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Abstract
Trecker examines the history of Great Migration in Jacob Lawrence's painting, The Migration of the Negro, and in Ralph Ellison's novel, Invisible Man. These paintings saw an epic clash of traditions and aspiration, and, young and ambitious, where each turned to new and modernist styles--the flat picture plane, semi-abstraction, and surrealism--to render migrants' experiences. The results are complementary views of a great historical moment. Lawrence emphasized the relentless physical and economic pressures that impelled masses of people to leave their homes. His images focus on the group and on the physical events of the journey. Ellison concentrated on the psychological and intellectual experience of migration. Together they described what it meant for the uprooted population, escaping not slavery this time but the racist Jim Crow South for the unknown possibilities and challenges of the North.