Born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Lawrence grew up in Harlem during the Depression. Harlem was an active cultural center then, and Lawrence became interested in the arts while still a teenager. He received early training at art workshops sponsored by the federal government’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) in Harlem and then studied at the American Artists School in New York. From 1938 to 1939, Lawrence worked in the Federal Arts Project and produced some of his earliest major works. His first important solo exhibition in 1944, at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, secured his place as an important commentator on the American scene, particularly African American experiences. Lawrence died on 9 June 2000.

“Sharecropper” is a powerful portrait of an anonymous woman that calls attention to the hardships experienced by tenant farmers of the American South, who were required to pay for the land they rented with part of their crop and thus often faced lifelong debt. She created “Sharecropper” at the Taller de Gráfica Popular (People’s Graphic Workshop) in Mexico City, which was dedicated to the production of socially engaged prints.”

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/364497

Elizabeth Catlett’s artwork and life painted a noble and human way of life for African American and Mexican working-class women. Her work tells accurate stories of their lives.

She was born in the United States in Washington, DC, in 1915. Raised by her mother because her father died shortly after she was born, Catlett spent summers with her grandparents in North Carolina.

She graduated from Howard University with a degree in Art and the University of Iowa with a Masters in Fine Arts degree. In 1940, she got a job as the department chair of Art at Dillard in New Orleans.

The first female professor of sculpture at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, School of Fine Arts San Carlos, in Mexico City, Catlett taught there until she retired in 1975.

Her work is collected in America, Mexico and the Czech Republic.

In addition to supporting marginalized communities in protests marches, Catlett was also commissioned to create monuments for the Ralph Ellison, Louis Armstrong and at Howard University.  Social justice was a matter that filled her work with images of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Black Power and other African American figures.