflecting the oppression and the conditions engendered by oppression.”65 Neal, Perkins and others, just like Catlett had before them, were arguing for an art that grew out of, and addressed, Black struggle. They were also questioning the worth of any other kind of art produced by Black artists. ‘Black Art’ was being set up as a worthy pinnacle, and Black artists were being requested, challenged or persuaded to scale it. For Black artists, to decline the invitation was not acceptable. Even as Catlett acknowledged the discrimination from which the Black artist suffered, she issued a warning about the dangers of cultural dilution: “[Negro artists] experience a frustrating denial of opportunity to exhibit as Negro artists and so they are strongly tempted to lose their identity in the mass of American artists, who follow the prevailing mode say nothing socially, or even realistically. The result is a rationalization of their non-objectivity; they are accepted; they are no longer Negro, they are American; they are now equal.”66

63 Ibid: 46

64 Ibid: 47

65 Ibid: 47 - 48

66 Samella Lewis, “In Her Own Words: Work – Refining the Ideas”, The Art of Elizabeth Catlett, Hancraft Studios, 1984: 98

60

In considering sentiments such as these from Catlett, and sentiments from the Black Art advocates years later (for example, “… we cannot accept the false doctrine of “art for art’s sake.”)67, we see a compelling interplay between the two. As a woman, Catlett’s voice was fearless and uncompromising and it refused to pander to dominant and often prescriptive gendered notions. In time, figures such as Eugene Perkins adopted equally fearless and uncompromising positions. “For like the Black Revolution, the Black Arts Movement must seek to liberate black people from what Neal calls ‘the Euro-

Western sensibility’ that has enslaved, oppressed, and niggerized black people since the merciless slave ships first began shanghaiing our ancestors from Africa to America. There can be no dichotomy between the two. Both have to be interrelated and supportive of each other if true liberation is ever to be realized.” 68 Physical slavery may have been abolished, but argued Perkins and a host of other cultural activists, there still lingered and existed the greater damage of mental slavery. Hence the continued agenda of ‘liberation’ that was continually being emphasized in the late 1960s and early 1970s. As noted earlier in this thesis, Ron Karenga, another Black Arts Movement advocate wrote, “Black art, like everything else in the black community, must respond positively to the reality of revolution. [It] must expose the enemy, praise the people, and support the revolution.”69

As mentioned in the previous chapter, Catlett adapted, or developed, a distinctly international dimension to her approach to her practice. This came about as a direct

67 Ron Karenga, “Black Art: Mute Matter Given Force and Function”, Addison Gayle (ed.) The Black Aesthetic, Doubleday and Company, New York, 1971: 175 68 Sherry Turner, “An Overview of the New Black Arts”, Freedomways Journal, New York, USA, Vol. 9, No. 2, Spring 1969: 158

69 Ron Karenga, “Black Art: Mute Matter Given Force and Function”, Addison Gayle (ed.) The Black Aesthetic, Doubleday and Company, New York, 1971: 174 and 175

61 consequence of living and working in Mexico, and being empathetic to the poorer, often indigenous peoples around her. Elton Fax had drawn attention to this when he quoted Catlett as saying: “A woman critic here [Mexico] once told me that whenever I do Mexicans in sculpture they always turn out to be black…. My art does, after all, speak for both my peoples.” ”70 In moving to Mexico, Catlett embraced an internationalism seldom seem in the work of other African American artists, but an internationalism that was deemed essential to aspects of the Black Arts Movement. Wrote Neal, “The Black Arts movement seeks to link, in a highly conscious manner, art and politics in order to assist in the liberation of Black people. The Black Arts movement, therefore, reasons that this linking must take place along lines that are rooted in an Afro-American and Third World historical and cultural sensibility. By “Third World,” we mean that we see our struggle in the context of the global confrontations occurring in Africa, Asia and Latin America. We identify with all the righteous forces in those places which are struggling for human dignity.”71 Catlett sought to reach out to constituencies such as these. “…if we are to reach our audience on a large scale – our potential audience in the United States, in Latin America, in Africa, and in other receptive sections of the world – we must develop a public art, that is easily transported, easily exhibited, and easily reproduced.”72

One of the most pronounced visual arts manifestations of the Black Arts

Movement was AfriCobra, which had its routes in the Organization of Black American

Culture (OBAC), which was founded by Jeff Donaldson in Chicago. This organization professed a lack of faith in the ability of mainstream institutions to meaningfully include

70 Elton C. Fax, “Elizabeth Catlett”, Seventeen Black Artists (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1971: 31 71 Larry Neal, “Black Art and Black Liberation”, in The Black Revolution, An Ebony Special Issue, Johnson Publishing Company Inc., Chicago 1970: 32 - 33

72 Samella Lewis, “In Her Own Words: Work – Refining the Ideas”, The Art of Elizabeth Catlett, Hancraft Studios, 1984: 101

62

Black artists, so OBAC sought to take their art into the community. Strong believers in the presence of community art and participation from members of the community, OBAC painted the iconic and celebrated Wall of Respect in 1967. To paint this wall, they received permission from the leader of the gang that controlled the territory, and input from members of the community. As it was being painted, poets, musicians and performance artists frequently held performances in front of the wall. Soon after the mural was painted, the OBAC Visual Workshop disbanded. The legacy continued to live on as members Jeff Donaldson, Barbara Jones Hogu (whose Unite print was referenced in the previous chapter) and Wadsworth Jarell continued to meet on how to give visual expression to the goal of Black Power and eventually founded The African Commune of

Bad Relevant Artists (AfriCOBRA). Jeff Donaldson explained that the mission of

AfriCOBRA was to create art the people could relate to without any formal art training or experience. He placed the AfriCOBRA images into three categories:

1. Definition – images that deal with the past 2. Identification – images that relate to the present 3. Direction – images that look into the future

“It is our hope that intelligent definition of the past, and perceptive identification in the present, will project nationfull direction in the future – look for us there, because that’s where we’re at.”73

AfriCOBRA sought out similarities in Black art to define a common and easily recognizable aesthetic but were unable to find what they were looking for. They decided to create their own guidelines. Barbara Hogu Jones outlined them in 1973:

73 Jeff Donaldson, “AfriCOBRA 1,” 1970: 82 - 83

63

A. FREE SYMMETRY, the use of syncopated rhythmic repetition which constantly changes in color, texture, shapes, form, pattern, movement, feature, etc. B. MIMESIS AT MID-POINT, design which marks the spot where the real and the unreal, the objective and the non-objective, the plus and the minus meet. A point exactly between absolute abstractions and absolute naturalism.. C. VISIBILITY, clarity of form and line based on the interesting irregularity one senses in a freely drawn circle or organic object, the feeling for movement, growth changes and human touch. D. LUMINOSITY, “Shine,” literal and figurative, as seen in the dress and personal grooming of shoes, hair (process or Afro), laminated furniture, face, knees or skin. E. COLOR, Cool-ade color, bright colors with sensibility and harmony.74

As mentioned, artist and educator Jeff Donaldson was one of the founders of

AfriCobra and the esteem in which he held Catlett was reflected in a ‘commentary’ he wrote for Catlett’s solo exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem (this was the exhibition referred to in Chapter Two). Wrote Donaldson: “Some Black artists have committed their art to the Struggle for Survival/Victory of Black and Third World peoples over their oppressors. Elizabeth Catlett has made this commitment. Black and

Third World people need Elizabeth Catlett because her work speaks to these concerns, ever has and, hopefully, ever will. We need reflectors, interpretors (sic) and prophets who charge us with our divine mandate to regain our motherlands and our manhood and to punish those who persist in robbing us of them. Elizabeth Catlett offers visual praises to our potential. Wise and Brave Man (sic) of the Future will smile and praise her.”75

74 Barbara Jones Hogu, “The History, Philosophy and Aesthetics of AFRI-COBRA,” in AFRIC-COBRA III, exhibition catalog (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Art Gallery, 1973), unpaginated

75 Sharon F. Patton, African-American Art, Oxford History of Art, 1998: 205

64

The Black Arts Movement affected both the creation of art and the establishment of institutions catering to the needs and aspirations of Black artists. This included the setting up of galleries, and increased scholarly attention paid to Black artists by way of journals such as Black Art: an international quarterly. Here again, the influence of

Elizabeth Catlett can be clearly ascertained. Samella Lewis, who had been a student of

Elizabeth Catlett, moved to Los Angeles in 1966 after receiving her doctorate. The next decade would prove to be a fertile time in her career. Lewis self-published two volumes of Black Artists on Art, in 1969 and 1971 respectively. As a way to keep the book updated, Lewis started the magazine Black Art: an international quarterly with Val

Spaulding and Jan Jemison. Black Art was the first periodical to focus on African

American artists (and, to a much lesser extent, African Diaspora practitioners).

Eventually the periodical changed its name to International Review of African American

Art. As mentioned and referenced throughout this thesis, Lewis was responsible for one of the pioneering monographs on Catlett, The Art of Elizabeth Catlett, Hancraft Studios,

1984. Furthermore, as mentioned in the previous chapter, the debut issue of Black Art contained a feature on Catlett, complete with a print of Boys, for the journal purchaser to treat as the artwork it was. International Review of African American Art continues to be published, a testimony of the extent to which Catlett acted as an inspiration and a mentor to Samella Lewis.

During the early 1970s Lewis opened The Gallery to have a space to curate shows focusing on Black artists’ work. She expanded her vision in 1976 by founding the

Museum of African American Art. Through all of this, Lewis continued to work in

65 academia full time, having been hired as a full time professor of art history and humanities at Scripps College, in 1970. The Claremont University Center consortium included Scripps College and funded several of Lewis’ projects, most significantly the museum and magazine. Within this consortium, Lewis also worked with the Black

Studies program giving lectures on African American art and mentoring students. These lectures would culminate into her book, Art: African American in 1978. Until the mid-

1990s this book was the standard academic text for African American art history. A measure of the affection, ease of communication and empathy that existed between

Catlett and Lewis can be ascertained by a “Personal communication” from Catlett to

Lewis, from which quotes were drawn and included in an updated version of her major text on African American Artists, now published as African American Art and Artists,

University of California Press, 2003.

“Art must be realistic for me, whether sculpture or printmaking. I have always wanted my art to service my people – to reflect us, to relate to us, to stimulate us, to make us aware of our potential… Learning how to do this and passing that learning on to other people have been my goals… [technique is] the difference between offering our beautiful people art and offering them ineptitude. They deserve the very best and we have to equip ourselves to give them our very best.”76

Elizabeth Catlett was a figure whose pronouncements consistently intersected with those voices most staunchly advocating the Black Arts Movement, the rights of

Black artists, and the need to reach out to the Black community and other peoples of the

76 Samella Lewis, African American Art and Artists, University of California Press, 2003: 134

66 world. A self-proclaimed feminist, Catlett focused on the Black woman in her art, placing her as a memory holder and key figure in society and the family. But Catlett’s embrace of feminism came with caveats. “I’m a feminist, but I get the same feeling about the feminist movement when I hear the very sad problems that middle-class women in the

U.S. have in their need to express themselves. When I put it beside what is going on in the Black ghetto and the Chicano ghetto and in countries in Latin America and Africa – especially South Africa – and the Far East, middle class feminism doesn’t get to be that important to me.”77

77 Samella Lewis, “In Her Own Words: Purpose – The Focus on Women”, The Art of Elizabeth Catlett, Hancraft Studios, 1984: 102

67

Chapter Five - Conclusion

In her 97 years of life, Elizabeth Catlett was continuously engaged in the world around her. Her experiences shaped her outlook and art practices. Growing up with a working mother and a memory of a late father who both valued education, instilled the importance education can have in one’s life and how that same education could propel one further in life. Teaching traditional students and working adults who were not afforded the privilege of going to college opened Catlett’s eyes to her own privilege and the hunger that existed in the world for a deeper understanding of all things. All of these experiences would lead her to develop a philosophy that she expressed in every piece of work that she created. She was able to perfectly merge form and meaning, especially using that form to express emotion in ways that makes an artist not only memorable, but also worthy of the history books.

Elizabeth Catlett was not a resident of the United States during the time of the

Black Power and Black Arts Movements, but maintained an awareness of what was happening during this time. It was during this period that she made works such as

“Malcolm Speaks for Us” (1969) (fig. 24), “The Torture of Mothers” (1970) (fig. 15) and

“Watts/Detroit/Washington/Newark” (1970) (fig. 16). These prints and her sculptures expressed a solidarity that she had with Black people in America although she had already immigrated to Mexico. While working at the Taller de Gráfica Popular, her activism continued in her work. She created prints dedicated to the laboring and indigenous masses in Mexico and the print shop collectively looked to the Civil Rights

68 and Black Power movements in America for inspiration. Her print, “Malcolm Speaks for

Us” (reproduced on the last page of this thesis) is a visual representation of one of the ways in which the philosophies of Malcolm X helped shape the Black Power and Black

Arts Movements.

In the For My People series, Catlett turned the indexical to iconic, while exploring different expressions of Black identity. Margaret Walker was asked about the

“personal I” versus the “communal I” in her book of poems, For My People. She admitted that this “I” was transformative and could be taken in either sense. “I think some of the poems are quite personal though they grow into a larger identity. They really begin with a very personal expression of my love for the South. ‘There were bizarre beginnings in old lands for the making of me,’ ‘my grandmothers,’ ‘I sing of slum scabs on city faces’ – all of them began with the personal beauty, but they move out beyond the personal.”78

With the series of prints Catlett created to accompany the poem of the same name, it is clear how Catlett has transformed this concept from the page into image. The images that accompany the stanzas can easily be anyone’s experiences and have grown to be timeless.

This series also referenced her artistic genealogy and that of an established Black aesthetic. Although her artistic expression is in the visual arts, she engaged a poet who also had an established genealogy in the Black Arts. The circular interaction of these

78 Charles Rowell, “Poetry, History, and Humanism: An Interview with Margaret Walker,” Conversations with Margaret Walker, University Press of Mississippi, 2002: 21 - 22

69 women situated them both in their individual canons and in the Black Arts Movement as a whole. By examining Catlett’s genealogy and philosophies, it is clear that she fits squarely into the art historical canon by engaging with each time period in which she was active and being able to pull each of those times forward in her work.

Black subjectivity is rooted in class and social difference, which makes it relatable to struggle and resistance across the world.

The idea that Black artists should create their own aesthetic has been expressed in

Catlett’s works. The abstract rendering of the facial features in Catlett’s figures is easily attributed to the artist. She has managed to use this imagery to create representational images that also express wide ranges of emotion. In this way, she created her own unique canon while continuously expressing the tenets of the Black Arts Movement, both before it had been cited and named as such. Catlett’s embrace of the Black Arts Movement continued well after its demise in the mid 1970s.

In 1970, (the year before he penned the fulsome tribute to her quoted in the last chapter) Jeff Donaldson listed Elizabeth Catlett as one of the Elders of Distinction during his Conference on the Functional Aspects of Black Art.79 This conference included panels on the various artistic aspects of the Black Arts Movement and task force initiatives. Although she was being recognized at this conference, the United States government refused to grant her a visa to enter the country legally, on the grounds that

79 This conference was held at Northwestern University May 6/7-10, 1970. Catlett was listed as an Elder of Distinction along with Romare Bearden, John Biggers, Margaret Burroughs, Aaron Douglas, John M. Howard, Jacob Lawrence, Hughie Lee-Smith, Archibald Motley, Lois Mailou Jones Pierre-Noel, William Walker and Charles White. See texts such as Jeff Donaldson, “CONFABA – Conference on the Functional Aspects of Black Art (May 7 – 10, 1970)”, International Review of African-American Art 1 (15) 1988: 27 – 30

70

“as a foreigner, there was a possibility that she would interfere in social or political problems, and thus, constituted a threat to the well-being of the United States of

America.”80 In this conversation, Catlett goes on to describe her position as an artist in the Black Arts Movement and in the fight for Black Liberation. “To the degree and in the proportion that the United States constitute a threat to Black People, to that degree and more, do I hope to have earned that honor. For I have been, and am currently, and always hope to be a Black Revolutionary Artist, and all that it implies! However, in this sense, I regard myself in good company. Yesterday, I learned that another of our Black Sisters,

Dr. Shirley Graham, widow of the late Dr. Dubois, was also refused a visa to return to the

United States. Neither in my case or hers, do I regard it as accidental, or coincidental.

To me it demonstrates just another small harassment in a giant conspiracy to keep Black people from coming together to exchange ideas, and to share views which might aid in advancing the struggle for Black Liberation.”81

Catlett went on to express her solidarity with Black artists in America and the similarities they had with the artists in Mexico. The conference proceedings were expected to affect the course of the artistic movement in Mexico. Artists were looking to participants in the

Black Arts Movement for inspiration and guidance on how to proceed with their own liberation movements. She continued to point out the global scope of these movements by citing the conference held in Algeria. Like Larry Neal, Ron Karenga and the members

80 Transcript of Elizabeth Catlett’s telephone conversation of May 6, 1970; This can be found in the papers of Elizabeth Catlett housed in the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University, New Orleans.

81 Ibid.

71 of AfriCOBRA, she believed that art should be used for liberation of Black people and that the aesthetic of Black Art would develop according to the needs of the people.

All of the things she expressed in this phone call and in her writings and speeches translated into her work of the time and continued to be expressed in her work of the future. Her activism, creative spirit, awareness and innovation has secured Catlett a place in the art historical canon as an individual artist, a participant in the Black Arts

Movement and an artist that is able to transcend movements.

Elizabeth Catlett and Margaret Walker were two extraordinary women, whose visions of the Black American experience strongly resonated with each other’s work.

Walker’s For My People portfolio of prints represents an extraordinary coming together of two singular, original and historic American women.

72

Image

(fig. 24) Elizabeth Catlett, Malcolm X Speaks for Us, 1969, linoleum cut, 95 x 70 cm

73

Appendix: For My People

For My People By Margaret Walker

For my people everywhere singing their slave songs repeatedly: their dirges and their ditties and their blues and jubilees, praying their prayers nightly to an unknown god, bending their knees humbly to an unseen power;

For my people lending their strength to the years, to the gone years and the now years and the maybe years, washing ironing cooking scrubbing sewing mending hoeing plowing digging planting pruning patching dragging along never gaining never reaping never knowing and never understanding;

For my playmates in the clay and dust and sand of Alabama backyards playing baptizing and preaching and doctor and jail and soldier and school and mama and cooking and playhouse and concert and store and hair and Miss Choomby and company;

For the cramped bewildered years we went to school to learn to know the reasons why and the answers to and the people who and the places where and the days when, in memory of the bitter hours when we discovered we were black and poor and small and different and nobody cared and nobody wondered and nobody understood;

For the boys and girls who grew in spite of these things to be man and woman, to laugh and dance and sing and play and drink their wine and religion and success, to marry their playmates and bear children and then die of consumption and anemia and lynching;

For my people thronging 47th Street in Chicago and Lenox Avenue in New York and Rampart Street in New Orleans, lost disinherited dispossessed and happy people filling the cabarets and taverns and other people’s pockets and needing bread and shoes and milk and land and money and something—something all our own;

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For my people walking blindly spreading joy, losing time being lazy, sleeping when hungry, shouting when burdened, drinking when hopeless, tied, and shackled and tangled among ourselves by the unseen creatures who tower over us omnisciently and laugh;

For my people blundering and groping and floundering in the dark of churches and schools and clubs and societies, associations and councils and committees and conventions, distressed and disturbed and deceived and devoured by money-hungry glory-craving leeches, preyed on by facile force of state and fad and novelty, by false prophet and holy believer;

For my people standing staring trying to fashion a better way from confusion, from hypocrisy and misunderstanding, trying to fashion a world that will hold all the people, all the faces, all the adams and eves and their countless generations;

Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let a bloody peace be written in the sky. Let a second generation full of courage issue forth; let a people loving freedom come to growth. Let a beauty full of healing and a strength of final clenching be the pulsing in our spirits and our blood. Let the martial songs be written, let the dirges disappear. Let a race of men now rise and take control.

Copyright © Margaret Walker

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Bibliography

Anon, “Margaret Walker”, Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Basic Civitas Books, New York, 1999: 1956

Barksdale, Richard, and Kinnamon, Keneth, “Margaret Walker”, Black Writers of America: A Comparative Anthology, Macmillan, 1972: 635 – 636

Bearden, Romare and Henderson, Harry, “Elizabeth Catlett”, A History of African- American Artists from 1972 to the Present, Pantheon Books, New York, 1993: 418 - 426

Benét, Stephen Vincent, Foreword, Margaret Walker, For My People, Yale University Press, 1942

Boyer, Horace Clarence, “Gospel Music”, Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, Macmillan Reference USA, 2006: 928 - 934

Collins, Lisa Gail and Crawford, Margo Natalie (eds.), New Thoughts on the Black Arts Movement, Rutgers University Press, 2006

Donaldson, Jeff, “CONFABA – Conference on the Functional Aspects of Black Art (May 7 – 10, 1970)”, International Review of African-American Art 1 (15) 1988: 27 – 30

Donaldson, Jeff , “AfriCOBRA 1,” 1970: 82 – 83 [quoted in Lisa Gail Collins and Margo Natalie Crawford (eds), New Thoughts on the Black Arts Movement, Rutgers University Press, 2006]

Fax, Elton C., “Elizabeth Catlett”, Seventeen Black Artists, Dodd, Mead, New York, 1971

Graham, Maryemma, “Walker, Margaret”, entry in Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, (Volume 5), Thomson Gale, 2006: 2260 - 2261

Geis, Deborah R., Suzan-Lori Parks, University of Michigan Press, 2008

Garrett, Shawn-Marie, “Figures, Speech and Form in Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom”, Kevin J. Wetmore Jr and Alycia Smith-Howard (eds.) Suzan-Lori Parks: A Casebook, Routledge, 2007

Henkes, Robert, The Art of Black American Women: Works of Twenty-Four Artists in the Twentieth Century, “Elizabeth Catlett”, McFarland & Company, Inc., 1993

Herzog, Melanie, Elizabeth Catlett: An American Artist in Mexico, University of Washington Press (Jacob Lawrence Series on American Artists), 2005.

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Herzog, Melanie Anne, Elizabeth Catlett: In the Image of the People, Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2005

Jones Hogu, Barbara, “The History, Philosophy and Aesthetics of AFRI-COBRA,” in AFRIC-COBRA III, exhibition catalog (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Art Gallery, 1973), unpaginated

Karenga, Ron, “Black Art: Mute Matter Given Force and Function”, Woodie King and Earl Anthony (eds.) Black Poets and Prophets: The Theory, Practice, and Esthetics of the Pan-Africanist Revolution, Mentor/New American Library, New York, 1972: 174 - 179

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Myers, Aaron, “Elizabeth Catlett”, Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience: Kwame Anthony Appiah, Henry Louis Gates Jr. (editors), Basic Civitas Books, 1999: 394

Neal, Larry, “Black Art and Black Liberation”, in The Black Revolution, An Ebony Special Issue, Johnson Publishing Company Inc., Chicago 1970: 30 - 53.

Parks, Suzan-Lori, The America Play and Other Works, Theatre Communications Group, 1994

Patton, Sharon F., African-American Art, Oxford History of Art, 1998

Rowell, Charles, “Poetry, History, and Humanism: An Interview with Margaret Walker,” Conversations with Margaret Walker, Maryemma Graham (editor), University Press of Mississippi, 2002

Sellman, James Clyde, “Gospel Music”, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Henry Louis Gates Jr. (editors), Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Basic Civitas Books, 1999: 850 - 856

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Stewart, Ruth Ann, New York/Chicago: WPA and the Black Artist, Studio Museum in Harlem (exhibition catalogue), 1978

Turner, Sherry, “An Overview of the New Black Arts”, Freedomways Journal, New York, USA, Vol. 9, No. 2, Spring 1969: 156 – 163

Wilson, August, The Ground on Which I Stand, Theatre Communications Group, 2001.

Archives

The Amistad Research Center, at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, holds the papers of Elizabeth Catlett

Website http://www.amistadresearchcenter.org/beyond_the_blues/catlett.html (accessed April 27 2014)

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