Chicago’s Native Son
Chicago’s Native Son
Charles White and the Laboring of the Black Renaissance
This chapter explores the early career of Chicago-born painter Charles White, and argues that the artistic production of young black artists became intricately intertwined with protest politics during the 1930s. As a young man, White educated himself in the history of African Americans by discovering books like The New Negro, the definitive collection of the Harlem Renaissance, and by joining the Arts Craft Guild, where White and his cohorts taught each other new painting techniques and held their own exhibitions. These painters developed as artists by identifying with the laboring people of Chicago and by pushing to expand the boundaries of American democracy. African American artists like White thus came to represent the vanguard of the cultural movement among workers in the 1930s, making Chicago's South Side the center of the black arts movement.
Keywords: Charles White, young black artists, 1930s protest politics, Arts Craft Guild, Chicago, American democracy, South Side, black arts movement
Illinois Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
