Milton Kemnitz
Product Details
Milton Kemnitz, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1911-2005. A 20th century ink on paper fireplace interior scene. Signed lower left. Image 13 1/2 x 15 1/2", matted 17 x 19" high overall.
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Biography:
Kemnitz, a Michigan native, began his career as a social worker in the 1930s but soon discovered his calling as an activist by organizing welfare recipients — a project that at first cost him his social-worker job.
He went on to become secretary of the Detroit-based Conference for the Protection of Civil Rights, which expanded into the National Federation for Constitutional Liberties. He went to work for that organization in Washington, D.C., in 1941.
In April 1942, Kemnitz spoke at an NFCL conference in Washington to protest the South's racist Jim Crow policies and poll tax, the internment of Japanese-Americans, the suspension of strike rights and other wartime measures.
Kemnitz moved to New York City in 1942 to run the NFCL there and then spent much of World War II as a merchant seaman in Europe. It was during that service that he learned to paint through a National Maritime Union program.
After the war, he returned to New York and then to Ann Arbor in his native Michigan, bent on making his living as an artist. And that's what he did. He painted Ann Arbor streetscapes and Great Lakes ships, birds and trains, and scenes of the Georgian Bay. Ever the activist, Kemnitz used his paintings of old buildings in Ann Arbor to fight for their preservation. His books of art included "Michigan Memories," "Ann Arbor Now and Then" and "London and Back."