Charles White is one of the most important African American artists in history. He created images of African Americans at a time when they were not in vogue and they were rarely seen. When they were seen, images of blacks were caricatured and negative, and White actively fought to combat this common media image. White presents his subjects with dignity and human values. He is interested in Black history, and often celebrates influential figures in his artwork. “I use Negro subject matter because Negros are closest to me,” said White in a 1960s interview. “But I am trying to express a universal feeling through them, a meaning for all men.”

Oh Mary, Don’t You Weep is an exceptional drawing from the height of White’s career in the mid-1950s. The two women in the drawing are monumental, rendered with strength and dignity. Their volume, details of clothing, and the background shading are comprised of carefully delineated line—remarkable for the artist’s mastery of the medium both close up and at a distance. The title references an African American spiritual that originated from before the Civil War. Oh Mary, Don’t You Weep, considered one of the most important spirituals from its time, contains coded messages of hope and resistance that would have been comforting to those singing and listening. The song tells a Biblical story of Mary, who pleas with Jesus to raise her brother Lazarus from the dead. (As a side note, the Fisk Jubilee singers made the first recording of the song in 1915.) Because liberation was one of the messages of Oh Mary, Don’t You Weep, it also became popular again in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s (when White completed the drawing).

The drawing also connects with many objects already in the collection. In the late-nineteenth century collection, connections can be made to Emma Marie Cadwalader-Guild’s sculpture, Free. Because of his work for the WPA and the Fine Arts Project, White connects with our collection of WPA-era prints. White’s work relates to that of Hale Woodruff. White’s first wife was Elizabeth Catlett, who is represented in the collection by a sculpture and a linocut. Kerry James Marshall’s Our Town also shares affinities with White.