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[[strikethrough]] between [[\strikethrough]] In these years I also began to feel more confidence in myself. I became friends with a young white fellow student whose father was a professional sign painter. He taught us both the trade and we set up a little shop after school hours, doing signs and lettering, and even theatre displays. For a time we were hired by a theatre to do this work, and given $75.00 a week. Unconscious of the existence of trade unions -certainly the schools never mentioned them - we did not know, as we soon found out, that the employer was using us to avoid hiring union members, and was thus saving [[strikethrough]] amount [[\strikethrough]] an amount equal to what he was paying us. During this time I also sketched incessantly, at lunch time or in whatever spare time I could find in the evenings. I drew whatever I saw; the people I knew, the streets about my home, events that had happened. And I discovered that there were other Negro artists in Chicago. I read in a Negro newspaper of a Negro art group called the Art Crafts Guild, which met every Sunday. I was fifteen at the time. I timidly took a few drawings to their meeting, and was admitted. They met every week, mostly [[strikethrough]] so [[\strikethrough]] to work from a model or from scores in the streets, and criticized each other's work. They had community exhibitions, and thus some of my work was first publicly seen, in places like a Negro Baptist Church, a Young Men's Christian Association cuse, a Settlement House or Boy's Club. We would [[strikethrough]] exhibit in a vacant lot. [[\strikethrough]] occasionally take over a vacant lot for our exhibitions. We got to know each other imimately intimately, and would visit each other's homes. Some lived in a garage which we rented for a studio. Dues were small. None of us had any formal art training [[strikethrough]] but [[\strikethrough]] except for one who had gone for a short time to the Institute, and was the Club President, chief critic, guide and instructor, giving us also some knowledge of the technical aspects of handling paint. 
We decided we would give out prizes at our exhibitions, the judges being an older artist and one of the leading figures in the community. Then we determined we would get some formal artx education. We raised some