William McBride (artist) facts for kids

William McBride Jr. (1912-2000) was an amazing African-American artist, designer, and art collector. He started his art journey in the 1930s, working with groups of Black artists. He also got help from government programs like the Works Progress Administration (WPA). McBride became very important in Chicago, especially for helping to create the South Side Community Art Center. He was known as a great teacher, someone who worked for social change, and a collector of African art and art by other Black artists.

Early Life and Moving to Chicago

William McBride Jr. was born in 1912 in Algiers, New Orleans, Louisiana. He was the second of three children. When he was about ten years old, his family moved to Chicago's South Side. This move was part of the "Great Migration," when many African Americans moved from the Southern United States to Northern cities. In Chicago, William went to St. Elizabeth grammar school and Wendell Phillips High School. He passed away on August 11, 2000, in Chicago, at 87 years old.

McBride's Artistic Journey

Learning and Creating Art

From a young age, William McBride was very interested in art. In the early 1930s, he took classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He then joined a group of young Black artists called the Arts and Crafts Guild. This group was started by George Neal during the Great Depression. Members of the guild met regularly to share art tips, talk about art and important issues, and raise money for their own art shows.

Working with Government Art Programs

While working with the Arts and Crafts Guild, McBride also joined the New Deal's Civilian Conservation Corps. By 1935, he was working as an artist for the Federal Art Project in Illinois. This project was part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a government program that created jobs during the Great Depression.

McBride worked on many WPA projects. For example, he designed books and sketched costumes for the Federal Theatre Project. One of the plays he worked on was based on the children's book Little Black Sambo.

The South Side Community Art Center

McBride was a big supporter and featured artist at the South Side Community Art Center (SSCAC). The SSCAC was set up by the Federal Art Project/WPA as a place for art in the community. It was located in a former mansion in Chicago.

The SSCAC officially opened in 1941, but its first art show was on December 15, 1940. This show featured paintings that had been displayed earlier at the American Negro Exposition in Chicago. McBride's paintings were in the show alongside works by other famous artists like Charles White and Margaret Taylor Goss. Margaret Taylor Goss said the SSCAC's goal was to "defend culture."

When World War II started, the government cut funding for art projects. All federal money for art stopped in 1943. But the SSCAC kept going thanks to local fundraising and community support. To this day, the SSCAC is the only community art center from the WPA that is still open!

Designing for the Community

In the early 1940s, McBride was the publicity director for the SSCAC. He became well-known for his designs in souvenir books and posters for the SSCAC's Artists and Models Ball. This ball was a big yearly event to raise money for the center. It was a very popular event in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago. McBride also designed Christmas cards for a nearby tavern called The Brass Rail.

His souvenir books and concert programs often included ads and support from different parts of Black Chicago society. These promotional items became some of his most famous works.

Art of Silkscreen Prints

McBride learned how to do screen-printing while working for Goldblatt's, a department store chain in Chicago. Later, he was inspired by African masks and started using them in his screenprints. He created a series of prints featuring masks in the early 1940s. McBride "looked to Africa for a visual language," finding ideas in traditional African art at museums and in textile designs he saw in a British magazine called The Illustrated London News.

A Passion for Collecting Art

McBride was known as "a collector's collector." He traveled to countries like Ghana, Benin, and Nigeria to collect African art and bring it back to the United States. Because of this, he helped people in Chicago learn more about the art and culture of the Black diaspora (people of African origin living outside Africa).

McBride also loved to collect things that showed the history of his own community in South Side Chicago. Someone once said that McBride "went to virtually every art show, live performance and play, anything that was happening in the vibrant world of the South Side from the late 1930s to the early 1980s. And he'd go to an event and pull the paper off the wall and take it home."

Early on, McBride recognized the talent of other Chicago artists like Charles White, Eldzier Cortor, and Margaret Tayler Goss Burroughs. Over time, he built his own collection of their works. In 1995, McBride gave his huge collection of thousands of posters, playbills, and other items to the Chicago Public Library's Vivian G. Harsh Collection. This collection is a major resource for learning about African American artists in Chicago between the 1920s and the 1950s. His papers include important files from the SSCAC and many records of cultural and social activities.

Where to See His Art

You can find William McBride's art in several important collections:

• The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
• Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, NY
• DuSable Museum of African American History, Chicago, IL