Charles White is an acclaimed painter and muralist whose experience with the Works Progress Administration public projects enforced his desire to use art as a tool to educate about and promote African American contributions to culture and politics. His portraits are known for their representations of human dignity and the strength of working class communities. White is also renowned for his impeccable draftsmanship. His pencil renderings of the abolitionists Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth served as preliminary drawings for a larger tableau.

Based on biblical texts and his own memory of the Sunday sermons of the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Sr. at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, New York, Jacob Lawrence's "Genesis Creation Sermon" series delivers a richly personal interpretation. Inspired by realism and details of iconography, Lawrence's "Genesis Creation Sermon" series also reveals his interest in references from art history. The bright colors and expressive, monumental preacher figure that stands central in each work reflect the artist's affinity for action and resonance given in the sermon.

Artist Aaron Douglas created three images that are illustrations for the book of poems by James Weldon Johnson titled God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse. He rendered each piece with a flatly painted, hard-edged style reminiscent of the angularity found in some types of historical African sculpture. In these poems, Johnson draws on the rhythms and pacing of an African American minister preaching to the congregation.

Rendered in aqueous washes of gouache, Robert Thompson's "Reflections" depicts simplified, cream-toned figures in front of a mirrored reflection, resting atop and within a landscape of ghostly faces appearing to rise from planes of pink, violet and green. As Thompson was not only influenced by mythology but also by works of the old masters that he studied while in Europe, this emotive scene can be interpreted as the story of Narcissus paralyzed by his own reflection.

Based on biblical texts and his own memory of the Sunday sermons of the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Sr. at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, New York, Jacob Lawrence's "Genesis Creation Sermon" series delivers a richly personal interpretation. Inspired by realism and details of iconography, Lawrence's "Genesis Creation Sermon" series also reveals his interest in references from art history. The bright colors and expressive, monumental preacher figure that stands central in each work reflect the artist's affinity for action and resonance given in the sermon.

In this painting, Cortor depicts a domestic interior featuring an older woman and a young girl. The artist's use of soft yellows, browns and reds creates an aura of warmth that surrounds the subjects. The young girl bears a distraught look on her face as she holds an opened letter in her hand. The artist highlights the girl's concern by physically hiding her body within the surrounding furniture. The older woman in the foreground appears calm and reassuring, her face reveals little of her internal thoughts (a feeling of uneasiness can be seen in her fingering the pages of her Bible).

Charles White is an acclaimed painter and muralist whose experience with the Works Progress Administration public projects enforced his desire to use art as a tool to educate about and promote African American contributions to culture and politics. His portraits are known for their representations of human dignity and the strength of working class communities. As with other works by White, "The Bridge Party" employs a dramatic perspective and tight composition—grouping the figures as if contained by the support itself, with a rich palette of warm hues and exaggerated features.

Based on biblical texts and his own memory of the Sunday sermons of the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Sr. at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, New York, Jacob Lawrence's "Genesis Creation Sermon" series delivers a richly personal interpretation. Inspired by realism and details of iconography, Lawrence's "Genesis Creation Sermon" series also reveals his interest in references from art history. The bright colors and expressive, monumental preacher figure that stands central in each work reflect the artist's affinity for action and resonance given in the sermon.

"Portrait of Ella Fitzgerald" encapsulates Beauford Delaney's range of artistic styles, marrying gestural abstract mark making with portraiture. His figurative works, which included portraits of other notable artists of the time such as Duke Ellington and Marian Anderson, turned ever more abstract and into complete non-representation after Delany moved from New York to Paris in the early 1950s. He would remain in Paris for the rest of his life. This portrait parallels this stylistic shift as the characteristics of Ms.

Predominantly known as an accomplished printmaker and renowned educator, James Lesesne Wells was also a talented painter. While he focused his later career on printmaking and believed its accessibility and reproducibility was suitable for broadening the audience for African American subject matter, Wells' art was rich with religious and mythological scenes often set in detailed urban and rural environments.