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Today’s Black History WOW!
Renowned artist Annie Frances Lee was born on March 3, 1935, in Gadsden, Alabama. She was raised by a single parent and grew up in Chicago, Illinois. Lee began painting at an early age, winning her first art competition when she was only ten years old. She was offered a four-year scholarship to attend Northwestern University after high school, but married instead and raised a family.
Lee did not start her career as an artist until she was forty. She enrolled in Loop Junior College and completed her undergraduate work at Mundelein College in Chicago. While working at Northwestern Railroad as a clerk in the engineering department, Lee earned her M.A. degree in interdisciplinary arts education from Loyola University after eight years of night classes.
Lee’s railroad job inspired one of her most popular paintings, "Blue Monday," which depicts a woman struggling to pull herself out of bed on a Monday morning.
“Blue Monday” was painted in 1985, in Chicago. The painting shows a tired, faceless Black woman sitting on the edge of her bed about to start her workday. The artist first conceived of the painting while getting ready to catch a bus to work on a cold winter morning.
Her artistic trademarks are the animated emotion of the personalities in the artwork and the faces that are painted without features. At age fifty, Lee had her first gallery show; she allowed prints to be made of four of her original paintings. Using her unique designs, Lee also developed figurines, high-fashion dolls, decorative housewares, and kitchen tiles.
Over the decades, Lee has been a supporter of the Tom Joyner Foundation. She donated her time and artwork to help the Foundation raise money to keep students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Her Higher Education: A Way to Soar painting celebrates the successes of the students at these colleges. Her White Night painting captures the elegance and whimsy of one of the theme nights on board the Fantastic Voyage, an annual weeklong cruise that is a fundraiser for the Foundation and on which she was a regular exhibitor.
Several years after showing her work in other galleries, Lee opened Annie Lee and Friends Gallery where she displayed her works along with the works of other artists. When several of her paintings appeared on the sets of popular television shows such as "The Cosby Show" and "A Different World," the exposure helped popularize her work. Although she regularly received requests for public appearances, Lee preferred to appear at gallery shows; she also enjoyed visiting schools to encourage and inspire students.
Annie Lee passed away on November 14, 2014, at age 79.
Today In Black History
In 1716, the French transported their first captured Africans to slavery in Louisiana.
In 1790, Haitian Black fur trapper Jean Baptiste DuSable founded a trading post that would become the city of Chicago.
In 1831, the 2nd National Black Convention was held in Philadelphia.
In 1869, Dillard University was chartered in New Orleans, Louisiana.
In 1942, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was founded in Chicago, Illinois.
In 1966, civil rights activist Stokely Carmichael, also known as Kwame Touré, launched the “Black Power Movement.”
In 1968, U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy, Sr. died from wounds suffered from an assassin’s bullet the previous night in Los Angeles.
In 1977, Joseph L. Howze was installed as the 1st Black Roman Catholic Bishop in Mississippi.
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