Jeff Donaldson (Finding Aid)

Jeff Donaldson

1932 - 2004

Favorite Color: All colors

Favorite Food: Black-eyed peas

Favorite Time of Year: Anything but winter

Interview Length: 183 minutes

Interview Date(s): April 23, 2001

Interview Location(s): Washington, D.C.

Abstract

Artist Jeff Donaldson talks about his mother, a school principal who raised him and his siblings alone after his father died an early death; he talks about her pride and her resentment of the racism that was pervasive in Arkansas in the 1930s and 1940s. He tells about his mother's parents and a slave ancestor who came from Africa, and he shares stories about his paternal grandfather a man with legendary strength who fled Alabama for Arkansas after avenging an assault on his sister. Dr. Donaldson describes Pine Bluff, Arkansas during his childhood and recalls an interest in art that started when he was a small boy. Jeff Donaldson talks about his youth in Pine Bluff, Arkansas from junior high to college. He discusses those who influenced him including his mother, Clementine Richardson Donaldson, a well-educated woman concerned with the struggle of the race; his mentor John M. Howard, chairman of the art department at Arkansas State Agricultural, Mechanical and Normal College, who introduced him to the work of artists such as Hale Woodruff and Elizabeth Prophet, and the African American teachers at the segregated schools he attended in Arkansas who taught the revolutionary ideas of black pride and the unvarnished history of race relations in the United States. Artist Jeff Donaldson continues to talk about his experiences at Arkansas AM&N College including studying philosophy with George G. M. James at and a weaviing course which, despite his dislike for weaving, helped him learn discipline. After graduation in the mid-1950s he spent a year in Jackson, Mississippi, teaching high school art and participating in the NAACP branch headed by Medgar Evers. Donaldson then describes his experiences serving in the Army in France and studying design at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, from which he earned an M.A. in 1963. Finally, he recalls the founding of OBAC, the Organization of Black American Culture, and the other African American Chicago artists from various disciplines who participated. Artist Jeff Donaldson talks about his work as an artist and activist in Chicago's Black Arts Movement during the late 1960s and 1970s, including the famous mural on the South Side of Chicago, the Wall of Respect, created by the Organization of Black American Culture, which he had co-founded. He tells of the group along with other black organizations, being targeted by the FBI's COINTEL program which disrupted and eventually caused the "implosion" of the group after the mural was completed. It the place of OBAC, in 1968 Donaldson and others founded AFRICOBRA [African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists] , a collective based on a shared artistic and political vision, which has lasted to the present day. Artist Jeff Donaldson talks about creative movements that have developed in Chicago, recalls working on his Ph.D. in African American art history, continues to talk about AFRICOBRA, its involvement in the FESTAC '77 arts festival held in Lagos, Nigeria, and AFRICOBRA's present-day members. He tells about encounters by government agents who had him under surveillance for his connection with the black power movement, and compares the accomplishments possible through violent and non-violent means. Donaldson argues that Nat Turner and other leaders of slave insurrections should be honored as freedom fighters, and he criticizes today's African Americans for not acknowledging their own heroes. Artist Jeff Donaldson describes his experiences organizing a group of 75 African American visual artists including his art group, AFRICOBRA, the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists, who participated in FESTAC '77, the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture, held in Lagos, Nigeria in January, 1977. He shares his thoughts on Africa and the diaspora, and on the nature of race relations in America, where he says blacks and whites are closer than anywhere else and their fates are bound together. Dr. Donaldson talks about some of his accomplishments during his 28-year career at Howard University, where he served as Dean of the College of Fine Arts. Artist Jeff Donaldson shares his ideas about art, black identity, the Civil Rights Movement and the future of the African American community.

55 Stories (See Ordered Story Set)