Relics,

1931–46

These graphic portrayals of tumbledown buildings belong to a large series of linocuts made by Hale Woodruff between 1931 and 1946, when he taught at Atlanta University and painted his celebrated Amistad Murals for Talladega College. Committed to documenting issues of poverty and segregation in the urban and rural South, Woodruff exploited the stark linearity of the linocut medium to stage expressive vignettes with African American protagonists, including churchgoing women, chain gang members, and lynching victims. Despite the absence of such figures in this print, the shared decrepitude of the sagging shack and mule evoke the setting’s bleak social and economic realities.

<p>Hale Woodruff traveled to rural Atlanta in the 1930s, creating a series of prints that captured the realities that African Americans faced in post-slavery America. In <em>Relics</em>, the dilapidated shack stands caved in, with shards of wood jutting out from the internal structure. The jagged details of the lines and the emaciated mule succinctly reflect how violence and neglect are inscribed into the history of the Black American citizen, leaving behind chaos and disarray. This image alludes to the poor social status that formerly enslaved people inherited post-emancipation, diminishing their hopes for a prosperous future.</p><p><strong><em>Chelsea A. Peart, Class of 2020</em></strong></p>