by Chris Sanders

The 1920s and 30s was a period of turmoil and change for many African Americans. Economic exploitation, terror from the KKK, and political disenfranchisement led to a migration of over 6 million Black people from the rural South to the urban North and West, known as the Great Migration. Many people were drawn to Harlem in Manhattan of New York City, where there was a cultural and intellectual revival known as the Harlem Renaissance and the New Negro Movement. There was also the entrance into industrial work and unions, regaining the right to vote, and participating in political currents such as the New Deal. The East Side Freedom Library (ESFL) is a place to not only learn about these histories through their large collections of books, but to also engage in the artwork created by people during these times, one of which is the topic of this conversation. 

To the Youngest Delegate, 1936 sculpture by Augusta Savage

Twenty years ago, ESFL’s co-founders, Peter Rachleff and Beth Cleary, bought a piece of work from their good friend Camille Billops, an African American sculptor, puppeteer, filmmaker, archivist, printmaker, educator, archivist, and activist. This work was created by Augusta Savage, a prominent African American sculptor during the Harlem Renaissance. Savage’s piece, titled To the Youngest Delegate, one out of six copies, is a small bronze casting of a bar of soap that Savage carved while on her way to attend the National Negro Conference (NNC) in 1936 (Swann Galleries), an organization founded at Howard Univeristy with the goal of fighting for Black liberation. The image within the casting is an incredibly detailed carving of Elba Lightfoot’s infant child, who were both traveling with Savage to attend the NNC. 

When I first laid my eyes upon the piece, I was amazed at how small the soap was and how Savage was able to get such detail. I wondered what tools she used and how much time she spent making it. This work will eventually be put in ESFL’s collection of art made by African American artists to fulfill the library’s purpose of highlighting African American agency. 

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Augusta Savage was born Augusta Christine Fells on February 29, 1892 in Green Cove Springs, Florida, to a large family. She began creating as a young child and made small animals and other figurines using the clay she found in the ground near her home. Her father, a minister, disapproved of these clay makings because he thought it was sinful and did many things to discourage Savage, including giving her whoopings. In 1915, she lost her trove of clay when her family moved to West Palm Springs, Florida. One day, Savage was riding to school when she saw a store that had the word “pottery” in the name. Savage was immediately intrigued and went inside. While there, she was amazed to see many buckets of clay. The potter who owned the store noticed Savage’s amazement and told her she was free to take the buckets home.

She was excited to take the buckets, but was met with her mother’s advice to hide them from her father. Savage was only able to successfully hide them for a short period of time before he found them and told her to get rid of them. Luckily, her mother was able to convince her father to let her keep them and Savage never heard another complaint from him again. This moment was the start to Savage’s amazing sculpting career.

At the age of 27, Savage entered her first art contest at the local county fair where she won a $25 prize and received a ribbon for “Most Original Exhibit.” The superintendent of the fair, George Graham Currie, was very impressed with Savage’s work and encouraged her to study art and connected her to a sculptor in New York by the name of Solon Borglum. Borglum was a notable American sculptor who is known for his depiction of frontier life, especially that depicting his experience with cowboys and Native Americans. (He is also the brother to Gutzon Borglum, an American sculptor known for his work on Mount Rushmore.) 

The encounter led Savage to move to New York City where she met with Borglum to take sculpting lessons from him. Unfortunately, she couldn’t afford the lessons, but because he believed in her, he told her about Cooper Union School of Art, where tuition was free. He wrote a letter of introduction for her and the next day she met with Miss Reynolds, the person in charge at Cooper Union. Reynolds asked Savage to show her some work, but Savage didn’t have any to show so, Reynolds told her to create a piece overnight and bring it in tomorrow. The next day Savage presented Reynolds with a portrait sculpture of a minister that she saw while traveling days prior. This impressed Reynolds and Savage was immediately admitted into Cooper Union where she completed her four-year program of study in three years.

In 1923, Savage applied to a summer program to study art in France but was rejected due to racial discrimination. She responded with letters to local media about these practices. Despite making headlines, the program didn’t change their decision. Fortunately, American sculptor Hermon MacNeil, whose work fostered a global recognition of the significance of the American Indian as an artistic focus in American and European art, invited Savage to his Long Island studio to work on her craft. 

Finally, in 1929, she was awarded the Julius Rosenwald fellowship to study abroad in Paris, France. There she exhibited her work at the Grand Palais. Savage was awarded another Rosenwald fellowship and also won a grant from the Carnegie Foundation to continue her work and travel to other European countries.

Throughout Savage’s life, there was a common theme of encountering white artists that believed in her talents and gave her the resources she needed to further her sculpting career.  People like Solon Borglum, Miss Reynolds, Herman MacNeil, and many others saw something in Savage that motivated them to help her in any way they could. Having to rely on the help of other artists was a limitation that many African American artists faced during the Harlem Renaissance.

When Savage’s fellowship ended, she returned to the U.S. during the Great Depression. The worldwide depression not only brought the huge stock market crash that sent Wall Street into a panic and caused high deflation, mass unemployment, and extreme poverty. This depression hit the African American community very hard. By 1932, almost half of the community was out of work. 

During this time, Savage and many other African American artists experienced trouble getting commissions. Savage began teaching art and established the Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts in 1932. Located on West 143rd Street, it was a place that offered painting, drawing, and sculpting classes to new Black artists. These artists consisted of painter Jacob Lawrence, visual artist Romare Bearden, and painter Norman Lewis, who are all prominent artists of the Harlem Renaissance and whose work is still talked about today.

Savage also lobbied for the Works Projects Administration (WPA), an American New Deal program working to employ millions of job-seekers to carry out public works projects, to include Black artists. She helped found the Harlem Artist’s Guild which aimed to support and promote young African American artists by focusing on art that would improve public understanding of their everyday lives and issues. This led to Savage serving as director for the WPA’s Harlem Community Center which was a Federal Art Project community art center that allowed Black artists to receive education about the arts for little to no charge. 

By becoming a teacher and establishing programs to help other African American artists, Savage was able to realize a key component to the success of the Harlem Renaissance and other Black arts momentents: building community and solidarity. This “community-driven education that Savage championed is part of the African American tradition…because Black people have historically been excluded from formal academic spaces” (León). 

Such programs were highly associated with Black activism, which led to their being  propagandized as communism. Many Black artists and activists resonated with communism because of its call to eradicate a system that has historically dehumanized Black people. Dominant historical narratives in particular have overlooked Black women’s roles in these movements and campaigns. However, these women have always “organized, fought, and led mass campaigns against national oppression and economic exploitation” (Burden-Stelly and Dean). During the National Negro Congress of 1936, which Savage attended as a representative of the Harlem Artists Guild, Black communist women helped shape a resolution that organized domestic workers to regularize their hours, raise wages, and improve living conditions. Unfortunately, the United States government weaponized public opinion against communism in order to shut down these organizations and diminish their public appeal. 

In 1939, Savage was commissioned to create a piece for the New York World’s Fair. She “was one of only four women, and the only Black artist, to receive a commission” (León).  Her piece was called The Harp. It was inspired by James Weldon Johnson’s poem “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” which is commonly referred to as the “The Black National Anthem” because of the way it “eloquently captured the solemn yet hopeful appeal for the liberty of Black Americans” (NAACP).  The sculpture depicted 12 African Americans in the harp’s strings with the soundboard being an arm and hand. This piece represented an important aspect of African American culture: hope. However, after the fair ended the sculpture was destroyed because she couldn’t afford to cast the piece in bronze or pay for it to be preserved. Sadly, this isn’t the first piece of Savage’s that has been destroyed; most of her work wasn’t able to be preserved because of financial limitations. This is what makes To the Youngest Delegate so important to our appreciation of Savage’s career. It is one of few pieces Savage was able to preserve and it’s only of a soap carving.

A souvenir version of Savage’s 1939 sculpture The Harp, which was inspired by “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”

Savage eventually grew frustrated with trying to reestablish herself as an artist and decided to move to a farm in Saugerties, New York in 1945. It is alleged that the move was due to a run-in with the FBI because of her connections to the Southern Nergro Youth Congress and other artists/programs that were associated with communism. She spent the rest of her years dabbling in writing and continued making art as a hobby while teaching children in summer camps. She unfortunately became ill and moved back to New York City to live with her daughter and her family where she died of cancer on March 26, 1962. 

Augusta Savage’s legacy lives in the minds and hearts of many African American artists and her contributions to the Harlem Renaissance and community as a whole will not go unnoticed. However, her inability to reestablish herself after the Great Depression was largely due to her identity as a Black woman. Black feminist thought was an untouched subject of the Harlem Renaissance. Despite the tons of literature being written by Black women that showcased their journey of self-determination, it was overshadowed by Alain Locke’s New Negro Movement. This movement focused on Black men’s role in the community and was “not a universal construct or gender inclusive [term] and that the [B]lack women’s identity had yet to be addressed during this time” (Carr). Black men described Black women’s identity as being tied to motherhood and homemaking, however Black women had a need for “education, leadership, recognition, self-actualization, self determination, opportunity, and equality” (Carr), and Augusta Savage is a primary example of this. 

Being able to interact with her work, To the Youngest Delegate, at East Side Freedom Library, and to consult the Library’s many books about African American artists, female as well as male, is put into context when we remember Savage’s words, “I have created nothing really beautiful, really lasting, but if I can inspire one of these youngsters to develop that talent I know they possess, then my monument will be in their work” (León). The idea that Savage created nothing beautiful or lasting is not only incorrect, but is a testament to the work that Savage was unable to see or preserve because of the financial limitations she experienced as a Black woman. Her story represents perseverance and reveals what was possible for Black women during the Harlem Renaissance. It also paved the way for the next generation of Black women artists to see themselves in a story and believe that they too can make it. This story serves as a means to properly remember Savage’s work and experience it in a day and age where Black women’s labor remains largely invisible despite the tireless effort they put into making sure the world and our communities function. We should use Savage’s narrative as a jumping off point to commemorate other Black women who have toiled for the success of themselves, their kin, and their community and we should also take advantage of ESFL’s space to do this necessary reflecting.