Sergeant John “Edward” Welch, Harlem Renaissance Man
Artist / Sign Painter, World War II Buffalo Soldier
by Mary Hess, with Bobby and Joan Harris
Photographs of Edward Welch’s Art courtesy of Bobby and Joan Harris
In 1918, as a baby in his mother’s arms, one of the first things John Edward Welch ever heard was the brand new Norfolk & Southern train whistle blow as it barreled past tiny Winfall, North Carolina. The train had passed over the Albemarle Sound trestle at Edenton, and the dark, slow blackwater of the Perquimans River at Hertford, steaming northeast, to travel on the edge of the Great Dismal Swamp. John “Edward” Welch, an African-American, was born in his grandfather’s post Civil War “hand-built house” in Winfall, Perquimans County, North Carolina, in a town of only 222 citizens today.
The Norfolk & Southern railroad train would blow its whistle and vibrate on the tracks, it rolled so close — young Edward could feel the rhythm of the locomotive at his kitchen table. It felt as if the train was moving through the living room of the clapboard wooden house.
As a 7-year-old young boy, Edward was learning how to pick cotton and peanuts in the hot, dusty fields of Winfall, near “Cotton Gin Road,” earning only pennies a day in 1925. Some days he would earn 30 cents. One day, in 1931, Edward and his mother boarded the train and left tiny Winfall far behind. They were on their way, through historic Elizabeth City, north to the edge of the Great Dismal Swamp, through Norfolk, Virginia, and all the way to the The Big Apple, Harlem, New York.
Edward Welch and his mother joined the The Great Migration of African Americans who left violence and racism in the Jim Crow rural south, fleeing to the “Promised Land” of freedom and opportunity. Young Edward’s eyes opened wide to the great big world of the city, he entered the gates of New York City as if he entered the magical gates of the 1939 New York World Fair.
At the young age of 13, Edward painted a sign for a local store owner, and began painting signs. Although Edward lived in Harlem during hardship of the Great Depression, he was young, and he really began to embrace life and live. He began to be a serious sign painter, painting business signs as a teenager in order to survive. Edward Welch was born into the Harlem Renaissance, the “Rebirth.” He was learning a crash course in American history and civil rights, art and music, and how to paint signs, his own art. Edward immersed himself into school and learning. He took art classes in painting at Brooklyn Technical High School and the High School of Art and Design.
Edward had “given away” his favorite set of marbles in order to have more time to read books. As a young teenage boy, he changed dramatically, and Harlem changed him. He shed his old skin, the mantle of Jim Crow society he had been born into, and was born anew, “smack dab” into the middle of the Harlem Renaissance.
“I had these marbles I loved - and I played with them all night,” he says.
“After I got done, I went out and looked for someone my age to give them to - because I knew my playing days were over.” — Edward Welch
Mark St. John Erickson Daily Press .com
Edward was interested in civil rights and his community. One of his first jobs was with the WPA’s Federal Art Project. During the Great Depression, the Works Progress Administration employed 8.5 million Americans. Edward became an Art Teacher, and he had a commercial sign shop.
Beginning in the 1960s, and after he retired in the 1980s, he painted hundreds of poster size portraits on heavy cardboard or wood — historical figures, famous athletes, lawyers, civil rights leaders, artists and musicians. He used stickers, buckets of glitter, and bright colors in his painted collages. His paintings have themes of civil rights, culture, music, law, history, and showcase African Americans. Although he was formerly trained, his work has elements of folk art, visionary art, outsider art, and poster art. Some of his work might remind one of Alabama Folk Artist, Howard Finster, but Welch’s work is also decidedly different in many ways. Although a religious man, Edward Welch did not quote thousands of Bible scriptures, instead he had stock phrases he used. Like Howard Finster, Welch’s work can look “flat, lacking perspective,” but it still leaps off the “canvas” into your heart. Famous African Americans are depicted “bigger than life,” with exuberance and pride, and are depicted with reverence and respect, leaving some of the cartoonish aspects of naïve art behind.
Edward painted what he lived—dancing at the Savoy Ballroom, and listening to Louis Armstrong concerts at the Apollo Theatre. He had moved to Harlem as a child, about the same time Ella Fitzgerald had also moved to Harlem. Ella was a teenager, and singing in the streets. In 1934, 17-year-old Ella Fitzgerald sang at Amateur Night at the Apollo Theatre.
Edward Welch uses Civil Rights as a theme throughout his art. He has theme phrases and symbols he uses repeatedly, the American Flag, Uncle Sam, “We Love You!” and “We Need You!” He paints architectural monuments and buildings, institutions of democracy. In the 1930s and 1940s, human-size Uncle Sam Posters used to stare down every child in America.
His high hat, his whiskers, and long-tail coat,
all red, white and blue, Stars and Stripes.
His finger pointed right at you.
History of Mackay’s Ferry, Bob Spruill, Norfolk & Southern Historical Society
Welch uses imagery of a cornucopia of fresh farm produce, a farmer working with his hands, behind a horse-drawn plough in a field. Edward uses the phrases “Feeding the Hungry,” “Respect the Farmers,” and “Save our Children.” Edward created his own portrait of The Birth of a Nation using covered wagons, New York Harbor, and the Statue of Liberty, instead of the racist imagery used in the famous film.
Edward Welch’s contribution to the culture of the Harlem Renaissance, and the Civil Rights Movement — is his paintings. Edward lived in Harlem in the 1930s, and again after World War II, when the Civil Rights Movement gained traction in New York before exploding into action in the 1960s. Edward began seriously painting his portraits in the 1960s. He would insist, “I am not an Artist, I am a Sign Painter, I always had a sign shop.” Edward Welch was a “Sign Painter,” but he was also an Artist, swaying to the bright, spine-tingling timeless jazz of Louis Armstrong, another Harlem Renaissance man.
“There’s a story behind pretty much everything you see in here.” Edward Welch
Mark St. John Erickson Daily Press .com
Later in life, Edward Welch had hundreds of his poster paintings stacked in his small Newport News, Virginia apartment. Welch loved music, as exhibited in his celebration of “The Hardest-Working Man in Show Business,” — James Brown. Edward uses a “Glittery Gold Record” as the “O” in “Brown.” Welch uses the phrases, “Make Big Money!” “We Need You,” and James Brown’s famous phrase of “Don’t Be a Drop Out!” James Brown was famous for being “Live at the Apollo!”
Edward Welch’s family came from Winfall, North Carolina, a small rural agricultural town, but an area rich in early American Colonial history. Edward painted an autobiographical poster painting of his “Family Tree” with images, old family photos of his ancestors, and the North Carolina family home hand-built by his grandfather. Winfall was established after the Civil War by former enslaved African Americans and a few wealthy agricultural industrialists. Winfall is historic place, and the Norfolk & Southern railroad tracks run right through the middle of town.
This rural farming area of North Carolina and Virginia was a dividing line between Union and Confederate forces during the Civil War. It was said that, “once an African American crossed the Blackwater River east in Virginia, they were on the Union side of the conflict.” The headwaters of the Great Dismal Swamp flow south into the Perquimans River. Winfall was established at the mouth of the swamp-fed Perquimans River flowing into the Albemarle Sound. Right after the American Civil War, houses were being built in Winfall in 1873. It was originally a small crossroads community, where wealthy landowners purchased land in 1850. When a store at an intersection in the area blew down during a storm, Winfall acquired its name.
The Norfolk & Southern Railroad built a depot in Winfall in 1881. A lumber mill and lumber industry were added to a cotton gin warehouse and agricultural fields, connecting to the Port of Elizabeth City, and beyond. Many of the homes were built from 1880 to 1930, in the style of Queen Anne, Craftsman and Colonial Revival. Property records show many Americans named “Welch” living today in the Bronx, New York, still own property in Winfall, and neighboring Hertford. Some of these New York residents may be descendants of North Carolina African Americans who also migrated north during the Great Migration.
Not much is known about Mr. Welch’s family, but the area in North Carolina where they lived goes back to early English farming settlements along the East Coast. A town in West Virginia is named after a Confederate Captain named Isaiah Welch. With an English/Welsh name like “Welch,” some of Edward’s history probably includes “Slave Owners” named Welch. Some of Edward’s ancestors may have been English and Native American, but they were definitely African, and had been enslaved in North Carolina. Edward was born a “free man,” but into a life of southern sharecropper poverty.
The Perquimans River is a tidal estuary, with ancient towering cypress trees and their “knees” filtering the blackwater slowing flowing from Great Dismal Swamp and spilling into the Albemarle Sound. “Perquimans” means “The land of beautiful women” in Yeopim. The Yeopim were a small Weapemeoc Native American Tribe who lived on the Albemarle Sound in the 1500s. Yeopim, also Weapemeoc, is translated into “People of the First Light.”
Since 825 CE, the Chowanoke (Chowanoc) Native Americans, part of the Algonquin tribe, lived in this area of North Carolina, today called “Chowan County,” location of the “Chowan River.” Native American artifacts date back to 4500 BCE. Native Americans used bald cypress, technically a “softwood,” for coffins, homes, drums and canoes.
One of the first Native American “Reservation” areas was created in 1677 for the small population of Chowanoke Native Americans who had survived genocidal destruction of their homes, and the measles and smallpox viruses. Bennett’s Creek (Gatesville) where the Chowanoke lived, is northwest of Winfall, between the headwaters of the Chowan River and the Great Dismal Swamp. Today, the Chowanoke population is all but gone from Gatesville. The long end of a musket and the short end of a cutlass had pushed the Chowanoke to the west, away from the Perquimans and Chowan Rivers, and Chowan County, their namesake.
There is a legend that an Englishman had fallen in love with a Native American woman, but she died. He refused to believe she had died and forever thought she was in the Great Dismal Swamp. Thomas Moore, an Irish Poet in 1803, described the lover who searched for his sweetheart who died, he wouldn’t believe she was dead, but still living in the swamp:
“They made her a grave, too cold and damp
For a soul so warm and true;
And she’s gone to the Lake of the Dismal Swamp,
Where, all night long, by a fire-fly lamp,
She paddles her white canoe.”
A Ballad: The Lake of the Dismal Swamp —Thomas Moore
When Edward Welch was 7-years-old, he began picking cotton. There is a street named “Cotton Gin Street” in Winfall. Edward would walk to his one-room schoolhouse, because only “white children” had a bus. Eventually, a flat-bed truck was converted to a school bus for the African American children. PBS Documentaries is recording how African Americans tell stories about public school buses transporting “white children,” and passing them by, leaving them to walk in dirt ditches, to breathe in road dust and bus exhaust.
This area of North Carolina is almost all agricultural, and was developed as a result of the “draining” of the Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina and Virginia. If Edward Welch’s ancestors were enslaved in North Carolina, much of their history has been erased, beginning with their “names.” Edward painted a portrait of Abraham Lincoln detailing the end of the Civil War and the abuses of slavery. It is one of the portraits where he mentions the Emancipation Proclamation and Juneteenth, but not the name of Juneteenth itself. In other posters, in 2005, Edward paints about “1619 and Reparations,” foreshadowing Nikole Hannah-Jones’ 1619 Project, created 400 years after 1619 — in 2019. Later in life, Mr. Welch lived for a long time in where Ella Fitzgerald was born, Newport News, Virginia, one of the oldest European settlement areas in Colonial America, right near Jamestown.
Winfall and this area of North Carolina has a long history of military service by African Americans and fell behind Union lines during part of the Civil War. It is possible that Edward Welch’s ancestors had a military history. Since Winfall is located directly south or connected to the original, vast Great Dismal Swamp, Mr. Welch’s ancestors may have ties to, or been a part of, the Maroon Community of African Americans who escaped enslavement by living in the swamp when laws of human bondage and American Slavery were strengthened, enforced, and tightened in the 1800s. The Maroon Community actually engaged in trade with outside communities to survive. New research suggests that thousands of African Americans lived in the Great Dismal Swamp. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote about them in Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp. “The term Maroon probably comes from the Spanish cimarrón, a fugitive slave, or something wild and defiant.”
Winfall has an early American settlement history with neighboring Hertford, founded in 1700. Perquimans County is described as:
“...always been rooted in agriculture and the early settlers were Quakers,… by the early nineteenth century, Quaker out-migration resulted in the consolidation of small parcels of land into large plantations. The slave labor force in the county also increased, and the cultivation of cotton rose dramatically by 1860.”
Winfall is also near Edenton, North Carolina. Edward Welch may have heard stories about Edenton as a boy. Edenton is the birthplace of the famous American Writer, Harriet Jacobs, who escaped enslavement and wrote her 1861 autobiography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. When Harriet Jacobs was threatened with rape by her enslaver and he threatened to sell her children, she hid in a tiny crawl space under the roof of her grandmother's house, until she could safely escape.
Edenton’s long colonial history, includes the “Edenton Tea Party” in 1774. The Port of Edenton is where the Norfolk & Southern Railroad built a five-mile long railroad trestle over the Albemarle Sound connecting it to Mackay’s Ferry in 1910.
“The sight and sound of those big locomotives, “those iron horses,” as referred to by the early Native Americans, are still fresh and clear in my mind today. The excitement of feeling the earth shake, as the engine would rumble in, hissing, letting of steam, black smoke rolling out the stack.”
History of Mackay’s Ferry, Bob Spruill, Norfolk & Southern Historical Society
Edward Welch was born in a former “Plantation Colonial Economy” where, even after the Civil War, a young African American boy had little resources for education, love, and respect. He grew up in an abusive home. Edward said his mother “destroyed Daddy and me.”—Peter Hastings Falk. His mother, one of eight children, had been neglected as a child herself, as an adult and mother, she was also an abusive parent. The legacy of violence and American enslavement of human beings long impacted Edward Welch’s life far into his future.
At the end of July, circa 1926, young Edward was picking cotton in the hot dusty air, his straw hat was too big, felt itchy, and his sweat coated his small child brow.
“One day, while resting in the cotton and peanut fields,
Edward watched a cicada emerge from its chrysalis.”
— Peter Hasting Falk
The buzz of the omnipresent cicadas ebbed and flowed with the burning sun passing behind a fluffy cloud. Edward had some beans and cornbread and went to have lunch under the shade of a large oak tree. As his little boy head leaned against the cool tree, all of a sudden, he saw a small movement, like the tree itself was breathing in the hot air. Edward watched in amazement as a large camouflaged insect began to appear emerging from the tree itself. He sat very still and watched as a luminescent cicada emerged from its shell — its exoskeleton, its bulbous eyeballs glistening in the bright day. Slowly, slowly, its translucent fragile gossamer wings began to unfurl. The cicada was born anew, it didn’t move, just holding tight to the tree bark as if it was part of the tree itself, yet somehow eternal and free. Cicadas are symbols of “immortality.” The drumbeat buzz of the cicadas filled the air.
Similar to Folk Artist Howard Finster, Edward was amazed at this small, miraculous transformation of re-birth, and life, and thought that the wonders of God he learned about in Bible study truly lived in him, and all around him.
“He watched its shell began to crack. Then the mature cicada gradually emerged. “I believed I was witnessing a miracle — as if I alone had been chosen by God to see it. It was a sign of the promise of rebirth.” Edward Welch
—Peter Hastings Falk
This was a life-changing event for young Edward, and he started to think about God being an important part of his life, with the themes of birth and magical “re-birth,” “renaissance,” or metamorphosis.
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Edward Welch had heard and read accounts of enslaved Nat Turner’s fight for freedom, abolitionist John Brown’s insurrection, and Frederick Douglass’ successful escape from slavery. Edward knew their work and sacrifices for American Civil Rights. Welch, Turner, Brown, and Douglass had all been schooled in “Bible Study,” this is what they knew, this is what influenced their worldview the most.
The story that probably changed Edward’s life the most was the history of Nat Turner’s life and “Rebellion,” which happened just over the Virginia State Line from where Edward was born in North Carolina. Winfall is on the southern border of the Great Dismal Swamp, Edward Welch was born near the state border, where Nathaniel “Nat” Turner spent his entire life in Southhampton County, Virginia. Edward used Nat Turner as a subject of one of his paintings, and he probably heard the name of Nat Turner at a young age.
Nat Turner was highly intelligent, extremely religious, and studied the Bible during a time in the early 1800s where “book learning” for enslaved African Americans was illegal and frowned upon by plantation slave holders in Virginia. Nat Turner spent his entire life being an American Slave, until in 1831, he was briefly “free” before being tried and executed for “Insurrection and Rebellion.”
A History of Racial Injustice describes the aftermath of the execution of Nat Turner:
“In the months after the rebellion, angry white mobs began to torture and murder hundreds of Black people who had not participated in the revolt, terrorizing enslaved and free Black people. Conditions of enslavement worsened for thousands of enslaved Black people as more cruel, barbaric, and traumatizing forms of control were implemented.”
After the death of Nat Turner, more laws were passed tightening the bonds of American Slavery, including officially outlawing “book-learning.” In Southampton County, Virginia, more than 120 African Americans were murdered, and the 55 “white” men who fought against them.
The Edward Welch poster painting of the Nathaniel “Nat” Turner 1800-1831 Rebellion is an especially bloody work depicting a southern clapboard shanty with Nat Turner’s wife screaming. A red-haired white man is murdering Nat Turner, and the phrases, “Fighting for his freedom… he was called a miserable wretch!” and “Slaves are given their master’s names…your babies are their property.” Edward Welch’s bloody painting commemorating the death and torture of Nat Turner may be one of his earliest works. Most of his artwork depicts the fight for Civil Rights and non-violence, but this work is gruesome, and depicts the reality of the death of Nat Turner, undoubtably, one of the biggest influences on young Edward Welch’s life.
There is a old, direct route from Courtland (Jerusalem), Virginia, where Nat Turner was executed, 56 miles straight to Winfall, North Carolina, where Edward Welch was born. The headwaters of the Blackwater River flow from Virginia south, into North Carolina, becoming the large Chowan River, and then into the Albemarle Sound. Since Edward Welch grew up 18 miles east of the Chowan River, Mr. Welch could have “taken a boat north,” and travelled in a half a day, to exactly where Nat Turner lived and died. These areas of Virginia and North Carolina were also a part of Harriet Tubman’s Underground Railroad. Nat Turner’s story is one of “divine inspiration,” and no doubt inspired a young Edward Welch working the fields in rural North Carolina.
Edward Welch must have heard the John Brown Song as a young boy. Like John Brown, Edward was schooled every day in Bible study. He learned that all human beings are “children of God,” and that everyone is worthy of heavenly rewards — but Edward knew he had to work hard for earthly sustenance in life. At the end of the Civil War, in Charleston, South Carolina— February 1865, recently freed African Americans and some white missionaries held a parade of 10,000 people, led by 3,000 Black children singing John Brown’s Body. The march honored 257 dead Union soldiers whose remains the organizers had reburied from a mass grave in a Confederate prison camp. This is considered the first observation of Decoration Day, now known as Memorial Day.
John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave,
His soul’s marching on
He’s gone to be a soldier in the army of the Lord,
His soul’s marching on.
“His soul’s marching on” was an inspiration to young Edward. He learned from the John Brown Song how John Brown bravely sacrificed his life so all men could be free.
Edward Welch painted a portrait of Frederick Douglass. Frederick Douglass was born almost exactly 100 years before Edward Welch. Douglass published his first autobiographical book, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave in 1845. Frederick Douglass claims Native American, English and African American ancestors. In Welch’s portrait of Frederick Douglass, he combines images of the Capitol, Washington Monument, a building that looks like the Eiffel Tower, a World War II boat, and a large American flag with the phrase, “We Need You.” It is an autobiographical piece, with a clapboard house and a farmer furrowing a field with a horse and hand-held plough. This is a Edward Welch signature work, depicting what makes America great to him.
Edward Welch had a hard time growing up with his mother. Welch decided to not have children when he was married because his own mother had been “cunning,” perhaps meaning deceitful and mean-spirited. Frederick Douglass used “cunning” to describe “Edward Covey,” a cunning slave-breaker, who would sneak around.
He always aimed at taking us by surprise. Such was his cunning, that we used to call him, among ourselves, “the snake.” — Frederick Douglass
The word “cunning” conjures trickery, treachery, cruelty. “What cunning cruelty.” —William Shakespeare describes the villain Iago in Othello.
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In 1919, James Weldon Johnson described the white supremacist “Red Summer” of lynching and terror “White Supremacy” spread across the country against African Americans. At the time, Edward Welch was a one-year-old baby, and living close to where Nat Turner had been brutally executed much earlier in 1831. When soldiers returned from World War I, civil unrest and unemployment were high, leading to “race-riots” and violence. The “white-owned press” and the federal government feared “socialism and communism” fomenting among unemployed, struggling Americans.
Later in his life, Edward Welch painted portraits of Civil Rights Leader, Walter Francis White, who worked with James Weldon Johnson at the NAACP. Walter White joined the NAACP the year Edward Welch was born. Walter White was part African American in his ancestry. According to his family’s oral tradition, White was descended from a politician, and President of the United States, William Henry Harrison, and an African American woman named, “Dilsia.” Walter White had blue eyes, blond hair, and “passed as white.” He investigated lawless murders of African Americans in the early 1900s.
A story is told about Walter White narrowly escaping mob lynching by jumping onto a train chugging out of Arkansas. One of the train employees came face-to-face with Walter, telling him about how “he [Walter White] was going to die” at the hands of the mob. The train employee didn’t realize Walter was the very person the mob was hunting. White narrowly escaped being a victim of a lynch mob, again. In Welch’s multiple paintings of Walter White, he uses the phrases, “Justice for All,” “Domestic Terrorism,” “Eagle & Capitol,” and “Blind Justice.”
During the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, Walter White was also mistaken for “white,” and temporarily deputized to “kill” African Americans. Similar to Stetson Kennedy, who fought for Civil Rights in Florida and the South, Walter White could “blend in” with the Ku Klux Klan. Stetson Kennedy, however, did not have African American ancestors like Walter White. Edward Welch held Civil Rights leader Walter White in high esteem for his brave investigations into the Ku Klux Klan and the widespread lynching of African Americans in the early 1900s. Many young African Americans considered Walter White a “hero,” for his daring escapes from certain death and the lynch mob.
White later oversaw the plans and led the fight against public segregation. He worked with President Truman on desegregating the armed forces. Walter White was also active in the in Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling in 1954, which determined that segregated education was inherently unequal.
Edward Welch was heavily influenced by Civil Rights leader, Walter White, and must have known White was involved with the American Missionary Association, the “AMA.” The AMA was a protestant abolitionist group founded on September 3, 1846 (177 years ago) in Albany, New York. The main purpose of the organization was abolition of slavery, promotion of racial equality, the education of African Americans — before, during, and after the Civil War. The AMA had assisted the Underground Railroad in their mission of freedom. The AMA helped to establish Atlanta University, founded by newly freed African Americans.
A young Edward Welch might have heard stories about the “Freedman’s Colony” on Roanoke Island, located on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and the AMA schools for African Americans that existed during the Civil War on the island full of newly freed American citizens. Roanoke Island was one of the very first British Colonies in the Americas, and later, the Union Army held the island during the American Civil War. The AMA provided financial support and education to the Roanoke Freedman’s Colony (1863–1867). Located on an island occupied by Union troops, the colony was intended to be self-sustaining, but infectious disease and poor agricultural returns forced the colony to disband.
Most of Edward’s early artwork was similar in style to an AMA Poster which included stylized “Institutional Buildings,” like AMA churches and government architecture, with regal portraits of Civil Rights leaders. Edward sometimes paints in a triptych style, with portraits, architecture, symbols, and phrases.
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In 1931, 13-year-old Edward Welch left the rural southern cotton fields of Winfall and moved to the Big Apple, Harlem, New York. Louis Armstrong and Paul Robeson were cresting at the height of their careers in 1931. Through open apartment windows, radios played jazz, gospel and spirituals out to the streets all summer long.
In 1918, the year Edward Welch was born, Louis Armstrong was playing music on Mississippi riverboats. Louis Armstrong had a long career, playing in Harlem throughout the 20th Century, recording Heebie Jeebies in 1926, and Potato Head Blues in 1927. In 1964, Louis Armstrong’s Hello, Dolly! hit number one, and The Beatles lost their spot. Jazz Trumpeter and Singer Armstrong and his Hot Five had a career in full swing in 1931. His wife, Lil Harden Armstrong, did his advertising, billing him on placards as The Greatest Trumpet Player. In 1943, Louis Armstrong found a permanent home in Queens, New York.
Years later, Edward Welch painted a playful golden star for the “i” in Louis’ first name. Armstrong had been cared for as a child by a Jewish family in New Orleans, and he actually carried a Star of David with him his entire life. Louis Armstrong learned about racism as a child, not only racism against African Americans, but racism against Jewish Americans. Louis Armstrong was a “star,” an international star.
Welch depicts Louis Armstrong in full body, in a tuxedo, with his bright shiny trumpet. The scene has a close up of red bow tie wearing “SATCHMO” on the left. On the right, there is an audience in a theatre with a main curtain, like the Lafayette Theatre, or the 125th Street Apollo in Harlem. The audience gushes, “We Love You SATCHMO.” This piece is an example of Welch’s triptych style. Louis Armstrong’s bright jazz music was a huge presence during the Harlem Renaissance, he had a “double-career” there, in the 1920s-1930s, and again in 1940-1970.
In 1930, African Americans are described in New York: “But in Harlem, he is free.”
“Everywhere in Harlem there are Negroes; Negroes varying in color from jet black through browns and yellows to almost pure white; Negroes with tight, kinky, wooly hair and with smooth, straight, black, brown, or yellow hair; Negroes with eyes of every known color,…
The Negroes talk loudly and laugh loudly. There is noise everywhere a big, warm, friendly noise. Negroes stroll along the sidewalk leisurely, making their way here and there, or just strolling. There is no hurry or bustle or tension in the atmosphere.
One feels a pleasant, good-natured laziness in the air; one knows that these people are leisurely, humorous, friendly; one feels instinctively that here people know each other, that Harlem is not a community of strangers, in any sense of the word.
You could hear Ethel Waters, Bessie, Mamie, or Clara Smith sing some raw, rich, haunting ‘Blues’ in a deep, husky voice…”
— Eslanda Robeson, Paul Robeson, Negro
Edward Welch painted a portrait of Rutgers University’s college football star, and professional singer, stage and film actor, Paul Robeson. Edward may have heard Paul Robeson sing in Harlem at the Lafayette Theatre, or watched Show Boat. Show Boat, with a Ziegfeld Theatre premiere in 1927, was a Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein musical based upon a book by young Jewish writer Edna Ferber.
Paul Robeson was world famous. Robeson was the son of a North Carolina African American man, William Robeson, who escaped slavery from the “Robeson Plantation” in Martin County, North Carolina. William Robeson fled to New Jersey to later become a beloved preacher. William nurtured his youngest son, Paul, to become a famous All-American Football Player at Rutgers University, the third African American accepted to study at Rutgers.
Even after brutal physical treatment by his Rutgers’ football “teammates,” including sustaining a broken nose, Robeson persisted and showed his power and might on the field until the coach finally “yelled from the sidelines through a megaphone: ‘Robeson, you’re on the Varsity!’”—Eslanda Robeson
After that, the Rutgers Football Team embraced the prowess of Paul Robeson, instead of trying to “break his spirit.” Paul Robeson was accepted into the Cap & Skull Society and delivered the Commencement Speech at his Rutgers’ Graduation. Paul Robeson, a brilliant mind, fought hard to become a lawyer, but he became discouraged by the racism he encountered working in a law firm. Instead, Robeson went on to become one of the most famous singers, and stage and film artists in American history, starring in multiple productions of William Shakespeare’s Othello.
Paul Robeson attended parties at Walter White’s house in Harlem during the time Edward Welch was becoming a respected sign painter. Mr. Welch painted portraits of both Paul Robeson and Walter White. In addition to singing Old Man River in Show Boat, Paul Robeson sang The John Brown Song, making the song even more famous.
Walter White biographer A.J. Baime makes you wish you were part of the scene in the Roaring Twenties:
“At parties in Walter’s Harlem apartment, Black and white audiences first heard the singing of Paul Robeson and the verse of Langston Hughes. Broadway hit maker George Gershwin debuted Rhapsody in Blue on Walter White’s piano.”
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Edward Welch says he danced “The Lindy Hop” at the Savoy Ballroom, the “World’s Finest Ballroom” — Poet Langston Hughes calls it the “Heartbeat of Harlem.” The Savoy Ballroom was located on “The Avenue,” famous Lenox Avenue. The Savoy had pink walls lined with mirrors, was 10,000 square feet on the second floor, and could hold up to 4,000 people.
Edward Welch painted Charles Lindbergh as an Aviator, and probably knew some of the “Lindy Hoppers,” dancers at the Savoy Ballroom, who also danced the “Jitterbug.” Edward was at the Savoy in the “Lindy Hoppers’ Corner,” flirting with pretty dancers.
Edward went and heard music and saw theatre at the Apollo Theatre at 253 West 125th Street in Harlem. Many of Mr. Welch’s paintings are of famous political idealists and Civil Rights figures, other paintings are of musicians and singers, like Louis Armstrong, B.B. King, Sarah Vaughan, Stevie Wonder, Janet Jackson, Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin. Before and after World War II, Mr. Welch saw artists like Paul Robeson at the Apollo Theatre, where Ella Fitzgerald won the “Talent Contest.” Ella Fitzgerald and Dizzy Gillespie also made music at the Savoy Ballroom after World War II.
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The Great Depression had a profound impact on the country and Harlem, New York. Americans struggled for jobs, and when World War II loomed, many African Americans enlisted in the Army. In 1939, the “World’s Fair” had just opened in Flushing Meadows, Queens, New York, and the United States went to combat in Europe. At the World’s Fair, there was an exhibit about African American culture.
Edward Welch painted portraits of Professional American Boxers, Joe Louis and Mike Tyson. Boxing has historically been an integrated sport from the beginning. Canadian Boxer George Dixon was the first African Canadian to win a world championship in a sport in 1892. “Featherweight” Dixon was 5’3,” and weighed 87 lbs. when he started boxing.
In 1937, American Boxer Joe Louis, “The Brown Bomber,” defeated James J. Braddock. Langston Hughes wrote about Joe Louis’ victory:
“Each time Joe Louis won a fight in those depression years, even before he became champion, thousands of black Americans on relief or W.P.A., and poor, would throng out into the streets all across the land to march and cheer and yell and cry because of Joe’s one-man triumphs. No one else in the United States has ever had such an effect on Negro emotions—or on mine. I marched and cheered and yelled and cried, too.”
When Americans saw Boxer Joe Louis, and Louis beat Nazi-supported German Maximilian “Max” Adolph Otto Siegfried Schmeling, integrated Professional Boxing became a national phenomenon. German Nazis and American White Supremacists had a hard time defending their “Superiority” with Joe Louis in the ring.
Edward Welch’s ancestors may have fought in the Union Army. African Americans have served in every United States conflict since the Revolutionary War. After World War I, many African American soldiers “came home to a nation whose citizens often did not respect their accomplishments.” As a young man, Edward Welch trained in the U.S. Army, infantry and cavalry, to serve in World War II and Korea.
After the Civil War, in the Western United States, African Americans trained to fight against Native Americans for their land rights. Native Americans called them “Buffalo Soldiers.” Buffalo Soldier was supposed to be a “derogatory term,” for the look of soldiers’ hair reminded Native Americans of buffalo fur. African Americans embraced the term and owned it. Multiple Native American Tribes confirmed: “We called them ‘buffalo soldiers,’ because they had curly hair ... like bison.”
After working for the WPA Federal Arts Project, Edward Welch joined the Army, and became a Cavalry Sergeant. Edward left Harlem behind to learn to ride horses at Fort Riley, Kansas, where the Buffalo Soldiers trained. Professional Boxers Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson were also trained at Fort Riley before serving in World War II. Joe Louis also fought to have African Americans trained as Officers. Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson often served as “Boxing Entertainment” during World War II. Sugar Ray Robinson would refuse to box if the audience was segregated.
The first black commissioned officer to lead the Buffalo Soldiers and the first African American graduate of West Point, was Henry O. Flipper in 1877. Lieutenant Flipper was born into slavery in Thomasville, Georgia. Henry Flipper attended college at Atlanta University, the University founded in 1865, with the assistance of the American Missionary Association and the Freedman’s Bureau. After Flipper graduated West Point, he served his country by fighting in the 10th Cavalry Regiment of the U.S. Army in the American West. He fought in the last battles against Native American Tribes at Fort Sill and Fort Concho, West Texas, in “Indian Territory.”
Lt. Flipper was described as “an officer and a gentlemen.” After spending time with the “white” daughter of one of his Captains, Lt. Flipper was smeared. Later, after multiple “nefarious accusations” and alleged improprieties during Lt. Flipper’s time in the service, he was “dishonorably discharged” from the Cavalry.
Lt. Flipper died in 1940. In 1999, Lieutenant Henry O. Flipper was pardoned by President Bill Clinton, 118 years after his discharge. A bust of Lt. Flipper was unveiled and stands at West Point.
From 1870 to 1898, the total strength of the US Army totaled 25,000 service members, with black soldiers maintaining their ten percent representation.
Authorities, law enforcement and politicians viewed with alarm African Americans’ advocacy of racial equity, labor rights, and the rights of victims of mobs to defend themselves.
In May, 1919, W.E.B. DuBois published his essay Returning Soldiers.
“We return from the slavery of uniform which the world’s madness demanded us to don, to the freedom of civil garb. We stand again to look America squarely in the face and call a spade a spade. We sing: This country of ours, despite all its better souls have done and dreamed, is yet a shameful land.…
We return.
We return from fighting.
We return fighting.”
“Soldier Welch was stationed in North Africa and Casablanca during World War II and witnessed ‘Slavery’ and Anti-Semitism in North Africa.”
—Peter Hasting Falk
Edward Welch was in Casablanca in the same years as Allied Agent Josephine Baker. After North Africa, he was then deployed to Italy. A bright young man, Edward learned to speak Italian quickly. The 92nd Infantry Division, the “Buffalo Division,” served in combat during the Italian Campaign. Edward Welch, served as a Sergeant, and because he had learned enough Italian, as an Army Interpreter.
The 92nd Infantry Division was the only African American infantry division that participated in combat in Europe during World War II. Other units were used as support. It was part of the U.S. Fifth Army, fighting in the Italian Campaign. The division served in the Italian Campaign from 1944 to the war's end.
During the Civil War, African American Soldiers were initially called the “United States Colored Troops,” a term that has long since been “disappeared.”
Edward Welch was a brave soldier in Africa and Europe, he later served in the United States Air Force in Korea — all for the United States of America. He returned home to reopen his Sign Shop and resume his painting in Harlem, New York. The United States Army finally “desegregated” in 1948, under President Harry S. Truman, approximately 10 years after John Edward “Sergeant Welch” had enlisted. Edward Welch served honorably for the United States in the Korean conflict during the 1950s. Sergeant Welch was in Korea for five long years. It was after his military service in Korea, that Edward Welch solidified himself as a “sign painter,” an amazing artist of the Harlem Renaissance.
General Colin Powell was “moved to tears” as he dedicated the National Buffalo Soldier Monument statue erected at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas in 1992. The 13-foot tall bronze monument was cast by Master Sculptor, Eddie Dixon, and based upon a painting by Western Artist Lee Brubaker. Eddie Dixon was an African American Veteran with the 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam.
In October 2022, Master Sculptor Eddie Dixon was nominated for the National Medal of Arts, and is therefore currently in consideration for the highest award given to an artist by the United States government. — The Harlem Times
In the 1940s, Edward Welch lived in Tribeca, working in the Army Reserves. He took his education to higher levels at New York University and Virginia State College (University), studying industrial arts, drafting and graphics.
Edward started his first sign-painting business, “Star Sign Co,” in Harlem and soon had two employees, and business success. Edward told a story about how he was starting his own sign painting business, and he was going door to door, taking stickers to businesses to advertise. One business owner tried to shoo him away, but Edward explained he was a World War II Veteran, just looking for work, and the business owner changed his mind and decided to hire Edward to paint a sign:
“I took a bucket of stickers and stuck them on the doors and windows of every store in Harlem. One guy called me very angry, telling me to ‘take those goddamn stickers off my door!’ I came right away, apologized, and said I had just returned from the U.S. Army. My being in the service changed everything, and I wound up making the guy a sign.”
Edward Welch
— Peter Hastings Falk
Edward’s motto was “A business without a sign is a sign of no business.”
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Edward Welch painted many famous singers. Post World War II, Sergeant J. Edward Welch would have enjoyed dancing to Dizzy Gillespie in the Savoy Ballroom in 1948-1950. Edward painted Billy Eckstine in a Tuxedo, with sexy dancers, and a “beautiful” Natalie Cole, Unforgettable. Welch clearly loved Natalie Cole, he mentions “Dad.” Welch depicts Sammy Davis, Jr., age 4, as a “Genius,” and mentions Sammy’s mother.
Aretha Franklin spent her lifetime singing and taking action for Civil Rights. Her “Second Home” was the Apollo Theatre in Harlem. Edward Welch painted a beautiful portrait of Aretha Franklin, a respectful depiction of the “Queen of Soul.”
“Nobody embodies more fully the connection between the African-American spiritual, the blues, R&B, rock and roll—the way that hardship and sorrow were transformed into something full of beauty and vitality and hope.”
President Barack Obama describing Aretha Franklin
Edward Welch painted a portrait of Stevie Wonder, combining elements of the “Lindy Hop,” the Savoy Ballroom, and the Apollo Theatre.
Edward Welch portrayed great American Civil Rights Leaders. He painted portraits of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, and the Harlem preacher, “Father Divine,” Reverend George Baker. Dr. King’s “March for Jobs and Freedom” is a perfect subject for Edward, fitting into his interests in Civil Rights, integration, civil involvement, and equality for all.
Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall was a towering figure in the 1960s. Justice Marshall had attended college with Langston Hughes. Justice Marshall attended Law School at Howard University because in 1930, the University of Maryland Law School was a segregated “white” enclave. Vice President Kamala Harris also attended Howard University for her BA. If he were here today, Edward Welch would be painting a portrait of Vice President Harris.
Edward Welch was traumatized by the story of Nat Turner’s execution. The violent deaths of Malcolm X Shabazz, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., President John F. Kennedy, and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy would have added to the trauma of violence Mr. Welch understood to be American history.
Edward Welch, from a young age, was always a religious man, a man of optimism, patriotism and hope. He had a connection to the NAACP and Father Divine. Edward Welch painted Father Divine (Reverend George Baker) “Meals 15 cents, 1905-2000,” and “Feed us first, then religion will follow…Peace Mission NYC.” Father Divine was mostly interested in “Feeding the Poor,” and he probably knew everyone in Harlem.
Like Dr. King, Edward was interested in justice and the law. Like Malcolm X, Mr. Welch might have wanted to become a lawyer at some point. Edward Welch painted a portrait of Dr. Betty Shabazz, wife of Malcolm X, modeled after the newspaper photograph of her face after the assassination of Malcolm X Shabazz. Large funerals were held in Harlem for Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz.
Edward Welch painted at least two paintings of Malcolm X. One painting has a southern farmer with a horse and plough, and angry phrases, “Black People worked 400 years in America for nothing!” In all caps, Edward writes: “TODAY IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO LIVE HERE WITHOUT RESTITUTION!” “DESPERATION = CRIMES” with a bald eagle on a background of an American Flag. “I was hungry and desperate, I sold dope.” “Only Unity Will Save our Children and Country!” “Save a child,” and he wrote, “If it’s not too late for All of U.S.!” Mr. Welch’s history suggests he was in favor of equality and integration, not “Black Nationalism” or the “Nation of Islam.” This doesn’t mean Mr. Welch didn’t attend speeches by Malcolm X. The violent death of Malcolm X Shabazz was certainly a shock in 1965.
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Edward Welch was the kind of artist who would wake up in the middle of the night with inspiration, and begin to paint. He refused to call himself an artist during his lifetime, preferring the title “Sergeant” and “Sign Painter.”
One of Edward Welch’s first collages is a depiction of his life as a Military Veteran and it has contains two self-portraits. In this work, he is a “young man” and a “soldier.” He obscures his face in both self-portraits, however, showing himself as the “Invisible Man,” an image that reminds one of the Ralph Ellison character in his 1952 novel. In the center of the collage, Mr. Welch is portrayed as the “unknown combat soldier,” with obstacles of broken tree branches placed at his feet.
Mr. Welch’s primary medium is collage, he would often use bright paint colors, vinyl letters, stickers, sequins, and lots of glitter in his work. His art was often poster size, painted and glued onto plywood. His work depicts famous Americans, he admired their achievements and highlighted his love for their contribution to history. One of Edward Welch’s favorite phrases he uses in his artwork, is similar to Uncle Sam’s Motto of “I Want You!” — Edward uses, “We Need You!”
Symbolism used in Edward Welch paintings are American Flags, History of Slavery, Music, and Art, Authors, Civil Rights Leaders, Supreme Court Justices, Social Justice Leaders, Law and the Courts, Sports Figures, Innovators, and Women. Edward Welch clearly loved women. In his paintings of women he puts them on pedestals, they are beautiful portraits. His life of loving women must have been complicated, for he was married to, and divorced from, four women. Edward painted a beautiful portrait of singer Janet Jackson. He knew love was important. It is as if Edward wanted to “love them all.
Sergeant Welch depicts women in his artwork as idealized and beautiful, the way he probably saw all the women he encountered in his life. Often, Mr. Welch depicts women as “Sex Objects,” but also emphasizes their “Freedom.” He was obviously torn between being sexist, and depicting respect for women. He did want to teach men how to love and respect women through his art. He tried to start a magazine called “Men.” He thought that men should be more responsible and “take care of the women and children in their lives.”
When Sergeant Edward Welch returned from World War II, Musician Ray Charles was beginning his career. By the time of Sergeant Welch’s service in Korea, “Genius” Ray Charles was a hit, becoming the “Father of Soul,” performing at the Apollo Theatre.
After studying at the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind in St. Augustine, Ray Charles moved to Jacksonville, Florida to live with Charles Wayne Powell, a family friend. He played the piano for bands at the historic Ritz Theatre in the LaVilla neighborhood, downtown west. Ray Charles had started his career, but had to leave Florida in order to expand his reach. Charles also left the “Jim Crow” south and went to a northern city, Seattle, Washington. Ray Charles eventually “arrived” in Los Angeles, California.
Much of the historic LaVilla neighborhood of Jacksonville, the “Harlem of the South,” has been torn down, a failure of “Urban Renewal” or “Planning.” Short-sighted municipal government “blamed drugs” for urban poverty. The Ritz Theatre has been completely rebuilt, and a new “LaVilla Performing Arts” public middle school is thriving, and was built blocks away.
In the 1960s, Ray Charles supported the Civil Rights Movement and Dr. King’s policy ideas. Ray Charles’ and Edward Welch’s lives mirrored each other, Ray Charles is quoted as saying:
“What you are inside is what you are inside. I was raised in the church and was around blues, and would hear all these musicians on the jukeboxes, and then I would go to revival meetings on Sunday morning.”
Great African American Artists and Civil Rights Leaders not only had to leave the American South to find their freedom and their voice, but many were forced to leave the United States for Europe to find respect. Frederick Douglass and the father of Paul Robeson escaped enslavement. Louis Armstrong’s real home was ultimately in Queens, New York. Aretha Franklin and Joe Louis moved to Detroit. Ray Charles left Jacksonville, Florida, eventually settling in Los Angeles, California. James Brown got started in the South, in venues in Macon, Georgia, and soon was “Live at the Apollo.” Paul and Eslanda Robeson left for London, England, and James Baldwin, Josephine Baker, and Miles Davis went to Paris, France.
Edward Welch found employment and respect working for the United States Government in the Works Progress Administration and the United States Army as a Cavalry Sergeant. Sergeant Welch found refuge in “Good Government,” which can provide stability and egalitarianism in a society sometimes fueled by bigotry, self-dealing, and discrimination.
Mr. Welch later lived his life in Newport News, Virginia, a “Historic Navy Town.” He had amassed a collection of hundreds of his works in his apartment. He exhibited his artwork in galleries in order to sell his pieces. Edward Welch exhibited his art in Baltimore, Maryland. He had an important exhibit at the Ricco Maresca Gallery in New York City, which is in the Chelsea area of Manhattan, right near the Whitney Museum. Another Welch exhibition was held at the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia.
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Bobby and Joan Harris met Edward Welch one day in Jacksonville, Florida. Mr. Welch was in his last years of life. The Harrises, along with their daughter and her husband, lovingly helped Mr. Welch find a home where they helped care for him until he died in 2011. Edward Welch lived in an apartment next to the Harris’ daughter’s mother-in-law. Mr. Welch would tell colorful stories of his life, and flirt with the ladies until the day he died.
While Mr. Welch was living in Jacksonville, he told the Harrises about his fascinating journey, as a sergeant in the United States Army - Cavalry Division, and his career as a Sign Painter, who had lived in Harlem, New York. He left his personal effects with them and pleaded with the Harris family to preserve his artistic legacy.
Edward was interested in new inventions and ideas all the time. When he was 88-years-old, Edward said, like the cicada, he wanted to be reborn, “I want to come back as white, but with my own black brain.” After quite an adventure, and a long life, Edward Welch died of cancer at the age of 93, surrounded by his friends, Bobby and Joan Harris, in Jacksonville, Florida.
Like so many African Americans who moved to Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance, Edward Welch never lost his sense of wonder and pride in the American Dream — and the achievements of so many Americans who were subjects of his tributes. Edward Welch learned to speak Italian, worked as an Army Interpreter in World War II, and fell in love with American Jazz. When Edward, as a young boy, left the cotton fields of North Carolina to live in The Big Apple — he shed his exoskeleton, his childhood experience of Jim Crow and American slavery. Edward Welch became a Harlem Renaissance Man, an Artist.
Sergeant Welch was a Civil Rights Activist, Sign Painter, a Calvary Veteran, and “Buffalo Soldier.” He was full of pain about racial discrimination and how it affected his community. Yet, Sergeant Welch was full of love and pride at being an American. Sergeant Welch served his country with honor. John Edward Welch deserves honor, and place in American History as a Harlem Renaissance Man, a true son of Democracy and freedom.
SPECIAL THANKS TO:
Bobby & Joan Harris and Family of Jacksonville, Florida
Art Curator and Photographer Thomas Moore of Metro Newport News, Virginia
Art Curator Peter Hastings Falk of New York, New York
Journalist Mark St. John Erickson of the Daily Press .com, Newport News, Virginia
Sarah Puckitt, MFA, Curator of Photography/Photo Archivist of the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia
Dave Wolters of Jacksonville, Florida
Research Sources
Unless otherwise notated, direct quotes are all from Wikipedia
Public Domain Photographs are sourced from Wikimedia
1585 “Roanoke Native Americans of Roanoke, Virginia”
By John White - British Museum, Londonhttps://www.nationalgeographic.com/content/dam/magazine/rights-exempt/2018/06/lost-colony/lost-colony-ritual-dances-painting.jpg Public Domain
National Register of Historic Places
North Carolina Historical Society
Norfolk & Southern Historical Society
http://www.norfolksouthernhs.org/NORFOLK & SOUTHERN RAILROAD AT MACKEYS FERRY.pdf
Bob Spruill
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
Perquimans County, North Carolina Property Records
Eslanda Robeson, Paul Robeson, Negro
White Lies: The Double Life of Walter F. White and America’s Darkest Secret
by A. J. Baime (c) 2022;
A History of Racial Injustice, Montgomery, Alabama
https://theharlemtimes.com/online-news/history-in-bronze
https://discoveriesinamericanart.com/artists/j-edward-welch-african-american- artist-black-artist-outsider-artist/
Peter Hastings Falk
artspace .com
https://www.artnet.com/galleries/ricco- maresca/ed-welch-signs
Michelle Erhardt, Anna Holloway, Thomas Moore and Elaine Viel
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44780/a-ballad-the-lake-of-the-dismal-swamp
Brad Hall, Jason Stick and John Sebastian Vitale
Nobile and Amundsen , Norfolk, Virginia
History, Experience and Art Collide
Mark St. John Erickson - Daily Press .com
Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia
Christopher Newport University Alexick Gallery, Ferguson Center for the Arts, 1 University Place, Newport News
Jacobs's only known formal photograph, 1894
Gilbert Studios photograph of Harriet Jacobs.jpg
Adam Cuerden - Journal of the Civil War Era