Credit: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of the Harmon Foundation
During World War II, the Harmon Foundation commissioned Laura Wheeler Waring, an African-American artist who taught at Cheyney Training School for Teachers (now Cheyney University) to paint a series of portraits of prominent African Americans in order to combat the stereotypical portrayals of blacks commonly found in American museums. After travelling in cities across the country from 1944 to 1954, the paintings, including this 1945 portrait of Jesse Redmun Fauset, became part of the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D. C.
