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COLEMAN 12

a former student of Woodruff and Prophet at Atlanta University. Oubre, like Woodruff, attracted a strong group of art students to Alabama State College from 1949 to 1965. Harper T. Phillips, Herman "Kofi" Bailey, William Anderson, Amos White, II, William Henderson, Arthur L. "Al" Britt, among others, including this writer, were to study with H.L. Oubre, as he preferred to be called. Oubre was Ellisonian in his approach to art. He demanded that the student understand technique (in this context, tools, medium and appropriate manipulation) for Oubre, like Ellison, believed that it was "a way of feeling, of seeing and of expressing one's sense of life." A versatile artist himself, Oubre produced paintings, sculptures, and drawings of great strength, frequently depicting Black subjects or more abstract forms influenced by African sculpture.  Oubre introduced his students to Afro-American art through the writings of Alain Locke and James A. Porter. Henry O. Tanner, Robert S. Duncanson, Edward Bannister, Hale Woodruff, Elizabeth Catlett, Samella Sanders Lewis were all introduced and studied in studio classes at Alabama State College.

Woodruff's influence, like the spread of the cotton plantations more than a century earlier, was to extend west from Atlanta to Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas and other parts of the South. In 1948, Lawrence Jones, a member of the Outhouse School and a talented and versatile artist in his own right, moved from Fort Valley State College to Jackson State College in Jackson, Mississippi. By 1951, Jones had established a degree program in art and out of that program a number of talented artists such as Willie Cook, Johnny Jacob, and Freddy Norman, among