Here, a woman is slicing fatback, a less desirable cut of pork while her young child looks on. Scarcity is the visual motif of this panel, as the both the child and his mother appear thin and malnourished, while a single candle provides them with a lightsource. Pork would have been a common staple in the diet of the migrants when the lived in the South, but higher prices in urban areas, coupled with rations due to the war as the title suggests, rendered the migrants in poverty to buy only the cheapest cuts.
SKU: 64125
Creator: Jacob Lawrence
Date: between 1940 and 1941
Original Medium: Casein tempera on hardboard
Original Size: 18 x 12 in.
Location: The Phillips Collection
© 2016 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York