Today Akron, Ohio, hosts the world championship Soap Box Derby race, a youth program run nationally since 1934.Soap Box Racing by William H. Johnson illustrates the sport in an action-packed urban context, among basketball players and a bystander.
Go, Go, Speed Racer!
Today Akron, Ohio, hosts the world championship Soap Box Derby race, a youth program run nationally since 1934.Soap Box Racing by William H. Johnson illustrates the sport in an action-packed urban context, among basketball players and a bystander.
Johnson studied art in New York and lived in France, Denmark, and Norway. Upon returning to the United States in 1938, he began painting images of African American life, drawing on both his youth in rural South Carolina and life in New York City where he lived in the 1930s and '40s.
Learn more about the artist and view several of his works in our online exhibition, A Journey through Art with William H. Johnson.
Pictured: William H. Johnson, 1901–70, Soap Box Racing, about 1939–40, tempera and pen and ink with pencil on paper, 14 1/8 x 17 7/8 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Harmon Foundation.