Paul Butler, The Albert Brick Professor in Law at Georgetown Law and legal analyst on MSNBC specializing in issues of race and criminal justice, penned this response to Panel 5 of Jacob Lawrence’s Struggle: From the History of the American People.

Jacob Lawrence, Panel 5, We have no property! We have no wives! No children! We have no city! No country!—petition of many slaves, 1773, 1955, from Struggle: From the History of the American People, 1954–56, Egg tempera on hardboard, 16 x 12 in., Collection of Harvey and Harvey-Ann Ross. © 2021 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

“Jacob Lawrence was critical race theory before it was cool. Or controversial. In the Struggle series, Lawrence re-told the revolutionary part of United States history, including the saturated colors, the angles that cut, the blood. “The part the Negro has played in all these events has been greatly overlooked,” he said. “I intend to bring it out.” Especially for the children, which is why Lawrence made the images small—portable to classrooms, where they might teach a different story than the textbooks filled with the lies of the victorious.

The first glance of Panel 5 reveals something not quite legible but soaring, rising triumphant, toward a blue sky, like a stained glass window in a strange church. But it turns out you looked up because that’s where the bayonets are pointed, some of them. Other weapons are aimed by the Black enslaved and white enslavers at each other. The Black people, for once in this history, are given expression. They look angry, scared, and determined. They are dripping blood. Lawrence made the enslavers look like monsters, which of course they were. That’s why they deserved to die, Lawrence’s image shows us, their blood no more sanctified than that of the British redcoats we see vanquished in other images in the series.

The story many Americans are told about slavery includes the cotton gin, the Great Emancipator, and, lately, Juneteenth. Not so much the bloody uprisings of the enslaved. The Black American revolutionaries who Lawrence painted understood the price of liberty in a different way than Patrick Henry or Paul Revere. When and if the descendants of the enslaved obtain our freedom, the victory will owe more to the unknown Black revolutionaries than the known white ones.”

—Professor Paul Butler, Georgetown Law

Tamika D. Mallory is an American activist and one of the leading organizers of the 2017 Women’s March, for which she was recognized in the TIME 100 that year. Additionally, she received the Coretta Scott King Legacy Award from the Coretta Scott King Center for Cultural and Intellectual Freedom in 2018. She explored Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle, and penned this response to Panel 27.

Jacob Lawrence, Panel 27, . . . for freedom we want and will have, for we have served this cruel land long enuff . . . —a Georgia slave, 1810, 1956, from Struggle: From the History of the American People, 1954– 56, Egg tempera on hardboard, 11 3/4 x 15 3/4 in., Private collection. © 2021 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

“Jacob Lawrence’s Panel 27 of the Struggle series is a vivid expression that encapsulates not only the plight of the enslaved Africans in the 1800s, but the pursuit of Black Americans in our modern day. Despite the 200 years since Captain James declared his refusal to live in bondage any longer, we as Black Americans still find ourselves fighting for freedom. America is the land of many that serves a few. Jacob Lawrence’s iconic depiction of past struggle reminds us of how important it is to relentlessly seek justice for all. Whether we are protesting, boycotting, galvanizing, lobbying, or strategizing, our spirit for lasting change will never die. We have served this cruel land long enough. We will fight…Until Freedom.”

—Tamika D. Mallory, Co-Founder, Until Freedom

Could a missing Jacob Lawrence Struggle painting be hiding on your walls?

Since the 1960s, Jacob Lawrence’s Struggle: From the History of the American People has suffered the tragic fate of being dispersed among more than a dozen public and private collections.  Severed from their original context, several of these panels have gone missing. Yet, thanks to the national tour of Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle, two of the five remaining missing panels have resurfaced. How did that happen? As it turns out, in each case, the private collectors had been living with these works without any idea of the visionary artist or series to which it belonged. “I passed it on my way to the kitchen a thousand times a day. I didn’t know I had a masterpiece,” confessed the newfound owner of Panel 28.

As the exhibition comes to a close, have a look around your home and those of your friends and family members. Do either of these two panels look familiar? All that is known about the third missing painting, Panel 20, is that it is titled “Spindles,” likely referring to the spikes on a cotton gin used to clean cotton.

Only a black-and-white image survives for Panel 14: Peace, 1955, painting location unknown. © The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy of Lucia | Marquand

Panel 29: A cent and a half a mile, a mile and a half an hour.—slogan of the Erie Canal builders, 1956, painting location unknown. © The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy of Lucia | Marquand