David Driskell

One of the first things I want to do when we are all out of lock down is visit the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture. I’ve been before but the collection is so large and so interesting that it takes several trips to even begin to see it all. This time I’ll be looking for something specific — Behold Thy Son, a painting by David Driskell, the distinguished artist who died ten days ago of coronavirus at the age of 88. It was painted in 1955 when Driskell was a 24 year old instructor at Talladega College reacting to the brutal murder, in neighboring Mississippi, of teen aged Emmett Till.

Driskell was remembered in the New York Times obituary as “a pivotal champion of African-American art,” and described as an “artist, art historian and curator.” I knew him, slightly, as a warm and generous man.

In the spring of 2012, a year after my book came out, I received a package from Mr. Driskell, who I had never met or even heard of. It was a catalog of a recent exhibition of his art and came with a note expressing the “joy” he had felt on reading my book; he said he couldn’t put it down until he finished it. “I think I may have attended a Rosenwald School in North Carolina in the 1940s,” he wrote. He ended with an invitation to visit him at the Driskell Center at the University of Maryland. How is it possible that I never did? I so regret that!

I did meet Mr. Driskell on several occasions including the premiere of the documentary film, Rosenwald, in which we both appear. And I heard him lecture at the Phillips Collection on Jacob Lawrence, who he considered a mentor. But I never followed up on my intention to get to know him better and go see his work .The one time I called to see if I could come visit he was in Maine where he spent summers raising all the vegetables for his family and painting in a small studio. Reading the obituaries I learned that he grew up in the small North Carolina town of Hollis. His father was a preacher, blacksmith, and carpenter; his mother made baskets and quilts. He attended a one-room schoolhouse and then a segregated high school 25 miles away. When the time came to go to college he was given a scholarship to attend Shaw University in Raleigh, N.C. but at the last minute he decided he would like to go to Howard in Washington, DC. According to the New York Times, he arrived after classes had begun and without having applied. But he was persistent and they finally let him in. His first idea was to major in history but his artistic talent quickly showed itself. African American art historian James Porter encouraged him to study art.

In addition to teaching, Driskell was noted for creating the show “Two Centuries of Black American Art: 1750 - 1950,” which was seen in Los Angeles, Dallas, Atlanta and at the Brooklyn Museum. Asked about the nature of the works he had assembled, Driskell said , “I was looking for a body of work which showed first of all that blacks had been stable participants in American visual culture for more than 200 years, and by stable participants I simply mean that in many cases they had been the backbone.” In another interview he said, “Art was always functional for African people. If there is anything different for us, it’s how we deal with the arts and deal with history.”

Just a month before his death Driskell spoke at the opening of a show dedicated to the works of Romare Bearden at the David Driskell Center at the University of Maryland. I’ll have to go there too when we are all free to roam again. In the meantime, here’s one of his wonderful pictures. It’s called Oh, Freedom

And here’s another. Maybe it’s one of the churches of his childhood. Rest in Peace, David Driskell.