The Labor Agent in the South
This evocative painting from 1940 is part of the famous Great Migration series by African American painter Jacob Lawrence. It shows how many African American workers found a route to opportunity: northern manufacturers, facing severe wartime labor shortages, sent agents to the South to recruit workers. Agents often arranged loans to pay for train fare and other travel expenses; once laborers were settled and employed in the North, they repaid the loans from their wages. Here, a line of men waits for the agent to record their names in his open ledger. The bare tree in the background suggests the barrenness of economic prospects for impoverished rural blacks in the South; it also hints at the threat of lynching and racial violence. Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY.