Charles Henry Alston (1907 - 1977)

Charles Henry Alston

Charles Henry Alston was a mid-twentieth-century American artist. He is known as a graphic and muralist painter as well as a sculptor, illustrator, and educator who lived and worked in New York City's Harlem neighborhood.

Charles Alston was an activist in the so-called "Harlem Renaissance." He became the first African-American director of the U.S. Federal Art Project. The artist created murals for Harlem Hospital as well as a number of cultural and administrative buildings in New York City. Alston is the author of a bust of Martin Luther King, Jr. which was the first depiction of an African American to be displayed at the White House in Washington, DC.