n his Migration of the Negro series, Jacob Lawrence rarely gives his African American subjects distinctive identities; they are, rather, almost uniformly faceless, as in Panel No 60: And the Migrants Kept Coming, the final image in the work. One way to read these faceless, two-dimensional silhouettes is to see in their lack of distinction a common humanity. But there are other ways to read them. How might a white Northerner have understood them? How does this ambiguity raise questions of racism and the reception of the thousands of migrants in the North? Do any of these issues still inform American culture?

n his Migration of the Negro series, Jacob Lawrence rarely gives his African American subjects distinctive identities; they are, rather, almost uniformly faceless, as in Panel No 60: And the Migrants Kept Coming, the final image in the work. One way to read these faceless, two-dimensional silhouettes is to see in their lack of distinction a common humanity. But there are other ways to read them. How might a white Northerner have understood them? How does this ambiguity raise questions of racism and the reception of the thousands of migrants in the North? Do any of these issues still inform American culture?