May 26 …

Aaron Douglas was a painter, illustrator, educator, and major figure in the Harlem Renaissance.

Born on May 26, 1899 in Topeka, KS, Douglas received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Nebraska in 1922.

In 1925, Douglas moved to Harlem, initially headed to Paris to advance his art career, but influenced by “The New Negro” philosopy of Alain Locke and promotion of Harlem as the center of African American art and culture, Douglas remained there for most of the decade. While in New York, he studied with German portraitist, Winold Reiss, who encouraged him to pursue African-centric themes to create through art a sense of African American unity.

Early in the 1930s, Douglas began his commissioned work as a muralist, first at the Fisk University Cravath Hall library (a series on the development of Black people in the New World). He followed that with a series in the Sherman Hotel in Chicago, then at Bennett College in Greensboro, NC with a mural featuring Harriet Tubman.

In 1934, Douglas painted murals for the Harlem Branch YMCA. He also accepted a commission by the Public Works Administration to paint his most acclaimed mural cycle, “Aspects of Negro Life,” for the Countee Cullen Branch of New York Public Library.

Douglas received several Rosenwald fellowships, allowing him to travel and study art and Black culture throughout the American South, and received his Master of Arts degree from Columbia University in 1944. That year he moved to Nashville, to found and chair the Art Department at Fisk University, where he also served as founding director of the Carl Van Vechten Gallery of Fine Arts.

From these positions, Douglas utilized the collections’ African American, as well, white art to educate students on being Black artists in the segregated American South. He also encouraged his students to study African American history to fully understand the necessity for Black art in predominantly White-American society.

Aaron Douglas retired from Fisk University in 1966 and died in Nashville on February 2, 1979, at the age of 79.

Footnotes:

• Hughes, Langston, Milton Metzer, and C. Eric Lincoln, “A Pictorial History of Black-Americans,” Fifth Revised Edition, New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., p. 277.
• Wikipedia contributors, “Aaron Douglas (artist),” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, (accessed June 9, 2025).