Black Is the Color: African-American Artists and Segregation

Black Is the Color highlights key moments in the history of Black visual art, from Edmonds Lewis’s 1867 sculpture Forever Free, to the work of contemporary artists such as Whitfield Lovell, Kerry James Marshall, Ellen Gallagher, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Art historians and gallery owners place the works in context, setting them against the larger social contexts of Jim Crow, WWI, the civil rights movement and the racism of the Reagan era, while contemporary artists discuss individual works by their forerunners and their ongoing influence.

Cast

Whitfield Lovell

Kerry James Marshall

Ellen Gallagher

Richard Powell

Robert O'Meally

Michael Rosenfeld

Bridget Moore

Eric Foner

David C. Driskell

Jean-Michel Basquiat

Walter Evans

Patrick Albenque

Narrator