“It is the pure American Negro I am concerned with, aiming to show the natural beauty and dignity….”

Sargent Johnson (1888-1967), one of the most acclaimed African American artists of his era, lived with his wife and daughter on Park Street in Berkeley from the early 1920s to 1948.  The neighborhood was racially and economically mixed. Johnson created several portraits of neighborhood children including Elizabeth Gee, who lived a few blocks away on Acton Street.

Born in Boston to a black mother and a Swedish American father, Johnson embraced his African American heritage and viewed the fine arts as a means of fostering racial pride.  His work—which consisted of portrait busts, drawings, wood carvings, and paintings celebrating black America’s African roots—drew national praise. During the Great Depression, Johnson received several commissions from New Deal arts programs for sites, including Berkeley’s California School for the Blind and the Aquatic Park Bathhouse in San Francisco, where he was the unit supervisor and oversaw dozens of artists and craftspeople.