Henry Jackson Lewis

Henry Jackson Lewis, the nineteenth century’s foremost African American artist and illustrator, was born enslaved in Mississippi in the late 1830s. (Lewis’s exact birth date is unknown, and some sources place it as late as the 1850s.) He was severely burned as a child, leaving him blind in one eye and crippled in his left hand, but he nonetheless served in the Union army during the Civil War. Mustered in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, he became a self-taught artist, eventually mastering the craft of wood engraving and later chalk plate engraving for magazine illustrations. In the 1870s and 1880s he contributed illustrations to various publications, including popular family weeklies such as Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper and Harper’s Weekly. In 1882 he was hired to produce sketches for the Smithsonian’s Mound Survey of prehistoric Indigenous peoples sites along the Mississippi River.

Moving to Indianapolis, Lewis became an illustrator for the Indianapolis Freeman in 1889, a paper that became famous (thanks in part to his copious drawings) as “the Harper’s Weekly of the colored race.” Most of the roughly 175 illustrations and cartoons Lewis produced for the Freeman focused on themes of uplift and African American civil rights, and they were popular within the Black community. African American readers were less fond of his caricatures of rural African Americans under Jim Crow segregation, however, which one competing editor called a “grotesque and brutal mockery upon the race.” Taken as a whole, though, his images challenged his audience to confront the reality and impact of racism and segregation.

As visual chronicler, craftsman, and caricaturist, Lewis understood his importance in the African American community in the post–Civil War years. A self-portrait in the 13 July 1889 edition of the Freeman demonstrates how Lewis transgressed the stereotypical caricatures of Blacks that were common in the public sphere. He renders himself as a distinguished artist in formal attire—an artist whose key role it was to effect positive change for the African American community through art. Lewis centrally positions himself between his children under the apex of an American eagle. This symbol of freedom connects the strategic placement of the artist’s tools, palette, and a copy of the Freeman. It seems that for Lewis, literacy and what he refers to, in the open book below his profile, as the “sciences” of engraving and fine art were significant achievements. He viewed both as viable pathways toward achieving the freedom and equity that was often elusive and fleeting for African Americans during the late nineteenth century.

The theme of African American civil rights recurred in many of Lewis’s drawings. His images protested violence, discrimination, and particularly lynching in southern states. He frequently used symbols, such as a robed figure called Ethiopia (denoting Black nationalism) or Uncle Sam (for the US government), to call out inequality and to demand equal protection under the law. A few images were more militant, suggesting strategies for resistance, and many documented acts of celebration of African American culture and values. In one such image, appearing on the eve of the 1892 presidential election, the Freeman published an older Lewis image to remind readers that moving away was a form of protest against Democratic local and state governments that failed to punish lynching. The image bolstered an exodus encouraged by activist Ida B. Wells in the wake of a brutal lynching of three successful Black shop owners in Memphis, Tennessee.

Like Wells, Lewis understood and articulated the need for self-help and self-defense at time when Blacks were being killed by mobs. The caption below the image in the Freeman urges action: “Colored Men, stay on guard!” The two men at the far front left and right of the exodus parade are each engaging with dogs and banjos quite differently than how Lewis depicts these symbols in the smaller insets at the top of the frame. The dog and banjo in the foreground subtly represent communal defense and resistance to the social status quo. The posture of the two men flanking the front line of exodus marchers are not on the offensive—if anything, they hold the banjo and dog with careful restraint. In fact, while the man’s leashed dog in the foreground is not nearly as intimidating as the southern hound, the man leans back in an effort to control his pet. The banjo was similar to a stringed West African instrument, and it became an important element in slave music and dancing rituals. As drawn by Lewis, it provides a counterpoint to the weapons in the smaller frames. Lewis’s image captures both the cultural continuities of Black Exodusters and their need for self-defense through the guise of music.

Lewis died of pneumonia in Indianapolis in 1891, before this Exodusters image was published, but its themes resonate throughout his work. Although his tenure at the Freeman was brief, so powerful were his images that the paper continued to republish them, with new captions, through the end of the century. His work left a legacy that inspired early twentieth-century African American artists and activists to challenge discrimination—and celebrate achievement—through a vibrant visual culture.