The first African American to graduate from the Cleveland School of Art (now Cleveland Institute of Art), Sallee worked as a printmaker and, during the Depression, a muralist for the Works Progress Administration. He was the leader of the Karamu Group of printmakers, formed by artists connected to the Karamu House, an African American theater and community center that premiered many of Langston Hughes’s plays. In his prints, Sallee frequently depicted scenes of urban labor and the black experience in northern cities. 

Bio courtesy of http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/491388