Margaret Burroughs: A Closer Look
Learn about Chicago artist Margaret Burroughs, a Black artist, poet, educator, and activist whose work had a significant impact on Chicago’s cultural scene in the mid-20th century. After taking a close look at Burroughs’s Birthday Party, we hope you’ll be inspired to express yourself through printmaking.
Margaret Burroughs was an artist, poet, educator, and activist whose work had a significant impact on Chicago’s cultural scene in the mid-20th century. In 1922, at the age of five, Burroughs moved with her family from Louisiana to Chicago’s South Side as part of the Great Migration, when millions of Black southerners relocated to cities in the Midwest, Northeast, and West in search of better opportunities. In Chicago, she began to explore the arts, painting in watercolor and selling her creations at local fairs. After graduating from Englewood High School with friend Gwendolyn Brooks, who would go on to become a famous poet, Burroughs sought a teaching certificate and continued to practice art, developing relationships within Chicago’s community of artists.
This resource is made possible through the generous support of the Terra Foundation for American Art.
