Charles White: Monumental Practice

A deeply committed artist, educator, and political activist, White frequently described the importance of libraries and reading for his artistic development. In contrast with the exclusion of African American history from his school textbooks, White’s self-guided study in the Chicago Public Library as a young boy illuminated subjects that became the foundation for his work. In a 1965 interview, White noted: "My mother, when she went shopping, would leave me at the public library and this was the time I was six or seven years old.… [After art] books had been my second greatest passion in life.… I came across quite accidentally in the library one of the most definitive and one of the most important books that had ever been done on the culture of the Negro, which was a book called The New Negroby Dr. Alain Locke who was Professor of Philosophy, chairman of the Philosophy Department at Howard University. Dr. Locke was the authority on American Negro culture, with a particular interest to me because of his own special interest in art, the history of the Negro artist in America.… This book opened my eyes, because I heard names, read names, read of people that I’d never heard of before.… Then I began to search for other books on Negroes, which led to Negro historical figures, individuals that played a role in the abolition of slavery.… For the first time, at fourteen years old, these names came to my mind. I became aware the Negroes had a history in America."