Eldzier Cortor

The Night Letter (1938)

Born in 1916, Cortor’s life and career reflects the African American experience in the twentieth century. His family participated in the Great Migration of African Americans from the rural south to the industrial north near the turn of the century. Raised in Chicago, he trained at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Institute of Design; worked for the Federal Art Project; and co-founded Chicago’s South SideCommunity Art Center. Like many young African Americans, he searched for positive Black imagery, which he found in working-class life in Chicago’s South Side, in the former slave cultures of the U.S. South and Caribbean, and, finally, in the symbolic form of the Black female figure. While much of his work displays a strength and hopefulness, other works, such as the Haitian slaughterhouse series (L’Abbatoire),suggest the suffering than can result from oppression and racism.