Art is all around us. You may see colorful murals covering buildings or hear music blasting through open windows. The artists behind these pieces often try to tell their stories. Art has long told the stories of Black history too. Musicians sang songs about enslaved people. Black heroes crafted art about their experiences. Let’s dance through the pages of Black history.
“The caged bird sings of freedom.” Maya Angelou wrote those words. She penned more than 30 books. Angelou worked in the arts for more than 60 years. She spoke about race and never giving up. A famous poem of Angelou’s is called “Still I Rise.” In the poem, Angelou insists that nothing can hold her back, not even her skin color. The piece ends with these lines:
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my
gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
Other art forms have helped Black people rise up. One was jazz music. African Americans created jazz in the late 1800s in New Orleans, Louisiana. Musicians like Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Duke Ellington, and Louis Armstrong told Black stories through their songs. For example, Holiday sang a famous tune in 1939. Many call it the first protest song.
Jazz became the background music of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. In that movement, protesters spoke out against . Simone wrote songs about this historical time. One was “Four Women,” which touched on the that Black women faced. Piano player Duke Ellington used his instrument to demand equality. He would not play in front of audiences. And trumpet player Louis Armstrong spoke out about segregation in schools. Ellington and Armstrong both made music that reflected the Black experience.
Black artists have put paint to paper to tell their stories as well. For example, Jacob Lawrence painted scenes from African American life. One of his collections focused on the Great Migration in the 1900s. At that time, millions of Black people left the southern United States to escape poverty and racism. Lawrence’s group of 60 paintings is called the Migration Series. The paintings show Black people traveling, working, and going to school. They also show the challenges Black people faced, including unfair treatment by the police.
Lawrence once said: “I do not look upon the story of the Blacks in America as a separate experience to the American culture.” He called it “part of the American experience as a whole.”
Updated January 31, 2023, 5:02 P.M. (ET)
By Alexa Tirapelli
