Wilmer Jennings was an African American artist who worked for President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the mid-1930s. Born and raised in Atlanta, Jennings studied under Hale Woodruff, a celebrated African American mural painter, while a student at Morehouse College. He moved in 1933 to Providence to attend the Rhode Island School of Design, where he studied jewelry design, painting, and printmaking. In Providence, he was hired by the WPA to depict the economic hardships African Americans were experiencing during the height of the Great Depression. He became well-known for his distinctive black-and-white wood engravings and linocut prints before turning to a career as a designer in the famed Rhode Island jewelry industry.
Jennings was featured in the 1978 landmark exhibition “4 from Providence: Bannister, Prophet, Alston, Jennings – Black Artists in the Rhode Island Social Landscape,” one of the first exhibitions ever hosted in Bannister Gallery.
