In this story, The National Gallery of Art spotlights a lesser-known cultural movement centered on beauty.
“What is more far-reaching than beauty?”
In 1924, a young woman named Alma Thomas posed that question in her college yearbook. Thomas was the first graduate of Howard University’s newly formed department of art. Her groundbreaking abstract paintings were decades away—after graduating she would first devote 35 years to teaching art at a junior high school in Washington, DC.
But Thomas, like many of her fellow Washingtonians, already saw the power of Black artists pursuing beauty. At a time of Jim Crow segregation, political disenfranchisement, and social unrest, their choice to focus on art for art’s sake was radical.
Historian and professor Jeffrey C. Stewart has called them “aesthetic warriors.” They believed art could transform their place in American society.
Racism and Violence in 1920s D.C.
By the 1920s, DC had the third largest percentage of Black residents in the nation after New York and Chicago. The city offered Black Americans more opportunity and freedom than many other places in the U.S., but its residents were still regularly subjected to racial violence, segregation, and discrimination.
In summer 1919, sensational headlines spread claims of Black men attacking white women. These stories led to police and volunteer World War I servicemen unlawfully detaining hundreds of Black men.
By mid-July, tensions reached a boiling point. A four-day racist riot targeted the Black community. White mobs terrorized Black men, beating and murdering them. The Washington Post printed calls for more “mobilization” of servicemen its front page. The city’s Black newspaper, the Washington Bee, reported that Black residents, especially veterans, were arming and defending themselves. Eventually, President Woodrow Wilson called in federal troops to restore order. In the end, 15 people died (10 white and five Black). More than 100 were injured.
Racial discrimination was also a part of everyday life. Racist housing covenants prevented Black Washingtonians from living in certain neighborhoods. Schools and restaurants were still segregated. The city’s residents had little power to affect change. DC was ruled by a presidentially appointed board of commissioners, half a century away from self-governance.
Black Broadway
Against this backdrop, DC still blossomed into a center of Black culture. Historically Black neighborhoods surrounding U Street and Howard University became known as Black Broadway. Even before and as New York’s Harlem Renaissance grew, Washington had its own renaissance.
The area was the economic, social, and cultural center for the city’s Black community. Nightclubs and theaters hosted performers such as Billie Holiday. Restaurants and lunch counters, like Harrison’s Café, were among the few safe places for Black Washingtonians to eat in the city. Anchored by Howard University, the area was home to art galleries and literary clubs frequented by future icons like writer Zora Neale Hurston.
Some of the most important artists and activists of the period called the neighborhood home, such as composer and musician Duke Ellington; the father of Black History Month, Dr. Carter G. Woodson; suffragist and Civil Rights activist Mary Church Terrell; and poet Langston Hughes.
The Scurlock Studio
At the center of Black Broadway was the Scurlock Studio. Addison Scurlock and his sons George and Robert photographed DC’s Black community from 1904 to 1994. The Scurlocks documented baptisms, weddings, balls, and social clubs. They chronicled each graduating class at Howard University and local “colored” schools. Addison also paid special attention to photographing the neighborhood itself. Carrying his camera through the streets, he captured its businesses, churches, theaters, and outdoor scenes.
Opened in 1911 at the corner of 9th and U Streets NW, the Scurlock Studio became a destination for celebrities. They came for the Scurlock style. The sophisticated portraits framed sitters in elegant poses with soft lighting and retouching. Singer Madame Lillian Evanti, poet Esther Popel Shaw, entrepreneur Madame C.J. Walker, and educator and author Booker T. Washington all sat for the Scurlocks.
They became an integral part of their community because of “their reliability, insight, and loving care in depicting Black people, spaces, and places through the lenses of their cameras for those who mattered most—the African American citizens of their home city,” write Rhea L. Combs of the National Portrait Gallery and Paul Gardullo of the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
As Addison grew his business in the early 20th century, he intentionally focused on the beauty, success, and talent of his neighbors. The Scurlocks’ work “transformed historical images of Blackness and Jim Crow‒era depictions of African American life,” add Combs and Gardullo. “They turned the derogatory label of race into a source of dignity and self-affirmation for African Americans.”
Beauty or Propaganda?
The Scurlocks’ photos became a regular feature in The Crisis, the magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of the Colored People. Activist W. E. B. Du Bois edited the magazine, and the Scurlock photographs embodied his principles for art. He believed that Black artists should create works that represented the Black experience and contributed to the civil rights movement. With everything they faced, Du Bois claimed that Black artists didn’t have the luxury of simply focusing on beauty.
But the Scurlocks also photographed Howard University professor and writer Alain Locke, who publicly disagreed with Du Bois about the purpose of art. In his 1928 article “Beauty Instead of Ashes,” Locke argued that art should be more than just propaganda. Art, he wrote, could relate to the Black experience without representing it. The best art was rooted in self-expression, not advancing an agenda. Creatives could “offer through art an emancipating vision to America.”
Free to Express
Nearby on Howard University’s campus, Locke’s words inspired a group of artists led by James Herring. The founder of Howard’s art department, the Howard University Gallery, and private Barnett-Aden Gallery, Herring looked to promote the focus on beauty.
This group went a step further than Locke. They believed that Black artists should be free to express themselves as they pleased. As historian Jeffrey C. Stewart describes, Herring and his students–including Alma Thomas–believed “that the Black artist must be absolutely free in terms of subject matter or aesthetic tradition.”
Herring painted luminous landscapes. Through thick pastel brushstrokes, he created serene scenes of seashores. Porter made floral still lifes, richly colored portraits, and street scenes. Thomas eventually went on to create her signature, colorful style we now call “Alma Stripes.”
As enrollment in Howard’s art program grew, Herring brought on more instructors. Another one of his students, James Amos Porter, graduated from Howard in 1927, and began teaching alongside painter Loïs Mailou Jones and printmaker James Lesesne Wells. These educators would go on to be some of the most important Black artists of the 20th century. They would instill their belief in beauty in a whole new generation of artists. The “aesthetic warriors” transformed the nation’s capital into a center for Black art.
The Next Generation
Some artists who started in DC would go on to make their mark on international art history. Printmaker and sculptor Elizabeth Catlett began at Howard and showed some of her first works at the Barnett-Aden Gallery. She would go on to become one of the visionary artists of the century.
Others would be drawn to the city for its community of Black artists and thinkers. Painter Sam Gilliam moved to DC from Louisville, Kentucky. Being surrounded by the “aesthetic warriors” had a profound impact on his art. “I didn’t go to Howard,” he explained, “But more essential was that I was not very far from those products of Howard.” Learning and collaborating with Alma Thomas and others would drive his innovative draped paintings, which made waves in the art world.
DC became a center not just for contemporary artmaking, but also for the study of the history of Black art. Porter founded the field of African American art history. His 1943 book Modern Negro Art described the long and rich history of Black art in America. Porter’s student David Driskell picked up his mantle. As Driskell later described, Porter encouraged the young artist, saying, “You’re a pretty good painter, but you’ve got a good mind so you can’t just spend your time painting. You’ve got to help us define the field.”
While it all began in the 1920’s, this vision for art became, as Driskell described, “a lifetime commitment.”
In 1972, Alma Thomas became the first Black woman to have a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. The then-77-year-old painter reflected on her career: “I have sought to concentrate on beauty and happiness, rather than on man’s inhumanity to man.” Nearly 50 years after her Howard yearbook quote, Thomas had witnessed just how far beauty could take her.
This piece is inspired by the book Beauty Born of Struggle: The Art of Black Washington, published by the National Gallery of Art.
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