Lawrence Arthur Jones (1910-1996): black artist and Southern educator.
In the 1994 essay "Critical Genealogies: Writing Black Art," discussing issues of social class and art, bell hooks argues that art is dominated by considerations of class:In segregated Southern schools art has traditionally been taught from a perspective informed by the class and racial bias of Eurocentric traditions. This is an accurate description of the way art continues to be taught in many predominantly black schools including colleges and universities. (1)
In this paper we examine one case of an artist and educator in a predominantly black institution of higher learning in Mississippi who, from the mid-1950s to the 1970s, attempted to circumvent both segregation and Eurocentric traditions. (2)
Lawrence Arthur Jones (1910-1996) came from a poor background to create a department of fine arts in a school mandated to instruct black youth either in vocational skills or as teachers at what became Jackson State University (Figure 1). Though Jones subscribed to the views of fine art he was taught in art school in the north, he added a twist by focusing on Hispanic and, to a certain extent, African culture in the classes he introduced. African American youth of the mid-twentieth century in the south were barred from attending public art spaces. They were also not deemed to be in a high enough social class to receive training in fine arts. Lawrence Jones found innovative and original methods of overcoming such barriers.
Jackson State University was founded in 1877 by the American Baptist Home Mission Society in Natchez, Mississippi, as the Natchez Seminary and after five years, moved to Jackson, Mississippi. The school settled first in central Jackson and then was moved to its present location in the southwest part of the city where it became Jackson College. (3) Between 1872 and 1881, the Mississippi legislature cut spending on public education for both whites and blacks by sixty-six percent. (4) The climate was not conducive to public education in Mississippi.
During its early years the school was a private institution. Fifty-seven years after the move to Jackson, in 1934, the Baptist Home Mission Society withdrew its support of the school. Six years later, Jackson College secured the backing of the State of Mississippi if not its financial support. House Bill number 722 was signed by Governor Paul B. Johnson, Sr., in May 1940 designating the college an officially state-supported institution. (5) There were objections in the legislature against calling a school for blacks a "college," however, so the name of the school became the Mississippi Negro Training School. The name was later changed to Jackson State College and finally, in 1974, to Jackson State University.
The climate for education in Mississippi had not improved greatly in sixty years, however. One set of figures states that in 1940, white public schools in Mississippi received $41.71 per student. For the same year, black schools received $7.24 for each student. The salaries for white teachers were $776.00 per year, while black teachers earned $232.00 yearly. (6) Most of the operating funds for the "Mississippi Negro Training School," were provided by the Rosenwald Foundation which at first supported schools for African Americans. Later the foundation gave scholarships to promising African American scholars and artists. The State of Mississippi provided $10,000 in 1940 and the Rosenwald Foundation furnished an additional $30,000. (7)
Lawrence Arthur Jones was a successful navigator of the segregation era who endeavored to pass his survival skills and his "gift" on to others. In "Critical Genealogies: Writing Black Art," bell hooks describes the phenomenon of "the gift--the capacity to create art--that one had to yield, surrender to that calling." (8) In the white community this would be termed a "calling," related to a religious vocation. In interviews in 2005 Lawrence Jones's widow Maria Ramirez Jones spoke several times about people who told Lawrence: "Boy, you got talent!" (9) When he was a young man in Lynchburg, Virginia, several important people recognized the young Lawrence Jones's "gift," and helped him secure money to travel to the Art Institute in Chicago where he studied from 1934 to 1936. While in Chicago, Lawrence Jones worked with Jane Addams' Hull House, where he met Gertrude Stein. Maria Jones quotes her husband as describing Gertrude Stein's deep voiced praise: "Boy, you got some talent." (10) It was clear that young Lawrence Jones was destined for a career in the arts.
One of twelve children whose mother was a descendant of Thomas' Jefferson's slave Sally Hemings, Lawrence Jones inherited a background rich in historic lore. (11) Though his family owned few material goods, they had a lively intellectual background. For those who knew him, Mr. Jones' quiet manner and well-spoken courtesy were impressive. In 1910 when Mr. Jones was born, Lynchburg was a bustling town. Postcard photographs of the time show a brick-paved main street with wagons and buggies. Crowds of people filled the street for the opening day of the first "five-and-ten-cent" store in Lynchburg in spring 1910, before Lawrence Jones was born on Christmas Day of that year. (12)
Lawrence Jones attended public school in Virginia. When his talents were recognized locally, people raised money to help him leave Lynchburg. He attended the Art Institute of Chicago full time in 1935 and 1936. In both of these years he received Honorable Mention awards for his still life paintings. He returned to the Art Institute after serving in the army in World War II for the summers of 1946 and of 1951 through 1954, though he fell just short of the hours required for graduation. (13) Mr. Jones later attended the University of Mississippi in 1970 and 1971, where he received a Master's Degree in painting. This pattern of interrupted studies was not uncommon among African Americans who did not have the resources to complete degrees and often worked full time while studying.
From Chicago, Lawrence Jones went to Dillard University in New Orleans. He attended Dillard from 1936 to 1940, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Drama in 1940. (14) While attending Dillard, he apparently also taught courses in art. This was the beginning of Jones's service to the cause of his "gift" in the south. He then went to teach at Fort Valley State University in Fort Valley, Georgia. Winning a Rosenwald Fellowship in 1940 allowed him to go to Mexico to study at the recently established graphic arts workshop, the Taller de Grafica Popular in Mexico City. His studies were interrupted by World War II which brought him hastily back to Georgia to pack his art works into a subsequently lost trunk and report to Fort McClellan near Anniston, Alabama. (15)
In the US Army, Mr. Jones was classified as an illustrator and never left the United States. It was at Fort Valley State during World War II that Lawrence Jones painted the mural depicting an idealized rural southern life, Negro Work and Life in Georgia, discussed below. After the war, he returned to Georgia where he met Maria Ramirez from Cienfuegos, Cuba whom he married in 1946. She had been sent to study by her family with her return passage tucked in her luggage, just in case things did not work out in Georgia. In 1949, Jones was recruited by Jackson State College as it was then called, and moved to Mississippi to create an art department.
In Mississippi, Lawrence Jones made two important innovations. He was not an angry radical who chaffed against the restraints of racial segregation. Indeed, he was a lifelong pacifist. (16) Instead of fighting, Lawrence Jones turned his attention and his spirit to creating a department of fine art where previously only industrial art was taught. His second innovation was to bring Hispanic and Caribbean culture to a racially segregated student body that had been reared primarily in urban and rural Mississippi without access to art of any kind.
Jackson State College was apparently in the philosophical camp of George Washington Carver which espoused an approach based on achievement. Indeed, when the building named for Governor Paul B. Johnson, Sr., was built in 1942, a mural of the achievements of George Washington Carver by Vertis Hayes was installed over the door of the auditorium. (17) Lawrence Jones endeavored to bring a philosophical depth and sophistication to students who were growing up excluded from exposure to the high culture of their era. His philosophical orientation was more attuned to W.E.B. Dubois' notion of the "Talented Tenth." (18) Dr. DuBois believed that African Americans should be educated in liberal arts and not simply in vocational training. By the term "Talented Tenth," DuBois meant people of talent and education who were to teach others.
When Lawrence Jones was recruited by President Jacob L. Reddix through a friend, his mandate was to help build a program focused on art education for teachers. (19) When the Joneses arrived at Jackson State College, they were housed in Quonset huts left over from World War II. Faculty housing and classrooms were in these temporary buildings. There was no "art department." Painting courses were confined to industrial applications. Industrial Arts courses taught which paint was suitable for which type of surface and how to handle them. (20) Drawing courses focused on mechanical and architectural drawing techniques. Teacher training was the other concentration and the curriculum of the fledgling art department reflected this. The primary focus was preparing students for jobs in industry and education. Within the liberal arts, only the music department appears to have been flourishing in the late 1940s.
In the 1949-1950 undergraduate catalog, Jackson College Bulletin, Industrial Arts, Carpentry and Mechanical Arts are listed alongside courses in drawing and art education. Between 1951 and 1955, Lawrence Jones introduced courses such as art history, basic drawing, and art fundamentals. Painting, ceramics, and art education courses were also added. More unusual course offerings consisted of stage craft, costume design, and advertising art. Added courses in theater arts reflect Lawrence Jones's training in theater at Dillard University. One curiosity of the period is a course in Islamic art history which is listed. One wonders who taught this course. (21)
By the late 1950s Maria Ramirez Jones was teaching fabric crafts and printmaking. In 1956, Lawrence Jones hired Marcus Douyon from Haiti to teach ceramics. Marcus and his wife, Luz Douyon, were native French speakers. Mrs. Douyon taught French at Jackson State College for many years. (22) These people created a core of individuals with cultural backgrounds that differed from those of African Americans in racially segregated central Mississippi.
Trained in Haiti and at Alfred University in New York, Marcus Douyon was a mainstay of the Art Department until his retirement in the 1990s. Mr. Douyon's background made the transition between industry and art smoother because he was capable both in fine arts and in industrial ceramic techniques. Under his direction, the ceramics program boasted three large gas fired kilns and was housed in J.Y. Woodard Hall, the first permanent classroom building on the Jackson State College campus. (23) Between 1956 and 1970, Lawrence Jones and Marcus Douyon added courses to create a core curriculum. Required courses in the 1950s included:
Art Fundamentals 101/102
Stagecraft 313
Introduction to Arts and Crafts 103
Painting 322
Drawing 211/212
History of Modern Art 323
Interior Design 214
Art in Secondary School 401
Art History 222/223
Directed Teaching 402
Practicum (Primary/Elementary) 301
Costume Design 411
Advertising Art 311
Advanced Painting 413
Ceramics 312
Advanced Ceramics 414
These were required of students graduating with a major in art. In addition, the Athenian Art Club was established to: "... give its members experience in all fields of fine arts and crafts." The club was very popular. Through measures such as these, Lawrence Jones built a solid foundation in the fine arts.
Jackson State College's Art Department was well established by 1960. It was an accepted and important part of the Liberal Arts program preparing art teachers, fine artists, and students with a more commercially oriented focus in fields such as ceramics and advertising. In 1963, Mr. Jones contacted the Harmon Foundation in New York asking to borrow an art exhibit for a "Century of Negro Art Festival," which he was planning. Mary Beattie Brady of the Harmon Foundation answered that she did not have anything available, but suggested other sources for Mr. Jones. One of these was John Biggers who was then at Texas Southern University. Another contact she suggested was Atlanta University which had a collection of the works of: "... artists who have come to prominence in the forties up to the present time." (24) Atlanta University did send exhibits of the works of artists, some of whom later became famous.
The Jones home on Valley Street near campus became a haven for artistic students. Mr. Jones built a studio attached to his house where he painted. Visiting students learned lessons no classroom could impart. Betty Couther has stated: "In his studio, Jones noted my interest in his many paintings and began to tell me what each meant." (25) Her interest in iconography and in triptychs was born out of this encounter. Mr. and Mrs. Jones entertained students in their home and on the patio and swimming pool he built himself. Sculpture stood in the front yard. In the backyard, the patio was a huge ceramic and tile mosaic. The studio was a place to teach and to learn. By creating a rich artistic environment, the Joneses themselves created role models for students.
Lawrence Jones always recognized the limitations of his Mississippi program, however. He was quick to tell students: "You want to be a good commercial artist, get the basics here and go to the right school. If you want to be a master in this, go to the right school." Some excellent students went from Jackson State College to places such as Parsons School of Design in New York. (26) The most famous student to go from Jackson to New York and on to Paris, France, was the 1980s fashion designer Patrick Kelly. (27)
Mr. Jones's early experiences with Hull House and the example which Jane Addams had set by adding an art gallery and reading rooms at Hull House form an interesting background. A Chicago Tribune article of 1891 stated that examples of art in the Hull Settlement House were designed so that: "The love of the beautiful is implanted in the poor. It only needs a word of encouragement to make the bud burst into flower and thus lighten the homes of those who are shut off from many enjoyments from lack of money." (28) Though this article appeared before Lawrence Jones was born, it is not unlikely that he was inspired by similar sentiments.
In 1940, Jones went south to Mexico to study art at the Taller de Grafica Popular. This three year old program was dedicated to bringing "art to the people." Thus almost fifty years later, Lawrence Jones encountered ideas similar to the Hull House approach. Especially important is the idea that it is the obligation of those better placed in society to help those less fortunate. This is similar to W. E. B. DuBois's notion of the "Talented Tenth." Certainly Jackson State College was in the business of training young African Americans for jobs when Lawrence Jones arrived on campus. He managed to change the focus of the arts program from the strictly practical to a more philosophical basis. His philosophy was based on the examples he found in W.E.B. DuBois and Jane Addams and in the artistic milieu he encountered in Mexico.
Jones focused on the cultures of Latin America and the Caribbean. From his studies in Mexico, Lawrence Jones also learned to love murals. The Mexican Mural tradition formed a strong influence in his work. Between 1941 and 1943, he created a mural in Patton Hall in Fort Valley, Georgia. (29) This is titled: Negro Work and Life in Georgia. Painted on canvas, the mural was removed and restored when the building was renovated in 1969 (Figure 2). It is a beautiful example of Jones's early work which traces the history of African Americans from Africa through slavery to liberation and farming in rural Georgia. The four panels wrap around three walls and are separated in the center by the arch of a wide doorway. The first panel on the left shows life in Africa (Figure 3). The figure of a man with a musical instrument may be modeled on Jones's brother. (30)
Slave ships at sea form a transition to the second panel on the left side of the doorway. Here the harsh life under slavery is depicted. In the foreground, an overseer stands over a beaten slave (Figure 4). Slave cabins from Hermitage Plantation near Savannah, Georgia, appear in the background. The Hermitage slave cabins were torn down when the land was sold for a paper mill on the Savannah River in the 1930s. Jones probably worked from photographs in the Georgia Historical Society. (31)
Arm chains painted above the doorway link the left depiction of slavery with the right hand depiction of Reconstruction. The left cuff of the chain is bound to a tree. The right cuff of the chain is painted as open (Figure 5). Depicted in the panel to the right of the doorway is Liberty Hall in Crawfordsville, Georgia, home of Alexander Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy (Figure 6). The choice of iconography here is less understandable. One possibility is that the figure staring out of the painting at the bottom is Stephens and that he is unhappy with former slaves behind him who are rejoicing, teaching and wearing professional white laboratory coats. (32)
The final panel on the right depicts flourishing farm life among African Americans in rural Georgia. Significant are the figures of the woman on the porch who gives a little girl a book and the young man who is working on a truck (Figure 7). The simple frame house features a windmill for pumping or generating and back porch shelves filled with home-canned food. A woman in the center prepares food. Everyone is busy and productive. Animated chickens crowd the yard while a cow crops grass in the foreground. These are modern, well-dressed people. Lawrence Jones extols skills, industry and education as keys to prosperity and contentment.
This idealistic mural bears traces of the style of the Mexican muralists which often contain socialist political messages. In particular, Lawrence Jones' brush strokes and shading are strongly reminiscent of Diego Rivera's style. The backgrounds are Cubist in style with simple overlapping geometric shapes used to create a sense of space. In the creation of volume by using highlights and soft blue shadows, Jones also resembles Rivera.
Lawrence Jones created other murals after he moved to Jackson, Mississippi. Several were for local churches but it is unclear whether they still exist. One large mural in the music building on campus details the history of Jackson State University. In the first figure here, Mr. Jones is shown in front of a portion of this mural. This devotion to mural painting is one reason Jones's work is not better known.
In addition to his own painting, Lawrence Jones created an atmosphere in which the arts could flourish. Students evidently were also excited by the piquancy of foreign culture which the Jones and Douyon families brought to campus. A celebratory background atmosphere of carnival was drawn from the Caribbean and Latin America. Maria Jones states:
Believe it or not, the Festival of the Arts started among the students, but first we shared the Festival with a carnival dance. That was something. They had to make their own costumes. It was extraordinary. Every year we had one. It started in 1961, 1961. Oh yes, in spring we had all the things going. We worked like devils. (33)
African American and Latin American artists were invited to participate in these festivals which grew into important week-long arts programs celebrating music, visual arts and literature. By the 1970s, programs featured such luminaries as Margaret Walker Alexander, Elizabeth Catlett, Dudley Charles, Ruby Dee, and Edward Fisher. By the time of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi, according to Mrs. Jones, people wanted to be seen as contributing to this cause. (34)
The cloud over this scene was, of course, racial discrimination leading to unrest which developed from Freedom Summer of 1964 until it exploded with the killings of two Jackson State College students in May, 1970. One result of the discrimination was a persistent lack of resources. In interviews, Maria Jones decries the lack of resources. There was simply no money. The Joneses and the Douyons took students to programs off campus and invited them to their homes. They used recycled and "scrounged" materials such as foil, cardboard, pipe cleaners to create art. They brought Hale Woodruff's Atlanta University Art Annuals to campus. They created gallery spaces on campus and exhibited works such as African art collected by President Jacob L. Reddix. (35) Otherwise they had little access to art resources in the segregated south--neither Afro- nor Euro-cenetric.
In some of Jones's later prints, however, one can see anguish in his work. Prints such as Disasters of the War, are unclear except insofar as they reflect Lawrence Jones's commitment to pacifism (Figure 8). The title echoes the famous print series by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya. Other prints such as one depicting a group of people in front of a broken building are quite clear to people who know the Jackson State campus and the events of the spring of 1970 (Figure 9). The building is Alexander Hall, a dormitory which was blasted with hundreds of bullets as students fled or huddled crying on the floor. John R. Lynch Street at the time was a main route separating the campus. Student unrest caused white people to complain of students throwing rocks at passing cars on May 14, 1970. The complaints brought police and state troopers to the Jackson State College campus. Sometime in the early morning of May 15, violence erupted. James Earl Green and Phillip Gibbs died in the fusillade of gunfire from armed law enforcement officers. (36) Though Lawrence Jones tried to clarify his feelings in his print depicting the event, it is clear that violence was antithetical to everything in which he believed.
Lawrence Jones was both an artist and an educator. What he did in creating an Art Department at Jackson State College was to use his "gift" to build his hopes, dreams and training from a meager background into a life which enriched many people, both black and white. Lawrence Jones probably could have become famous if he had remained in Chicago or joined the New York art scene. Instead, Jones created a living example of a cultural and artistic lifestyle which students could emulate. The Joneses developed an atmosphere of celebration and richness in the midst of scarcity and exclusion. Lawrence Jones chose to stay in the south to help others understand the art he loved. In the early mural Negro Work and Life in Georgia, the idealism which carried into every part of his life is quite clear. His was clearly a life of "making do," which uplifted others. Lawrence Jones' life, as much as his art works, is his great contribution.
Jackson State University
(1.) bell hooks, Art On My Mind: Visual Politics (New York: The New Press, 1995), 110. Note that "bell hooks" is a nom de plume of Gloria Jean Watkins printed by both the author and the publisher with all lower case letters. Librarians, however, usually list the name "bell hooks," with normal capitalization for a proper name.
(2.) This paper was delivered April 21, 2007 at the Eighteenth Annual James A. Porter Colloquium on African American Art in the Blackburn Center at Howard University in Washington, DC.
(3.) Jackson State University Undergraduate Catalog 1993-95, 18-20. The school's history is reflected in the several changes of name since its founding. Originally called the Natchez Seminary, the name changed to Jackson College when it moved to a more central location in Jackson, MS. In 1940, upon its inclusion as a state supported institution the name became Mississippi Negro Training School. In 1956, it became Jackson State College and finally in 1974, the college was changed to a university, so the name became Jackson State University.
(4.) James Loewen and Charles Sallis, eds., Mississippi Conflict & Change (New York: Pantheon Books, 1974), 172. The editors state that during Reconstruction in 1872, the Mississippi legislature appropriated $1,136, 987 for 148,000 pupils and by 1881, had cut that figure to $757,757 for 237,288 pupils.
(5.) Lelia Gaston Rhodes, Jackson State University: The First 100 Years 1877-1977 (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1979), 103-105. Governor Paul B. Johnson is usually known as "Senior," because his son, Paul B. Johnson, Jr., was also governor of Mississippi later.
(6.) Loewen and Sallis, 213.
(7.) Rhodes, 105. The Rosenwald Foundation was begun by Julius Rosenwald, the president who built Sears and Robuck into a major national chain. Begun in 1917 for the "well being of mankind," the Rosenwald Foundation provided funding to build over 5000 schools in African American communities throughout the South between 1917 and 1929. The foundation later gave scholarships for study to promising African American scholars and artists. This information is from the Sears Archives at: http://www.searsarchives.com/people/questions/rosenwaldfoundation.htm.
(8.) hooks,116-117
(9.) Maria Ramirez Jones interview with author, Jackson, MS, June 2005.
(10.) Maria Jones interview.
(11.) Sally Hemings was the slave of Thomas Jefferson around whom controversy has swirled. There is evidence that she had children with Thomas Jefferson and that she was possibly the half-sister of Jefferson's wife who died. On Jefferson's death, she and her children were freed. Some Virginia families claim to be descendants of Jefferson through Sally Hemings. See the website: http://www.monticello.org/plantation/hemingscontro/ hemings-jefferson_contro.htlm.
(12.) http://www.retroweb.com/lynchburg/postcards_index.html. Postcards from the collections of Mrs. Joy Graybill, Forest, VA and the Jones Memorial Library in Lynchburg, VA.
(13.) Statement of Credit from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago photocopy from the Office of Records at the Art Institute of Chicago.
(14.) Personal communication from Connie Seymour at Dillard University, Sept 22, 2006.
(15.) Maria Jones interview.
(16.) Betty J. Crouther, "A Voice and Vision from the Deep South: Lawrence A. Jones of Mississippi." The International Review of African American Art, 17/4 (2001): 10.
(17.) This oil on plaster mural of Booker T. Washington holding a test tube and surrounded by symbols of his achievements by Vertis Hayes of Memphis, Tennessee is in Johnson Hall at Jackson State University as of April, 2007. Recently there has been talk of tearing this building down.
(18.) http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=174. W.E.B. DuBois, "The Talented Tenth," September 1903. In this essay Dr. DuBois espouses liberal education for black students and states: "... developing the Best [sic] of this race that they may guide the Mass [sic] away from the contamination and death of the Worst [sic] in their own and other races." He goes on to advocate teacher training stating: "Education must not simply teach work--it must teach Life [sic]. The Talented Tenth of the Negro race must be made leaders of thought and missionaries of culture among their people. No others can do this work and Negro colleges must train men for it. The Negro race, like all other races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men."
(19.) Maria Jones interview.
(20.) Jackson College Bulletin 1949-1950, 54.
(21.) Jackson College Bulletin 1953-1955.
(22.) Luz Douyon interview with author, Jackson, MS, June, 2005.
(23.) Luz Douyon interview.
(24.) Letter from (Miss) Mary Beattie Brady of the Harmon Foundation to Mr. L.A. Jones Jackson State College, March 4, 1963, Jackson State University Department of Art files. The Harmon Foundation was established in 1922 to recognize artistic and intellectual achievements of African Americans. It held competitions for artists and circulated exhibits of art. http//www.npg.si.edu/exh/harmon/ (National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institute). See also: http://www.press.illinois.edu/journals/ contours/1.2/walter.html. This is an article on the Harmon foundation and its support of artists by John C. Walter, "The Harmon Foundation and the Sponsorship of Contemporary African Artists, 1947-1967," Contours: A Journal of the African Diaspora.
(25.) Crouther, 10.
(26.) Maria Jones interview.
(27.) http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/patrick_kelly/.
(28.) http://tigger.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/urbanex/.ain.cgi?file=new/ show_doc_search.ptt&.
(29.) Most of the information about dates and meanings in this mural are from an anonymous article from the Peachlite, student newspaper at Fort Valley State dated 1943. The article features a photograph of a young Mr. Jones perched on a scaffold, working on the mural. The mural is about four feet by ten feet on the two side panels. The center is divided by the arched doorway into two panels approximately four feet high by eight feet wide.
(30.) Maria Jones interview.
(31.) Frank T. Wheeler. Savannah River Plantations: Photographs from the Collection of the Georgia Historical Society (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 1998): 91-110. This collection of photographs illustrates plantations along the Savannah River. Page 100 of the book shows a photograph of the slave cabins taken in 1933 from which Jones could have worked. The main house and slave cabins at Hermitage Plantation were purchased by Henry Ford in 1935 for $10,000. The main house was reconstructed in Bryan County, Georgia. Two of the slave cabins were shipped and rebuilt at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. The site is now a paper mill.
(32.) The Peachlite article (in note 29), identifies the building depicted here as Liberty Hall in Crawfordsville, Georgia: "... the estate of the great Confederate Statesman Alexander Stephens." Why Jones chose Stephens is unclear. In http://members.aol.com/jfepperson/corner.html, Alexander Stephens is quoted from a speech known as the "Cornerstone Speech," delivered in Savannah, March, 1861, as stating: "Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery--subordination to the superior race--is his natural and normal condition." Though Vice-President Stephens sued for peace towards the end of the Civil War, there is no indication that he changed his mind about slavery. Jones' depiction of Stephens in the Fort Valley mural is probably ironic.
(31.) Maria Jones interview.
(32.) Maria Jones interview.
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| Author: | Swanson, Lealan N. |
|---|---|
| Publication: | Southeastern College Art Conference Review |
| Article Type: | Biography |
| Geographic Code: | 1USA |
| Date: | Jan 1, 2007 |
| Words: | 5018 |
| Previous Article: | The black artist and his image in America 65 years ago. |
| Next Article: | Recollections of SECAC. |
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