The Power of Black Storytelling: Carolyn Randall Williams

"I have rape-colored skin. My light-brown-blackness is a living testament to the rules, the practices, the causes of the Old South. If there are those who want to remember the legacy of the Confederacy, if they want monuments, well, then, my body is a monument. My skin is a monument." Caroline Randall Williams 

Caroline Randall Williams, Wikipedia image 

Caroline Randall Williams, author, poet, Writer in Residence at Vanderbilt University, native of Nashville,Tennessee, wrote a powerful story about her legacy and identity in an op ed for the New York Times.* I am moved by her description of herself:  "I have rape-colored skin." 

That metaphor, the image, has stuck with me for days. I've never heard it put this way. But it is so right on, so correct. It holds the whole story of an America built on the free labor of slaves on land occupied by native tribes and invaded by Europeans. It's the history of America begun in 1619 when the first slaves from Africa arrived in Virginia.* 

I want to remember Williams' story. It embraces the real history of the United States. It's  a crash course in the history of racism on which this country was founded.  

Her story evokes one of my favorite historical figures, W.E.B. DuBois.  DuBois was a brilliant sociologist, the first African American to receive a PhD from Harvard, a founder of the NAACP and editor of its pioneering Crisis magazine from 1910 to 1934. Above all, he was a lifetime activist against white supremacy. His scholarly books on African- American history, the slave trade, and black contributions are legendary and should be required reading today. In his pioneering book The Souls of Black Folk (1897) and his famous Atlantic magazine article that year, DuBois introduced the concept of "double consciousness," the African American experience of "two-ness" in a white racist society. DuBois' writings have never gone out of fashion or relevance.* 

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One feels his two-ness, — an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, — this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He does not wish to Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa; he does not wish to bleach his Negro blood in a flood of white Americanism, for he believes—foolishly, perhaps, but fervently—that Negro blood has yet a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without losing the opportunity of self-development.

I have read this passage many times.  I used it in my American history classes. It always brings a powerful reality to the fore. Today we call it "Black Lives Matter." .  

Williams' NYT piece channels DuBois' soul. One hundred years later, she brings his honesty and truths, his pain and longing, to our contemporary times. I imagine DuBois hovering, glad to see some revival of the hope for acceptance that he had lost at the end of his long life. He became a citizen of Ghana, and died there, giving up on the U.S. 

Yes, we've come a long way since DuBois, but as Williams tells it we have a long way to go. The struggle to achieve the ideals of "equality and justice for all" continues. Even more persistent is the virulent racism that defines America, and the attitudes and actions that derive from it. The fact of slavery and unmitigated racism, and their tragic consequences, are still with us.   

The words of Caroline Randall Williams remind us of the freedom journey and its brutal path.  

A Coin with a Story: Selma Burke, African-American Sculptor and Educator

Selma Burke with her bas relief portrait of FDR

Selma Burke's sculpted portrait of FDR is on the United States dime. That's right. A coin with a story. I had no idea.

Selma Burke's story begins in Mooresville, North Carolina, where she was born in 1900.  I'm not sure if Mooresville remembers her or not, but she remembered Mooresville.  Young Selma attended a one-room segregated schoolhouse, where her curiosity was nurtured. 

Those old segregated schools, where talent was nurtured! They were the foundation of black achievement. I think African American youngsters learned more in these schools than in integrated ones later on, where racism flourished and the history taught was white history. Still is. The African American teachers in the segregated schools, many of whom lost their jobs with integration, are, indeed, the real heroes of the black experience. They shared their own history of struggle and achievement. They bolstered their students' dreams. Augusta Savage recalled that her high school principal encouraged her artistic talents by allowing her to teach a clay modeling class.  (Wikipedia)

It was the same for Selma Burke, who found her purpose in life at a young age. She played in a riverbed of clay near her home. She would later describe the feeling of squeezing the clay through her fingers as her first encounter with sculpture. "It was here in 1907 that I discovered me," she said.  Her little schoolhouse encouraged the discovery. She continued her education at Winston-Salem College and at nursing school, but art was her first love and true calling. 

Like other African-American artists and writers of the time, Burke's dedication to her art motivated her to move to New York City in her mid-twenties. It was an exciting time, the age of the Harlem Renaissance, that iconic platform of artistic expression, community and freedom that catapulted many talented African Americans into acceptance and recognition. The Harlem Renaissance nurtured a generation of black talent that burst upon the American landscape even as segregation and racism flourished.  

This is when Burke's life intersected with sculptor Augusta Savage,10 years her senior. Burke began teaching at the Harlem Community Arts Center, then under the leadership of Savage. Selma also worked for FDR's Work Progress Administration on the Federal Art Project, another opportunity made possible by Savage, who had worked so hard to ensure black artists were included. 

Burke continued her work on trips to Europe in the late 1930s. It was a pilgrimage that many African American artists, including her mentor Augusta Savage, took at some point in their developing careers. One of Burke's significant works from this period is "Frau Keller (1937), a portrait of a German-Jewish woman in response to the rising Nazi threat. Imagine that conjun

ction. Did Frau Keller survive the holocaust?

Mother and Child, 1950

Burke returned to New York about 1939. I like to imagine that she attended the opening of Augusta Savage's brilliant Salon of Contemporary Negro Art, such an exciting event for all black artists. The importance of displaying and promoting public awareness of this art cannot be overstated, a major contribution to the building of an inclusive American culture. 

Like Savage, Burke was also committed to teaching art to others, and in 1946 she established the Selma Burke Art School in New York.  She later opened the Selma Burke Art Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Just think of the generations of African-American artists who stand on the shoulders of pioneers like Savage and Burke. 

Many of Burke's sculptures can be seen today in various museums, including the Performing Arts Center in Milwaukee, the Hill House Center in Pittsburgh, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City, and the Smithsonian Museum of American Art. Maybe the Toledo Museum of Art will add a Burke sculpture to its permanent collection one day.

Some Sources

1.  https://www.blackhistory.com/2019/04/selma-burkes-sculptor-franklin-d-roosevelt-us-dime.html?
 
2. Selma Hortense Burke, Wikipedia.

3.https://mymodernmet.com/bisa-butler-contemporary-quilting/?fbclid=IwAR0m-

Discovered another African-American woman sculptor after posting this, via Rita Sjoborn, Celebration of Female Artists: Elizabeth Catlett (born in Washington, DC, 1915-1992)   Rita wrote: "In a career spanning more than 70 years, Elizabeth Catlett has created sculptures that celebrate the heroic strength and endurance of African-American and Mexican working-class women. With simple, clear shapes she evokes both the physical and spiritual essence of her subjects. Her hardy laborers and nurturing mothers radiate both power and a timeless dignity and calm. Whether working in wood, stone, bronze, or clay, Catlett reveals an extraordinary technical virtuosity, a natural ability to meld her curving female forms with the grain, whorls, color, or luster of her chosen medium. The beauty of her subjects is matched by the beauty she reveals in her sculptural materials."   This link is a good bio of Catlett. Her work is skillful and amazing. http://www.artnet.com/artists/elizabeth-catlett/

Augusta Fells Savage: Pioneering African-American Sculptor, Art Teacher, and Promoter of Black Artists

In 1939, a new art gallery opened in Harlem in New York City. It was called the Salon of Contemporary Negro Art, and it was the brainchild of Augusta Fells Savage, a talented sculptor who had faced obstacles due to her sex and race at every turn. Savage was among the first African-American woman to open her own art gallery in America. She hoped her Salon would give black artists a place to exhibit their work, free from the prejudice that kept them — and her — out of the mainstream art world. "We do not ask any special favors as artists because of our race," she said to the 500 people who attended the gallery's opening. "We only want to present to you our works and ask you to judge them on their merits." (Wikipedia)

Augusta Fells Savage was born on February 29, 1892, in Green Cove Springs, Florida. She struggled to achieve her dreams against formidable odds to became one of the leading artists of the Harlem Renaissance, as well as an influential activist and arts educator. She was a leap-year baby, she noted, and "I've been leaping ever since!" 

"From the time I can first recall the rain falling on the red clay in Florida. I wanted to make things," she recalled. "When my brothers and sisters were making mud pies, I would be making ducks and chickens with the mud." But her father, a Methodist minister with a conservative interpretation of the Biblical prohibition against graven images, punished her for her creations: "My father licked me four or five times a week, and [he] almost whipped all the art out of me." Fortunately, she persevered, and her high school principal encouraged her artistic talents by allowing her to teach a clay modeling class. (Wikipedia)

Gamin by Augusta Savage

Savage decided to pursue her art by moving to New York City, where in 1921 she was accepted at the Cooper Union School for the Advancement of Science and Art. After completing her studies, Savage worked in steam laundries in Manhattan to support herself and her family while continuing to sculpt. She received her first commission, a bust of W.E.B. DuBois for the Harlem Library, which led to more commissions including busts of other black leaders such as Marcus Garvey and William Pickens. Her 1929 bust of a young black boy entitled Gamin, which was voted most popular in an exhibition at the time of 200 works by black artists, cemented Savage's reputation as an influential artist of the Harlem Renaissance. Today, Gamin is on permanent display at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. (Regenia Perry, Free Within Ourselves.)

In 1934, Savage became the first African-American artist elected to the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors. She established the Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts in Harlem, open to anyone who wanted to learn to paint, draw, or sculpt. Among her young students were several who went on to become nationally-known artists including abstract painter Norman Lewis, figurative painter Jacob Lawrence, and portrait artist Gwendolyn Knight.

Unfortunately, little of Savage's work survives today. Because she couldn't afford bronze, she often had to make her sculptures out of plaster, most of which have crumbled over time. Other works, like The Harp, were destroyed because they could not be moved or stored, while some of her work has simply disappeared. In 1988, the Schomburg Center in Harlem held a retrospective of her work, but could only locate 19 pieces.

Throughout her career, Savage fought to help African American artists publicize their work. "She was keen on creating an infrastructure for black artists," says Wendy NE Ikemoto, curator at the New York Historical Society. "She put a lot of thought and energy into creating these intellectual spaces and networks for the work of black artists" (Perry).  She was instrumental, for example, in getting the Works Progress Administration to include black artists in its Federal Art Project. 

In addition to the students she fostered during the Harlem Renaissance, Savage devoted much of her later life to teaching children and summer art camps, mostly in Saugerties, New York. When she died of cancer in March 26, 1962, she was almost forgotten. Ultimately, her greatest wish was to inspire young artists: "I have created nothing really beautiful, really lasting," she once said, "but if I can inspire one of these youngsters to develop the talent I know they possess, then my monument will be in their work."  

Some Sources:

* Wikipedia, "Augusta Fells Savage"

* Regenia A. Perry, Free within Ourselves: African-American Artists in the Collection of the National Museum of American Art (Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art in Association with Pomegranate Art Books, 1992. "Augusta Savage always knew she wanted to be an artist and moved to New York City in 1920 with a ​“burning desire” to ​“become a sculptor in six months.” She enrolled at the Cooper Union and in 1929 won a scholarship to travel to Paris and Rome. She returned to New York in the middle of the Depression and was instrumental in getting the Works Progress Administration to include black artists in its Federal Art Project. Savage was the first African American to be elected to the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors and later became the director of the Harlem Community Art Center. She believed that teaching others was far more important than creating art herself, and explained her motivation in an interview: ​“If I can inspire one of these youngsters to develop the talent I know they possess, then my monument will be in their work. No one could ask for more than that.” (Davis, Contributions of Black Women to America, 1982).

* https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=29003&fbclid=IwAR2fc5XuH19J-  About Augusta Savage, an amazing sculptor and teacher. 

* https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/may/08/augusta-savage-black-artist-new-york.

* https://dos.myflorida.com/cultural/programs/florida-artists-hall-of-fame/augusta-savage/