Artis Lane, 1927

Photo credit - LOC

A contemporary figurative artist. Best known for her bust of Sojourner Truth, which is on display in Emancipation Hall at the Capitol Visitor Center in Washington, DC.

Born Artis Shreve in North Buxton, Canada, and grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan. From an early age, she showed interest in art, and during high school, she painted her classmates’ portraits. After graduation, she got a scholarship to the Ontario College of Art in Toronto, Ontario.

After receiving her degree, she married Bill Lane, and the couple moved to Detroit, Michigan. She continued her education at Cranbrook Academy of Art, the first woman to be admitted to the institute, and supported her family by painting portraits. Soon, her reputation as a portrait artist grew, receiving commissions from prominent figures, such as Michigan Governor George Romney, Detroit’s mayor Coleman Young, and members of the Ford family.

Upon her divorce, she moved to NYC, NY, and met her second husband, Vince Cannon. After spending some time in Texas and New Mexico, she settled in Los Angeles, CA, working with Universal Studios and becoming the portrait painter of celebrities, including Frank Sinatra, Nancy Kissinger, and President John F. Kennedy. During the 1970s, the civil rights movement influenced Lane’s work, and she began to depict social issues in her art, as can be seen in the painting Tear on the Face of America.

With time, Lane’s art expanded to various mediums, such as oil painting, sketching, and collage. It became more figurative and universal, reflecting her vision of metaphysical truth rather than the specific feature of the persons she depicts.

Among the portraits and sculptures of notable people she created are Dorothy Height, Mary McLeod Bethune, Aretha Franklin, Oprah Winfrey, and former President Barack Obama. Two of her most known works are a bronze bust of Sojourner Truth in the US Capitol, which upon its unveiling in 2009 by First Lady Michelle Obama, it became the first statue in the Capitol honoring a Black woman. The second is the bust she created of her great, great aunt, Mary Ann Shadd Cary, which stands in Canada since 2009.

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“My work operates on three levels: individual portraits, social justice, and divine metaphysics.”

“My work operates on three levels: individual portraits, social justice, and divine metaphysics.”

Fun Facts

  • She was a close friend of Cary Grant.
  • She created a series of bronze portraits for the Soul Train Awards.
  • She designed the original logo for the Dance Theatre of Harlem.
  • She designed Rosa Parks' Congressional Medal of Honor.

Awards

  • The California African American Museum's Lifetime Achievement Award (2007)
  • Dream of Los Angeles Award (2008)
  • The Women's Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement Award (2013)
  • The Women of Excellence Award from the Chatham-Kent Family YMCA in Canada
  • The Museum of African American Art Award
  • The Women for Women Award from the Martin Luther King, Jr. General Hospital Foundation

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Category: Arts
Tags: African-American Women, Painter, and Sculptress

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Adelaide-Johnson-WWP
Arts

Adelaide Johnson, 1859-1955

A feminist artist and sculptress, known as “The sculptor of the women’s suffrage movement.”

Born as Sarah Adeline Johnson in Plymouth, IL, to a family of farmers. She received her education attending rural schools, and after graduation, she began her art training, taking classes at the St. Louis School of Design. She was only 18 years old when she exhibited her artworks at the 1877 St. Louis Exposition, and thanks to the prizes she won, she was able to move to Chicago and make a living from her art. At 23, on her way to her studio, she fell 20 feet into an open elevator shaft. She was severely injured, but the compensation fee she was awarded enabled her the financial freedom to study sculpture and painting in Europe. As a feminist and women’s rights activist, she expressed her political views in her art. Among the many individual busts she sculptured, were busts of the Suffrage Movement’s leaders – Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucretia Mott, which she presented in the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 (The busts are currently located at the Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument Museum). She wanted to put the busts as a group monument at the US Capitol Rotunda but did not get the support at that time. After the 19th Amendment was ratified, she got the funding from the philanthropist Alva Belmont and the commission from the National Woman’s Party. She went to Italy to bring an 8-ton piece of marble to her studio and created her most famous artwork – “Group Portrait Monument to Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony.” The statue was dedicated in a special ceremony on Susan B. Anthony’s birthday, February 15th, 1921, in the US Capitol. This was the pick of Johnson’s career. During the 1930s, her career declined, and she had financial problems. In 1939, 80 years old Johnson invited the press to witness how she destroys her own artworks as a protest against her living conditions as well as against her shattered dream of opening a studio-museum honoring the suffragists and women’s rights organizations. This post is also available in: Español Read more...
Alice Coachman WWP
Sports

Alice Coachman, 1923-2014

High jump athlete, the first African-American woman to win an Olympic gold medal.

Alice Coachman was born in Albany, Georgia. While in elementary school, her teacher and aunt noticed her athletic skills and encouraged her to practice sports despite her parents’ objections. As a girl in the segregated south, Coachman had no access to athletic training facilities or the opportunity to compete in organized sports events (due to color and gender). Determine to develop her natural talent, Coachman used everything available to her – running with no shoes in fields and dirt roads and making high jump crossbars out of rope and sticks. During high school, Coachman caught the attention of the boys’ track coach, who took her under his wings and coached her. Within a year, she was spotted by a recruiter from Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama, and at 15, she got a scholarship. Her unusual jumping style, combined western roll, and straight jumping techniques helped her win the national championships in the next nine years. In 1939, at the age of 16, she started her scholarship at the Tuskegee Preparatory School, which in addition to studying and practicing, required mending uniforms and cleaning the school’s sports facilities. During this period, she won high jumps companions and national championships in the 50-meter dash, 100-meter dash, and the 400-meter relay team. She also won three conference championships as a guard on the women’s basketball team. At 23, Coachman received her degree in dressmaking and continued her education at Albany State College, where she studied Home Economics and science. In her late teens and early 20s, the years that were supposed to be the pick of her career, the Olympic Games were canceled because of WW2. Her first global stage appearance was made possible at the 1948 Olympic Games in London. On her Olympic tryouts, Coachman qualified to the US team with a high jump of 5 feet 4 inches, breaking the previous record by ¾ inch. At the Olympics high jump finals, she reached first place with a leap of 5 feet and 6⅛ inches on her first try, becoming the first black woman to win the gold medal and the only American woman to win a gold medal at the 1948 Games. On her return to the US, Coachman became a celebrity, she met President Truman and former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and various parades were held in her honor. Following the Olympic Games, 24 years old Coachman retired from her athlete career, with 34 national titles under her belt. She finished her degree at Albany State College and became a teacher and track-and-field instructor. In 1952, at the age of 29, she made history again when she signed as Coca-Cola Company’s spokesperson, becoming the first African-American woman to endorse an international product. In 1994, at 71, she established the Alice Coachman Track and Field Foundation. This non-profit organization supports young athletes in starting their careers and helps Olympic veterans adjust to life after retainment. Coachman died at the age of 90 of cardiac arrest. This post is also available in: Español Read more...
Alice-Dunbar-Nelson-WWP
Literature & Poetry

Alice Dunbar Nelson, 1875-1935

A poet, journalist, playwright, and political activist. Associated with the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.

Alice Ruth Moore was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, the daughter of a Creole seaman and a former enslaved black seamstress. After graduating high school at 14, she attended a teacher-training program at Straight University, and at 17, she began teaching at an Elementary school in New Orleans. She became involved with activism at the Phyllis Wheatley Club and wrote for the Woman’s Era Club newspaper – the first newspaper created for and by African American women. In 1895, she published her first collection of poems, essays, and short stories titled “Violets and Other Tales.” That same year she moved to NYC, where she helped establish the White Rose Mission – a settlement house for colored girls. Furthering her education, she took courses at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University. Her writings for the Woman’s Era newspaper caught the attention of the poet and journalist Paul Laurence Dunbar, and in 1898, after two years of correspondence, she moved to live with him in Washington, DC, and they got married. Their relationship fertile their writing but was also disruptive and abusive. He raped her before they got married, and after three years of violent behavior, she left him and moved to Wilmington, Delaware. There, Dunbar taught at various institutes, including Howard High School, the Hampton Institute, and the State College for Colored Students. She never stopped studying, and at 32, she received her M.S degree from Cornell University. In 1913, Dunbar worked as the co-editor and writer for the A.M.E. Review – the African Methodist Episcopal Church’s newspaper. She met poet and civil rights activist Robert J. Nelson, and they got married in 1916. Although she was always involved in political activism, supporting the women’s rights movement and working toward the empowerment of women of color, it was only in 1918 that Dunbar-Nelson was appointed to an official role in the movement as a representative of the Woman’s Committee of the Council of Defense. In 1920, she became the co-editor of the progressive black newspaper, the “Wilmington Advocate.” In that same year, she published a literary anthology, aiming at black readers, titled “The Dunbar Speaker and Entertainer.” At 45, Dunbar-Nelson was a successful and popular writer, consistently publishing articles, columns, and essays in newspapers as well as in academic journals. Dunbar-Nelson became a speaker at various events, including the 1928 American Negro Labor Congress Forum in Philadelphia. After she moved with her husband to Philadelphia in 1932, her health declined, and two years later, she passed away at the age of 60. Dunbar-Nelson is a representative of the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Her writing is characterized by complex understandings of race, gender, and ethnicity. In her work, Dunbar-Nelson explored issues that she dealt with as a woman of color, especially her mixed-raced experiences, not belonging here or there. She wrote about her perspective of education opportunity, workplace environment, and social oppression, inspiring generations of black writers to come. This post is also available in: Español Read more...
Alice Walker WWP
Literature & Poetry

Alice Walker, 1944

A novelist, poet, and social activist. The first African-American woman to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Alice Malsenior Tallulah-Kate Walker was born in Eatonton, Georgia, the youngest of eight children of sharecroppers. At 8, she was injured in her eye after her brother played with a BB gun, causing her permanent blindness in one eye. The mark on her eye made her an easy target to her classmates, so she turned to poetry for comfort. Growing up in the segregated south, she attended an only black kids’ high school, from which she graduated valedictorian. Her high scores granted her a full scholarship to Spelman College, where she studied for two years before transferring to Sarah Lawrence College in NYC. In this period, Walker had an abortion which caused her suicidal thoughts. She wrote all about it in her poems. In 1965, at the age of 21, Walker moved to Jackson, Mississippi, and became active in the civil rights movement. She worked for the Legal Defense Fund of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and as a consultant in black history to the Friends of the Children of Mississippi Head Start program while serving as writer-in-residence in various academic institutes publishing essays and short stories. At 23, she married Melvyn Rosenman Leventhal, a Jewish civil rights attorney. At the time, interracial marriage was illegal in the south, and the couple had to travel to NYC to get married. On their return, they became the first legally married interracial couple in Mississippi since 1822, when the miscegenation laws passed. During their nine years of marriage, they suffered recurring harassment from the Ku Klux Klan. In 1970, at 26, Walker published her first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, following the life of an abusive sharecropper husband and father. Three years later, she was appointed editor of Ms. Magazine, published her second poetry collection and her first collection of short stories. In 1976, Walker returned to NYC and published her second novel Meridian, about several civil rights activists in the south during the 1960s. In the late 1970s, she moved to California, where she wrote her best-known work, The Color Purple. Published in 1982, the novel explores the struggles of a black woman in the racist and patriarchal society of 1900s Georgia. The book was a best-seller, and in the following year, 39 years old Walker became the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Later the novel was adapted into a film featuring Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg and a Broadway musical produced by Quincy Jones and Oprah Winfrey. In 1984, she co-founded the feminist publishing company Wild Tree Press. She deepened the world of some of her characters from The Color Purple in two of her novels, The Temple of My Familiar and Possessing the Secret of Joy, and created new characters that allowed her to delve into other social issues, such as female sexuality in By the Light of My Father’s Smile from 1998, and identity questions in Now Are the Time to Open Your Heart from 2005. Throughout the decades, Walker published seven novels, ten poetry collections, four short stories collections, four children’s books, and a dozen collections of essays and articles. In all of her work, Walker deals with the struggles of black people, especially women, and their experiences in sexist, racist, and violent surroundings. Often using Black vernacular, which highlights the hundreds of years of slavery and oppression, she had dealt with complex topics such as rape, isolation, bisexuality, and troubled relationships within the black community. Walker is a long-time social and political activist, promoting and fighting for various causes, from black and women’s rights to environmental issues, Palestinians’ fight for independence, and the elimination of female genital mutilation. This post is also available in: Español Read more...
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