Coinciding with Black History Month, Lincoln City Libraries will host a free presentation this weekend exploring the early years of an influential painter and key figure in the Harlem Renaissance with little known Nebraska roots.
Aaron Douglas was born and raised in Topeka, Kansas, in 1899. After high school, Douglas saved money for college while working various jobs in Michigan and New York. His college of choice? The University of Nebraska.
Douglas began his college education in Lincoln in 1918. As the U.S. entered into World War I, Douglas briefly transferred to University of Minnesota to volunteer for the Student Army Training Corps. But after the signing of the armistice in 1918, Douglas returned to Lincoln as a corporal and became the first African American student to earn a bachelors degree in fine arts at NU in 1922.
He later moved to Harlem, where he joined a vibrant community of writers and artists who shaped the Harlem Renaissance. Douglas went on to found the art department at Fisk University in Nashville, which he led from 1939 to 1966. He passed away in 1979.
The program, set to start at 11 a.m. on Saturday, Feb. 7, at Bennett Martin Public Library (136 S. 14th Street), will highlight Douglas’ artistic legacy, including his illustrations for books by Langston Hughes and James Weldon Johnson, as well as his iconic murals at Fisk University and the Countee Cullen Branch of the New York Public Library.
The presentation will be led by Steve Shively, a retired English professor whose teaching and research focused on Nebraska authors, multicultural literature and the teaching of English. “Douglas is often considered the Father of Black American Art, and his time at the University of Nebraska was crucial to his artistic development,” Shively said.
For more information, visit lincolnlibraries.org. To read more about Douglas’ legacy, visit unl.edu.