In the mid-1950s, a group of 26 young Black artists in Fort Pierce and Gifford, Florida, decided they weren’t going to wait for anyone’s permission to make art. Segregation kept them out of galleries, so they took matters into their own hands. These 26 artists are known today as The Florida Highwaymen.
Back then, most career paths open to Black men led to fields or factories. Group founders Harold Newton and Alfred Hair weren’t interested. Instead, they painted fast, sometimes so quickly the paint was still wet when they loaded finished canvases into their car trunks. They’d cruise up and down U.S. 1, stopping at businesses, offices, anywhere tourists gathered, selling their vivid Florida landscapes for about $25 each. No galleries, no gatekeepers, just the open road and their own hustle.
Their paintings captured the wild, lush beauty of “old Florida”—poinciana trees blazing with color, empty beaches, quiet backwaters. Over the years, they produced nearly 200,000 of these scenes, and postwar homeowners and mom-and-pop hotels and motels snapped them up.
The artists didn’t call themselves the “Highwaymen” until much later. It wasn’t until the 1990s, when collectors and dealers started paying attention, that the name stuck, an outsider’s label for their roadside salesmanship.
Of the 26 artists, a few stand out for the sheer force of their talent and ambition. Newton and Hair were at the heart of the movement. Mary Ann Carroll, the sole woman in the group, carved out her own place in this story too. Together, they changed the face of Florida art, not by waiting for acceptance, but by creating their own path.
Finding Their Own Voice…