City of Huntsville celebrates black artists at African American Art Festival

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An NAACP flyer campaigning for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives in 1922, but was filibustered to defeat in the Senate. Dyer, the NAACP, and freedom fighters around the country, like Flossie Baily, struggled for years to get the Dyer and other anti-lynching bills passed, to no avail. Today there is still no U.S. law specifically against lynching. In 2005, eighty of the 100 U.S. Senators voted for a resolution to apologize to victims' families and the country for their failure to outlaw lynching. Courtesy of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

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Claude, age 23, just months before his 1930 murder. Courtesy of Faith Deeter.

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Souvenir Portrait of the Lynching of Abram Smith and Thomas Shipp, August 7, 1930, by studio photographer Lawrence Beitler. Courtesy of the Indiana Hisorical Society.

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February 22, 2026

Tatyana White,WAFF

Black Artist display artwork at Art Festival (Pixabay)

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WAFF) – The City of Huntsville celebrated local black artists with a new art exhibit for Black History Month over the weekend.

The African American Art Festival was at the Dr. Robert Shurney Legacy Center on Saturday, as dozens of pieces were on display.

Local artists showed paintings, mixed media, digital, and interactive work.

Artists at the festival said events like this are important for the entire community.“This is for representation. People want to see people that look like you, doing what you’re doing, maybe expose you to different things,” Local Artist Jamal Turner said.

This is just one of those things that a lot of people in our community are interested in. Art? How do I do art? What does art look like to me? So we have a large contingent of our population now that are attracted to this,” City of Huntsville Parks & Recreation Director James Gossett said.

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