Explore the powerful and often overlooked stories of early African American artists and performers in a free virtual Humanities Washington program.
Join us on Thursday, Feb. 26, at 6 p.m. for The Vanguard Generation: African Artists 1880-1918. This online presentation examines the first generation of African American artists whose work helped shape American popular culture in the decades following the Civil War and before World War I.
Register for this free program and the link to join will be emailed to you.
Active after the Civil War and before World War I, many of these artists were the first in their families to be born out of bondage or to attend college — overcoming tremendous hardship in defiance of Jim Crow laws.
Using newly discovered documents from the era, presenter Daniel E. Atkinson reveals the talent, ingenuity, conflicts, and solidarity of the “Vanguard Generation.”
Atkinson earned his PhD in ethnomusicology from the University of Washington, where his research focused on Afro-American vernacular expression. He is the author of The Rediscovery of George Nash Walker: The Price of Black Stardom in Jim Crow America, a biography of the co-founder of the Williams and Walker, the first Black theatre company to succeed on Broadway. He currently works as a maintenance laborer for Tacoma Parks.
The Vanguard Generation is the first program in a three-part virtual speaker series presented by NCW Libraries in partnership with Humanities Washington Speaker’s Bureau.
Additional programs in the series include:
March 26, 2026 – How Women Won the Marathon and Changed Our View of Gender exploring the fight for women’s inclusion in marathon running and the broader social impact of that movement. Register here.
April 23, 2026 – Green Expectations: A Poetry Workshop, an interactive writing workshop led by former Washington State Poet Laureate Claudia Castro Luna, examining the role of trees and plants in our lives. Register here.
Registration for these free programs is required.
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