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The Illinois Writers Project “Negro in Illinois” papers
This record forms part of the Chicago’s Art-Related Archival Materials: A Terra Foundation Resource project funded by the Terra Foundation for American Art. For this project, the Archives surveyed archival repositories throughout the Chicago region to identify art-related materials contained in their holdings. While the Archives of American Art does not own any of the materials described herein, information about those materials and links to the original repositories have been included when available.
Descriptive Summary
53 boxes of research notes and draft chapters for a projected book on African American history and culture in Illinois, The Negro in Illinois, compiled and written by participants in the Illinois Writers Project. Included are essays on “Colored Culture in Chicago,” including artists William Edouard Scott, Archibald J. Motley Jr., Henry Ossawa Tanner, Meta Warrick Fuller, Joseph Kersey, Clarence Lawson, Richmond Barthe, William Knight Farrow, E. Simms Campbell, and Charles C. Dawson, and on the Federal Art Project.
Biographical Historical Note
Produced by a special division of the Illinois Writers' Project, a Works Progress Administration program, The Negro in Illinois employed major black writers living in Chicago during the 1930s to chronicle the African American experience in Illinois from the beginnings of slavery to the present. The project was canceled in 1942, but a selection of the essays was published by the University of Illinois Press in 2013.