Migration panel 22. Another of the social causes of the migrants' leaving was that at times they did not feel safe, or it was not the best thing to be found on the streets late at night. They were arrested on the slightest provocation.

Three figures stand bound together shackled together by wrist; their backs turned toward the viewers, forming a human chain. In front of them is a visual rhyme in the form of metal bars, implying that the figures are in a prison cell. Additionally, their street attire hints at their recent arrest, representing the black southerners living under Jim Crow. Arrests were the result of charges including walking along railroad tracks, spitting, drinking, loitering, vagrancy, and speaking too loud in public: all of which applied strictly to African Americans. Lawrence pays tribute to the thousands of African Americans capriciously arrested as a result of these unfair charges that resulted from racial tendencies.
SKU: 65210
Creator: Jacob Lawrence
Date: 1940-41
Original Medium: Tempera on gesso on composition board
Original Size: 12 x 18 in
Location: Museum of Modern Art, NY
© 2016 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Paper SizePortrait / LandscapeUnframedFramed
Petite8x10 / 10x8$19$109
Small11x14 / 14x11$29$189
Medium16x20 / 20x16$59$279
Large22x28 / 28x22$99$389
Extra Large32x40 / 40x32$159$449