Horace Pippin

Pippin’s modern image of John Brown had contemporary resonance. Despite Brown’s actions, the Civil War, and Abraham Lincoln’s emancipation of enslaved African Americans, institutionalized racism and Jim Crow segregation proliferated in the decades following the Civil War. Pippin was one of the most important African American artists of the 20th century. After bravely volunteering to fight in World War I, he served in a segregated unit, the famous 369th Infantry “Harlem Hellfighters” Regiment.