1. The category “Negro art” was used in American critical discourse during the interwar decades to describe the creative expression of African Americans. It was often applied to art of the African diaspora in a broader sense, encompassing African tribal art as well as modern African American art. Alain Locke's definition of the concept of Negro art also included the treatment of Negro themes and material by nonblack artists. See Locke, Alain, Negro Art: Past and Present (Washington, D.C.: Associates in Negro Folk Educationrm, 1936)Google Scholar.

2. Most standard histories of African American art recognize the primary organizations and individuals involved in these various Negro art initiatives, but they rarely examine the interaction between them in any great detail. Romare Bearden and Harry Henderson place particular emphasis on the importance of this period and provide substantial information on the events and people involved (Bearden, and Henderson, , A History of African-American Artists from 1792 to the Present [New York: Pantheon, 1993])Google Scholar. Jeff Donaldson's work on art and activism in Harlem during the 1930s is an indispensable reference on this subject (Donaldson, , “Generation ‘306’ Harlem, New York” [Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1975]Google Scholar). Helen Shannon's study of the critical reception of African art during the early 20th century includes an excellent analysis of the institutional and ideological contexts wherein both African and African American art were seen. Shannon identifies points of contact between individuals and organizations showing socalled Negro art in New York City (Shannon, , “From ‘African Savages’ to ‘Ancestral Legacy’: Race and Cultural Nationalism in the American Modernist Reception of African Art” [Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1999]Google Scholar). M. Akua McDaniel's essay on the support of African American art between world wars is a good overview of the relationships between various institutions with a mutual interest in promoting black artists and providing art education (McDaniel, , “Institutional Support of Afro-American Artists: 1930–1945,” in Selected Essays: Art and Artists from the Harlem Renaissance to the 1980's [Atlanta: National Black Arts Festival, 1988]Google Scholar). Kim Carlton-Smith's study of the participation of women on the Federal Art Project contains useful information on art education in Harlem (Carlton-Smith, , “A New Deal for Women: Women Artists and the Federal Art Project, 1935–1939” [Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 1990]Google Scholar). All of these authors build on the initial observations of James A. Porter, who paid close attention to institutional contexts in his landmark historical study of African American art (Porter, , Modern Negro Art [New York: The Dryden Press, 1943; Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1992]Google Scholar).

3. An excellent account of these early programs can be found in Wright, Beryl's essay “The Harmon Foundation in Context,” in Against the Odds: African-American Artists and the Harmon Foundation, ed. Reynolds, Gary A. and Wright, Beryl J. (Newark, N.J.: Newark Museum, 1989)Google Scholar. Wright charts the promotion of African American art before the Harmon Foundation programs, including the precedents set for Negro art exhibitions first by the Carleton Branch of the YMCA in Brooklyn and later by the Harlem Branch of the New York Public Library. Similar initiatives were undertaken in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and other American cities, but the range of programming in New York City, which included private as well as institutional initiatives, assured its prominence as the premier showplace of Negro art in America during the early 1920s. A brief description by librarian Ernestine Rose of the art programming at the New York Public Library was included in the catalog of the 1931 Harmon Foundation annual show (see “Art in the Public Library,” in Exhibition of the Work of Negro Artists [New York: Harmon Foundation, 1931]Google Scholar).

4. Porter, , Modern Negro Art, 84Google Scholar. The dates listed on the brochure cover for this show are August 1 to September 30, but entries in the guest book go up to October 12, so the show must have been extended. Information on these shows can be found in the Schomburg Center Records, Ms 44, boxes 1 and 2, in Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York City (hereafter cited as SCRBC).

5. See Locke, , Negro ArtGoogle Scholar.

6. The Schomburg files contain a list of the names and addresses from the Washington show with notations on artists specially recommended. Quite a few of the artists on this list participated in the 1922 show but not the 1921 show.

7. Several individuals in attendance at these early exhibitions will review Harmon Foundation shows later in the decade; Worth Tuttle and Gwendolyn Bennett in particular wrote thoughtful and substantive criticism about African American art in the ensuing years.

8. Foreword, , Catalog of Exhibition by Negro Artists, 1922Google Scholar, unpaged, Ms 44, box 2, in SCRBC.

9. “Young Negro Artist Wins High Praise,” New York Times, 10 8, 1921Google Scholar, and an undated clipping in New York World, which reviews Negro contributions to America's Making, Alexander Gumby Papers, Scrapbook 5, reel 1, Columbia University, Rare Book and Manuscript Collection, New York City.

10. One such event was the Negro in Art Week, which took place in Chicago in November of 1927. Porter considered this another breakthrough event for Negro visual art, “occurring as it did with the ‘awakening’ of the younger writers and artists after 1924. Its results were important; professional and lay critics were ebration” (Porter, , Modern Negro Art, 85Google Scholar). The Negro in Art Week placed emerging African American visual art solidly within New Negro ideals as they were articulated by Locke and others. Locke spoke several times in Chicago during the event, and the Blondiau Collection, associated with his efforts to create an African Art Museum in Harlem, was part of the exhibition. Margaret Rose Vendryes points out that the connections drawn in the Negro in Art week between the African past and modern African American artistic expression set an important precedent for future exhibitions that will make this point (Vendryes, , “Expression and Repression of Identity: Race, Religion, and Sexuality in the Art of American Sculptor Richmond Barthe” [Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1997]Google Scholar). These connections had already been made at the New York Public Library shows, but the context and audience of the Chicago event were quite different. The event was sponsored by the Chicago Woman's Club, an organization of prominent Chicago citizens interested in progressive causes, in conjunction with the Art Institute of Chicago. According to Lisa Meyerowitz, this was the first time that the work of black artists was seen in a group show in a major American museum. The call for entries was specific in its qualification that the work submitted must meet modern standards for art exhibited at the museum; the Art Institute director's concern for quality was reiterated in correspondence with the Woman's Club, wherein he indicated that rigorous selection criteria would in all likelihood result in a smaller yield then initially proposed. Although the involvement of the Art Institute imparted a certain aesthetic legitimacy to Negro art that neither the New York Public Library nor the Harmon Foundations show could match, like so many initiatives on behalf of black artists in the interwar decades, its agenda was for the most part social and educational, not aesthetic. As stated in the catalog foreword, the purpose of the event was to educate the public about the achievements of American blacks with the hope of improving race relations (see Meyerowitz, Lisa, “The Negro in Art Week: Defining the ‘New Negro’ through Art Exhibition,” African American Review 31 [Spring 1997]: 75–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

11. Invitation to Thurman exhibition, Schomburg Scrapbooks, Microfilm 707 reel 12, in SCRBC. A notice on this show in the Chicago Defender also stressed the efforts made here to provide a more artistic and intimate setting for the exhibition of art works than had been achieved in prior institutional contexts (press clipping, April 16, 1927, in ibid.).

12. Text of Brown's talk, February 27, 1933, Ms 44, box 2, in SCRBC. At this time, she also presented a painting by William Scott to the New York Public Library, on behalf of the Harmon Foundation, as an act of appreciation.

13. Ms 44, box 1, in SCRBC.

14. According to Bearden and Henderson, Hayden thought of this as a kind of protest painting; he objected to the fact that Boykin was usually referred to as a janitor who paints rather than as an artist. Hayden himself was subject to similar condescension when he won the Harmon Foundation prize in 1926, and some writers understand this picture as autobiographical. But Bearden and Henderson, whose information was based in part on interviews with the artist in 1969, state explicitly that the subject is Boykin (Bearden, and Henderson, , History of African-American Artists, 159–60Google Scholar).

15. Francis, Jacqueline, “‘Modern Art, Racial Art’: The Work of Malvin Gray Johnson and the Challenges of Painting, 1928–1934” (Ph.D. diss., Emory University, 2000), 41–42, 123, 207 n. 102Google Scholar; and New York Age, February 25, 1933, in Harmon Foundation Papers, box 19, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Washington, D.C. (hereafter cited as HFP). See also Francis, Jacqueline, “Trying to Do What Artists of All Races Do: Malvin Gray Johnson's Modernism,” in Climbing up the Mountain: The Modern Art of Malvin Gray Johnson (Durham: North Carolina Central University Art Museum, 2002)Google Scholar.

16. An internal Harmon Foundation memo dated 1930 notes that Boykin submitted work for the 1928 awards and that his letterhead lists his address at 43 Christopher Street (in HFP, box 44).

17. Bearden and Henderson state that, from 1928 to 1929, Boykin operated an arts-and-crafts shop on Grove Street. They also claim that Boykin worked as a restorer and appraiser of paintings (Bearden, and Henderson, , History of African-American Artists, 495 n. 5Google Scholar). This information is corroborated by a document in the Harmon Foundation files written by Boykin's wife (in HFP, box 73). Sharon F. Patton's time-line notes 1930 as the opening of Boykin's School of Art in the village (Patton, , African-American Art [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998]Google Scholar).

18. Boykin's School and Art and Adjuncts, Primitive African Art Center, Afro-American Museum, Announcement of Term October 1930-June 1931, in HFP, box 73.

19. Cloyd Boykin (C.B.) to Frederick P. Keppel (F.K.), July 30, 1930, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Series III Grant Files, box 60, folder 19, in Columbia University, Rare Book and Manuscript Collection, New York (hereafter cited as CCNY). This letter is addressed “Dear friend” and stamped as received by the Carnegie Corporation on July 31, 1931, but the earlier date, which appears on the letter, seems more likely. This is probably Boykin's first letter of inquiry to Keppel that asks for money. The fact that he does not address it directly to Keppel, and that he misspelled his name in the address line, suggests that it might have been a generic fund-raising letter.

20. In early August 1930, Keppel spoke to arts administrator Alon Bement (A.B.) on the phone about Boykin. Keppel's notes record that Bement thought Boykin's enterprise was the first effort on the part of black people to do in art what they had already done in music. Bement also said Mary Brady (M.B.) of the Harmon Foundation was familiar with Boykin's operation and thought well of it, a statement that is rendered problematic by Brady's subsequent communications with Keppel (F.K. notes, August 8, 1930, in CCNY, box 60, folder 19). In September, Keppel wrote directly to Boykin, informing him that he had spoken to Edwin Embree (E.E.) of the Rosenwald Fund about his work and urging him to prepare a formal statement that could be shared with them in the interest of obtaining funding (F.K. to C.B., September 5, 1903, in CCNY, box 60, folder 19). The Carnegie Corporation agreed to make a fine-arts field-study fund available to relieve Boykin's financial situation until he received help from the Rosenwald Fund (internal memo, September 12, 1930, in CCNY, box 60). A grant form dated September 15 authorizes an allocation of $5,000 to Boykin “for research concerning negro [sic] in their relation to art education” (in CCNY, box 60, folder 19).

21. A.B. to E.E., September 16, 1930, copy in CCNY, box 60, folder 19. An internal Carnegie Corporation memo from 1931 attached to a later request from Boykin for more funding states that [in 1930] Boykin was referred to Bement, the Harmon Foundation (unable to do anything), and Embree (no record of outcome with the Rosenwald Fund) (internal memo, October 23, 1931, subject Boykin's School of Art, in CCNY, box 60, folder 19). Bement will later recall his early encounter with Boykin and his own role in helping to obtain funding for the school, which he regarded as the precursor to the much better known Harlem Art Workshop that operated in 1933 and 1934. In a 1933 article written for Opportunity, Bement described a trip to Boykin's school where he was taken “some years ago.” He saw black children doing promising work there and questioned Boykin intensely about it, calling him a “born teacher.” Later he informed foundation heads and educators interested in this matter that the Negro race showed promise in the visual arts. According to Bement, it was in part on the strength of this statement that Boykin got money from Keppel of the Carnegie Corporation, who also was personally interested in the artist. Bement claimed this was the beginning of art workshops in Harlem (see Bement, Alon, “Some Notes on a Harlem Art Exhibit,” Opportunity 11 [11 1933]: 840Google Scholar). On the relationship between Bement and the Harmon Foundation, see Reynolds and Wright, Against the Odds. The Art Center, which was affiliated with the National Alliance of Art and Industry, hosted the Harmon Foundation annual shows in 1931 and 1933.

22. “Boykin School of Art was planned for the study of Negro Art, … [it] was created by Cloyd L. Boykin in 1929 as an effort to provide an adequate place for the serious study of Art. His thorough and fine artistic training received in this Country and England and France, backed by many years of experience as painter and restorer has developed in him a rather keen insight into the needs of the Negro student in Art. The young Negro student deserves a chance, prescription having cut him off from many possible chances of achieving emotional inspiration. Each student will be given a thorough foundation in the branch of Art for which he is best fitted until there is a mastery of technique of his chosen line. We advise and help students secure positions as well as arrange exhibitions to help dispose of their work” (undated circular for Boykin's School of Art in the Old Governor's Mansion, 43–45 Grove Street, Greenwich village; marked as received September 4, 1931, in HFP, box 73).

23. Internal memos, April 30 and July 17, 1931; F.K. to C.B., May 5, 1931; C.B. to F.K., July 30, [1931] (stamped by Carnegie Corporation as received August 3, 1931); F.K. to C.B., August 3, 1931; and F.K. to C.B., November 13, 1931, all in CCNY, box 60, folder 19. The November letter states that Keppel had arranged for Arthur W. Packard, who represented John D. Rockefeller Jr., to see Boykin personally and urged him to telephone for an appointment.

24. C.B. to F.K., January 15, [1932] (stamped by Carnegie Corporation as received January 15, 1932), in CCNY, box 60, folder 19. It appears from this letter that Boykin was unable to obtain support from Rockefeller.

25. Primitive African Art Center Bulletin 4, no. 1 (07 16, 1932): 1Google Scholar. The address is listed as New York Urban League Building (copy in HFP, box 73). Both Ernestine Rose and Arthur Schomburg of the New York Public Library are listed as committee members for the school. They had been actively involved in the process that led to the opening of Boykin's classes in Harlem (see Franklin F. Hopper [New York Public Library] to F.K., May 25, 1932, in CCNY, box 266, folder 9).

26. Invitation to Harlem Opening of the Primitive African Art Center at the New York Urban League, 202–206 West 136th Street, July 5–9, 1932, in HFP, box 73. This was described as an exhibition of African culture and rare pieces of ancient Negro art lent by the Newark Museum, the Faulkner and Abyssinia collection, and a few rare pieces as a gift from J. D. Tompkins of the New York Tribune and Mrs. E. F. Butler, a resident missionary in Africa. It also included drawings, sketches, and prints by leading Negro artists.

27. C.B. to F.K., May 4, 1932, in CCNY, box 60, folder 19. In this letter, Boykin notes that he has not been able to connect with Mary Brady of the Harmon Foundation, whom he had hoped would be a member of his committee in the Harlem venture.

28. F.K. to C.B., May 6, 1932, in CCNY, box 60, folder 19. Communications between the Carnegie Corporation and the Urban League in June of 1932 make Keppel's intentions clear: $2,500 was granted to the National Urban League to be allocated as needed by the New York office for materials used in Boykin's uptown classes. This arrangement, which became a source of frustration for all concerned, was reached in consultation with the administration of the New York Public Library and Alain Locke (internal record of telephone conversation, June 11, 1932, and F.K. to Eugene K. Jones [Urban League], June 14, 1932, in CCNY, box 60, folder 19).

29. Internal memo, April 11, 1932, in CCNY, box 60, folder 19. Brady indicated to Keppel that, under restricted circumstances, Boykin would be a good leader for this initiative. In April 1932, Brady wrote Locke that she had been in conversation with Keppel about funding an atelier or art classes started in Harlem and the possibility of making financial arrangements with Boykin to do this. She was hoping to see this merge with the adult education work being done at the New York Public Library with the eventual development of a cultural center (M.B. to Alain Locke [A.L.], April 26, 1932, in HFP, box 1.

30. M.B. to F.K., 3 June 1932, re Claude [sic] Boykin and possibilities for art atelier in Harlem, in CCNY, box 60, folder 19.

31. Grant Report on Adult Education Experiment in Harlem, filed by Ernestine Rose, July 1, 1932, in CCNY, box 10, folder 9, American Association of Adult Education (AAAE), 1932. This document reports on the first period of the grant in which there had been programs in music, Negro history, world affairs, and family relations, among other things, but no specific programming in the visual arts. The report mentions the library's hopes to include art appreciation in the fall offerings.

32. Franklin Hopper to F.K., in CCNY, May 25, 1932, box 266, folder 9, New York Public Library. Hopper told Keppel that he had met Boykin and looked at the arrangements made by Rose and Schomburg for art classes in the library space. This confirms that Boykin's school moved to Harlem in 1932 under terms negotiated by the New York Public Library with the Urban League.

33. Copy of a letter from J. H. Hubert (New York Urban League) to C.B., July 25, 1932; C.B. to F.K., July 26, 1932; and Hubert to the Carnegie Corporation, August 4, 1932, all in CCNY, box 60, folder 19.

34. F.K. to C.B., October 5, 1932; and F.K. to C.B., September 26, 1932, in CCNY, box 60, folder 19.

35. C.B. to F.K., January 11, 1933; and untitled grant report, January 17, 1933, in CCNY, box 60, folder 19. These communications were written on PAAC letterhead to which has been added manually “Incorporated” and “John Sloan, President.” The grant report itself includes a breakdown of expenditures, listing the instructors and staff. Augusta Savage's name does not appear in this document, confirming her later accusation that Boykin used her name to get money from the Carnegie Corporation and she never saw any of it.

36. M.B. to F.K., June 3, 1932, in CCNY, box 60, folder 19.

37. Autumn Exhibition of the Primitive African Art Center and Boykin's School of Arts and Crafts, November 16–31, 1932, in HFP, box 73. A postscript to this announcement indicates that, due to curtailment of space at the Urban League in Harlem, some classes as well as the exhibit will be held at the Grove Street address.

38. C.B. to F.K, July 12, 1933, in CCNY, box 60, folder 19.

39. Patton, , African-American Art, 128Google Scholar.

40. M.B. to A.L., April 3, 1935, in HFP, box 1.

41. Ibid.

42. For further analysis of Brady's complex relationship with Locke and her ideas about Negro art, see Reynolds and Wright, Against the Odds.

43. Alain Locke, Memorandum re an Art Section for Harlem Center, Adult Education, March 25, 1933, SCM 92–70 Records of the 135th Street Branch, New York Public Library, in SCRBC.

44. On several occasions, Brady had expressed to Locke her concern that artworkshop initiatives in Harlem would not survive unless a stable funding source could be secured. She underscored the desirability of coordinating the various Negro art workshop initiatives in Harlem so as not to duplicate services and programs, a concern that Locke had also voiced in his various communications with the Carnegie Corporation. Brady told Locke that it was neither financially feasible nor appropriate for the Harmon Foundation to take a managerial role, but believed that their prior experience in developing art programs might be useful in the planning stages. While her expression of reluctance to assume control of such an initiative seems disingenuous given her marked propensity for inserting the Harmon Foundation into the cultural affairs of the black community, Brady's desire to see these initiatives located or coordinated by the library reflected the history of its long-standing and, in the main, amicable relationship with that institution and its programs (M.B. to A.L., March 2 and September 22, 1934, in HFP, box 1).

45. A New York Public Library document dated February 11, 1936, states that the Harlem Art Workshop, which opened in the summer of 1933 under Wells, was kept going with funds from the Civil Works Administration (CWA) under Alston in 1934. When this support collapsed in 1935, the Harlem Experiment in Adult Education, funded by Carnegie Corporation and sponsored by the New York Public Library, ended (SCM 92–70, in SCRBC). Similarly, the 1935 Harmon Foundation publication Negro Artists: An Illustrated Review of Their Achievements, makes reference to the Harlem Art Workshop established by the Adult Education Committee and the Carnegie Corporation in 1933 at the New York Public Library.

46. Authorization for funding this experiment was made in the fall of 1931, although the project had already been under discussion for at least a year. It was a three-year grant (1932–34) intended to support the study of problems relating to Negro adult education in the North and South (Morse A. Cartwright [M.C.], Director, American Association of Adult Education, to F.K., September 29, 1931, in CCNY, box 10, folder 8).

47. Locke's March 1933 memo describing the rationale, structure, and justification for this project notes the “possibility of the cooperation of the Harmon Foundation and of the Artists Relief section of the State Relief Fund through Mrs. McMahon of the American Association for College Art” (Locke, Memorandum re an Art Section). Before the establishment of the Federal Art Project (FAP), Audrey McMahon received authorization to administer private relief funds for artists through the College Art Association (CAA). After August, this program, which became a precedent for the FAP national program, was continued under the Federal Relief Emergency Administration (FERA), with allocations from the mayor's office run out of the CAA office. McMahon went on to become director of the FAP project in New York City.

48. M.B. to Ernestine Rose (E.R.), June 12, 1933, in HFP, box 2.

49. Report on the Experiment in Negro Adult Education, submitted by Ernestine Rose, December 14, 1933, in CCNY, box 11, folder 1.

50. M.B. to A.L., March 6, 1934, in HFP, box 1. An exchange of letters between Ernestine Rose and Audrey McMahon of CAA during 1934 confirms that the library staff was trying to arrange for improvements to the library through relief funds allocated to employ artists in Harlem. Rose sent McMahon a list of projects that needed attention at the library, including a refurbished auditorium (E.R. to AM, January 12 and November 20, 1934, SCM 92–70, box 5, in SCRBC. 51. This document, assembled by the Harmon Foundation in June of 1934, describes in detail the pedagogy of the workshop and its objectives. There is considerable overlap between Wells's ideas and the ideas expressed by Locke in his initial 1933 memo (James. L. Wells, Memorandum in regard to the Art Workshop Activities and Studio, in HFP, box 2; see also M.B. to E.R., June 13, 1934, in HFP, box 2).

52. “306” in effect became a second workshop, still sponsored by the New York Public Library with funding for the teachers now provided by Civil Works Administration (CWA) (see announcement of Alston's studio as an additional Adult Education Committee workshop, June 28, 1934, SCM 92–70, box 5, in SCRBC.)

53. M.B. to A.L., September 22, 1934, in Alain Locke Papers, box 15, folder 32, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, D.C. The CAA had actually been coordinating art workshops at the Harlem YWCA since July 1934. In response to a 1935 Harmon Foundation inquiry about his work in adult education at the YMCA, Richard Lindsey offered a report describing his experience as an instructor in the Arts and Crafts Adult Classes that were supervised by the Activities Department of the YMCA in conjunction with the CAA (Lindsey to Harmon Foundation, March 29, 1935, in HFP, box 78). The activities he described were similar in content to those in the document provided by Wells on the Harlem Art Workshop and Studio of 1933, with the conspicuous absence of discussion about racial attributes in the works of the students. Several years earlier, Lindsey had expressed dissatisfaction with the Harmon Foundation award standards, which he believed favored a particular kind of racially identified art (Lindsey to Dr. Haynes, January 9, 1930, in HFP, box 78).

54. This proposal will eventuate in the publication of the so-called Bronze Booklets, including Locke's classic early study of the visual arts, Negro Art: Past and Present, released in 1936.

55. This was most likely a reference to Alston's workshop (see Morse Cartwright [M.C.] to A.L., June 21, 1934; M.C. to F.K., November 20, 1934; and M.C. to A.L., Dec 21, 1934, in CCNY, box 19, folder 54).

56. Report on Negro Adult Education Projects, submitted by Alain Locke, March 15, 1934, 3–4, in CCNY, box 10, folder 10.

57. Ibid., January 10, 1935, 2, in CCNY, box 11, folder 2.

58. At the same time, Rose wrote to Alston in June of 1935 trying to secure the library a position within the newly organized efforts in Harlem to start community projects for unemployed artists. In this letter, she expressed her regret at having lost him, hoping to have his cooperation in future initiatives (see E.R. to John Marchmont, May 13, 1935; E.R. to Harry J. Grumpelt, May 23, 1935; E.R. to Charles Alston, June 18, 1935; and E.R. to Mildred Gordon, June 24, 1935, SCM 92–70, in SCRBC).

59. E.R. to A.L., November 25, 1935, SCM 92–70, in SCRBC.

60. Donaldson, “Generation ‘306’ Harlem,” 114. See also Greene, Larry A. and Linden, Diana, “Charles Alston's Harlem Hospital Murals: Cultural Politics in Depression Era Harlem,” Prospects 26 (2001): 391–421Google Scholar.

61. On Savage's support from both of these organizations, see Leininger-Miller, Theresa, New Negro Artists in Paris: African American Painters and Sculptors in the City of Light, 1922–1934 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2001)Google Scholar, and Bibby, Deirdre L., Augusta Savage and the Art Schools of Harlem (New York: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, 1988)Google Scholar.

62. Leininger-Miller notes that Keppel arranged a teaching position for her there (ibid., 201).

63. Mrs. Arthur Holden to F.K., undated, stamped received April 11, 1933, in CCNY, box 321, folder 6.

64. Augusta Savage to Mrs. Arthur Holden, in CCNY, box 321, folder 6.

65. Internal Carnegie Corporation memo, April 26, 1933, in CCNY, box 321, folder 6. Help came from another workshop that had been operating for young women in New York City.

66. James Hubert to F.K., September 19, 1933, in CCNY, box 321, folder 6.

67. Internal memo regarding grant for art program for adults in Harlem to be conducted by Augusta Savage, August 23, 1934, in CCNY, box 321, folder 6.

68. M.B. to A.L., October 8, 1935; and A.L. to M.B., October 12, 1935, in HFP, box 1.

69. E.E. to F.K., February 17, 1936, in CCNY, box 321, folder 6.

70. According to Vivian Morris, the Harlem Music and Art Center was opened early in 1937 by WPA Federal and Music Projects in a three-story building on 123rd Street and Mt. Morris Park West. This soon proved inadequate to meet the demands for free instruction, and it became necessary to separate the two (History of Harlem Art Center, July 14, 1939, Federal Writers Project Papers, R-6544 Writers Program, reel 1, in SCRBC). Bearden and Henderson claim that Savage's school evolved into the Harlem Community Art Center (Bearden, and Henderson, , History of African-American Artists, 174Google Scholar). Alston went on to become the first black supervisor on the FAP mural project at Harlem Hospital, whereas Savage's career remained within the field of art education. In subsequent years, it will be noted often that Savage's devotion to education compromised the development of her work. Nonetheless, at the end of the decade, she was awarded a major commission at the 1939 New York World's Fair, ensuring her reputation as one of the most famous black artists of her time. On Alston, Savage, and Harlem cultural politics at the end of the decade see Greene, “Charles Alston's Harlem Hospital Murals.” I am also grateful to Larry Green for sharing an unpublished manuscript on this material with me (Greene, , “The Politics of African-American Art Repression in the 1930s: Harlem Hospital and the Harlem Community Art Center,” paper presented at the Laying Claim Conference,Colgate University,Hamilton, New York,October 2001Google Scholar).

71. “Spacious building to coordinate work in section,” Amsterdam News [1937]Google Scholar, Alexander Gumby Papers, Scrapbook 4, reel 1, Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New York City.

72. Bearden and Henderson include extensive documentation of African American exhibition activity during the 1930s in A History of African-American Artists.

73. For further discussion of the variables that shaped the critical reception of African American artists in these years, see Calo, Mary Ann, “African American Art and Critical Discourse Between World Wars” American Quarterly 51, no. 3 (09 1999): 580–621CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

74. Historians of the New Deal art programs acknowledge that, while the central administration employed a rhetoric of inclusion and nondiscrimination, it did not routinely challenge existing local conditions of legal segregation (see Harris, Jonathan, Federal Art and National Culture: The Politics of Identity in New Deal American [New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995]Google Scholar; McKinzie, Richard D., The New Deal for Artists [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973]Google Scholar; and McDonald, William F., Federal Relief Administration and the Arts [Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1969]Google Scholar). Rena Fraden's study of the theater projects provides a useful discussion of the disparity between rhetoric and reality with respect to racial inclusiveness on the FAP. This is an area of research that certainly warrants further investigation (see Fraden, , Blueprints for a Black Federal Theater, 1935–1939 [New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994]Google Scholar).