Otto Neals: Artist & Teacher

Abstract

The road to becoming a successful artist was not easy for Otto Neals). His education and career opportunities were severely limited by racism and segregation (see the interview that follows). During the 1930s Depression, Dell Neals, Otto's mother, left her family behind in South Carolina in order to find work in New York City. She made this decision because Otto's father, Gus, was unable to find steady employment and she knew she had a better chance of finding stable janitorial or domestic work in the North (Fax 1977, 149-50).