Artist: Jacob Lawrence
Date: 1956
Size: 31 x 41 cm
Technique: Tempera
Depicting a brutal physical conflict between Black men and their oppressors, this painting represents the suppressed revolt planned by the enslaved Captain James to free populations between Greene County, Georgia, and Halifax County, North Carolina, in April 1810. Under ferocious attack, the central figure’s broad back, bearing gruesome scars from lashings, directly confronts the viewer. Lawrence derived the title caption from a letter written by James expressing his unrelenting desire to escape bondage and strike out for freedom. While the subject is ostensibly historical, the painting’s theme of racial strife resonated in the mid-1950s, during the nascent civil rights movement, when desegregation efforts were often met with violent resistance.
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