Aaron Douglas, born in Kansas in 1899, became one of the leading visual artists of the Harlem Renaissance and is often referred to as the "father of African-American Art." Douglas was known for his murals, landscapes, black & white drawings, and portraits. His illustrations also appeared in books by Countee Cullen, James Weldon Johnson, Alain Locke, and Langston Hughes, and on the covers of Vanity Fair. Artist and African-American art scholar David C. Driskell said of Douglas: "Douglas is the leading painter of the [Harlem] Renaissance movement. A pioneering Africanist, he accepted the legacy of the ancestral arts of Africa and developed his own original style, geometric symbolism. At a time when it was unpopular to dignify the black image in white America, Douglas refused to compromise and see blacks as anything less than a proud and majestic people." Douglas would later become the head of the art department at Fisk University. He died in 1979.