Painter, printmaker, and illustrator William Elijah Smith is best known for expressive linocuts depicting African American life during the Great Depression and World War II. His images of workers, families, and city streets combine bold contrasts of light and dark with a sensitive understanding of hardship and perseverance. Closely associated with Cleveland’s Karamu House, Smith belonged to a generation of Black artists who used accessible printmaking techniques to bring their experiences before a wider public.

Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1913, Smith moved to Cleveland with his younger siblings following their mother’s death. His early years there were marked by severe financial difficulties. A turning point came when he met Russell and Rowena Jelliffe, founders of the settlement house that became Karamu House. Their support provided both practical assistance and entry into a creative community. At Karamu, Smith studied with Marion Bonsteel and Richard Beatty, discovered printmaking, and eventually became an instructor himself. A five-year Gilpin Scholarship enabled him to attend Cleveland’s John Huntington Polytechnic Institute from 1935 to 1940.

Linoleum proved particularly suited to Smith’s artistic purposes. An inexpensive material that could be carved into printing blocks, it allowed him to create forceful images through sweeping cuts, rhythmic lines, and sharply defined silhouettes. His subjects emerged from the world around him, giving individual form to the pressures of unemployment, poverty, and racial inequality. In Native Son (1938), a young Black man leans against a city wall, his presence asserting African Americans’ place within the nation’s life. The print predates Richard Wright’s novel of the same title, published in 1940.

Smith’s work also reflects the connections between visual art, literature, and community at Karamu. His I’ve Known Rivers (1941) draws upon Langston Hughes’s poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” presenting a contemplative figure beside the water. Smith remained friends with Hughes, who admired his ability to convey the humor and pathos of Black life. As a member of Karamu Artists Inc., Smith participated in exhibitions that brought national attention to the workshop, including a 1942 presentation at New York’s Associated American Artists Galleries.

During World War II, Smith served in the United States Army and continued making art. His wartime drawings and watercolors recorded fellow servicemen and moments of daily military life. The linocut War Fatigue (1946), created after his return, distilled the exhaustion of combat into the image of a seated figure bent forward in weariness. Such works expanded his examination of human vulnerability beyond the Depression-era streets of Cleveland.

Around 1950, Smith moved to Los Angeles, where he worked at Lockheed Aircraft, pursued further training at the Chouinard Art Institute, and taught in his studio. He also helped establish the Eleven Associated Artists Gallery, contributing to opportunities for Black artists on the West Coast. His later career continued across painting, illustration, and printmaking, while his earlier linocuts gained recognition through exhibitions devoted to African American graphic art.

Smith died in 1997. His achievement received renewed attention in Karamu Artists Inc.: Printmaking, Race, and Community, presented at the Cleveland Museum of Art from March 23 through August 17, 2025. His work is held in collections including the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, and Cleveland State University’s Jelliffe Collection. His prints remain compelling records of Black experience, shaped by an enduring belief in art’s capacity to make ordinary lives visible.