The self-taught historian Charles Seifert —known as Professor Seifert—played a key role in Jacob Lawrence’s awakening to the importance of African history. Seifert built a successful career in Harlem as a carpenter and contractor, and as he prospered he amassed a collection of books, manuscripts, maps, and artifacts related to Africa’s cultures and diaspora. Seifert eventually housed his vast collection at 313 West 137th Street in a building he had purchased and named the Ethiopian School of Research History. He opened his library to many Harlemites, including the political leader Marcus Garvey, who founded the black nationalist United Negro Improvement Association and for a time lived in Seifert’s home in order to access his books.
Seifert believed that art played a central role in animating this history, and he conveyed this message forcefully in his regular lectures at the Harlem YMCA. Lawrence remembered that “one of his projects … was to get black artists and young people such as myself who were interested in art … to select as our content black history.”
