James Weldon Johnson was an American writer and civil rights activist. He was married to civil rights activist Grace Nail Johnson. Johnson was a leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), where he started working in 1917. In 1920, he was chosen as executive secretary of the organization, effectively the operating officer. He served in that position from 1920 to 1930. Johnson established his reputation as a writer, and was known during the Harlem Renaissance for his poems, novel and anthologies collecting both poems and spirituals of Black culture. He wrote the lyrics for "Lift Every Voice and Sing", which later became known as the Black National Anthem, the music being written by his younger brother, composer J. Rosamond Johnson.
"Lift Every Voice and Sing" is a hymn with lyrics by James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) and set to music by his brother, J. Rosamond Johnson (1873–1954). Written from the context of African Americans in the late 19th century, the hymn is a prayer of thanksgiving to God as well as a prayer for faithfulness and freedom, with imagery that evokes the biblical Exodus from slavery to the freedom of the "promised land."
African-American art is a broad term describing visual art created by African Americans. The range of art they have created, and are continuing to create, over more than two centuries is as varied as the artists themselves. Some have drawn on cultural traditions in Africa, and other parts of the world, for inspiration. Others have found inspiration in traditional African-American plastic art forms, including basket weaving, pottery, quilting, woodcarving and painting, all of which are sometimes classified as "handicrafts" or "folk art".
Faith Ringgold is an American painter, painting on different materials including fabric, a published author, mixed media sculptor, performance artist, and intersectional activist, perhaps best known for her narrative quilts.
Ernest Crichlow was an American social realist artist known for his narrative paintings and illustrations from the Depression-era, which focused on social injustice and the realities faced by African Americans.
Gwendolyn Clarine Knight was an American artist who was born in Bridgetown, Barbados, in the West Indies.
Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller was an African-American artist who celebrated Afrocentric themes. At the fore of the Harlem Renaissance, Warrick was known for being a poet, painter, theater designer, and sculptor of the black American experience. At the turn of the 20th century, she achieved a reputation as the first black woman sculptor and was a well-known sculptor in Paris before returning to the United States. Warrick was a protégée of Auguste Rodin, and has been described as "one of the most imaginative Black artists of her generation." Through adopting a horror-based figural style and choosing to depict events of racial injustice, like the lynching of Mary Turner, Warrick used her platform to address the societal traumas of African Americans.
Selma Hortense Burke was an American sculptor and a member of the Harlem Renaissance movement. Burke is best known for a bas relief portrait of President Franklin D. Roosevelt which may have been the model for his image on the obverse of the dime. She described herself as "a people's sculptor" and created many pieces of public art, often portraits of prominent African-American figures like Duke Ellington, Mary McLeod Bethune and Booker T. Washington. In 1979, she was awarded the Women's Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement Award. She summed up her life as an artist, "I really live and move in the atmosphere in which I am creating".
Augusta Savage was an American sculptor associated with the Harlem Renaissance. She was also a teacher whose studio was important to the careers of a generation of artists who would become nationally known. She worked for equal rights for African Americans in the arts.
William Henry Rinehart was a noted American sculptor. He is considered "the last important American sculptor to work in the classical style."
Anne Whitney was an American sculptor and poet. She made full-length and bust sculptures of prominent political and historical figures, and her works are in major museums in the United States. She received prestigious commissions for monuments. Two statues of Samuel Adams were made by Whitney and are located in Washington, D.C.'s National Statuary Hall Collection and in front of Faneuil Hall in Boston. She also created two monuments to Leif Erikson.
Nellie Mae Rowe was an African-American artist from Fayette County, Georgia. Although she is best known today for her colorful works on paper, Rowe worked across mediums, creating drawings, collages, altered photographs, hand-sewn dolls, home installations and sculptural environments. She was said to have an "instinctive understanding of the relation between color and form." Her work focuses on race, gender, domesticity, African-American folklore, and spiritual traditions.
Brenda Putnam was an American sculptor, teacher and author.
Lift Every Voice may refer to:
The Harlem Community Art Center was a Federal Art Project community art center that operated from 1937 to 1942. It influenced various budding artists intent on depicting Harlem and led to the formation of the Harlem Arts Alliance. It became a countrywide exemplar for others, notably the South Side Community Art Center in Chicago.
Marion Sanford was an American sculptor known for her bronze portraits of women engaged in everyday domestic activities.
Helen Evans Ramsaran is an American sculptor. Her work explores the primordial world of ancient rituals, mysterious fossilized remains, mystic forces, and African inspired architecture. Ramsaran's work was first inspired by a trip to Africa in 1981, and although her sculpture is inanimate, there is a lurking sense of humanity's presence. Her recent work explores the effects of climate change on life sustaining systems and resources, specifically marine ecosystems and plant and animal species.
Denise Murrell is a curator at large for 19th- and 20th-century art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. She is best known for her 2018 exhibition Posing Modernity: The Black Model from Manet and Matisse to Today, which explored how French Impressionist painters and later artists portrayed black models.
Bruno Mankowski, was a German-born American sculptor, carver, ceramicist and medalist.
Mary Perry Stone was an American painter, sculptor, and muralist. She is best known for her social protest artwork. Her archives are held in the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art.
