Jacob Lawrence was born in Atlantic City, and lived most of his younger years in Pennsylvania.  When his parents got divorced in 1924, he traveled with his mother and siblings to New York, and ended up living in Harlem.  He took art classes with Charles Alston at an after-school arts and crafts program, and by the age of fifteen he had decided to become a painter.  In 1938, he received a WPA (Works Progress Administration) Federal Writer's Project assignment. The WPA trained artists, musicians, writers, and other creative artists.  In 1940, He received a fellowship from the Rosenwald Fund and he started his "Migration Series", sixty panels in all.  In 1941 at the age of twenty-four, he became the first African American Artist included in the permanent collection of  The Museum of Modern Art.  When Jacob was forty-six, he began to do printmaking, and In 1964, he visited Africa and started his "Nigerian Series" . seven years later, In 1971, he moved to Seattle to teach at the University of Washington and in 1983, he retired as professor emeritus from the University of Washington.  

I think that Jacob's art is influential because like this art piece here he draws black Americans working jobs, being successful and dealing with the racismt, because in the 1920's/30's America was very racist so it was hard for a black American to work and deal with all this racism but Jacob's art work kept people influenced and inspire to keep pushing through the hard times.