Works of Art

Edmonia Lewis always loved art. In the 1800s, there weren't many women sculptors. Edmonia wasn't interested in what she couldn't do. She was only interested in what she could. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
You're listening to American Shadows, a production of I Heart
Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky. French historian
Eduard de Lablay had an idea. It was eighteen sixty five,

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the American Civil War was drawing to a close, and
he wanted France to give the US a gift. He
decided on a statue that would mark America's hard thought
democracy and celebrate its centennial. And he didn't propose just
any statue. His concept would take years to build. Frederic
Auguste Bartoldi, who shared Labala's vision, was commissioned for the

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monumental task. Bartoldi traveled to America in eighteen seventy one
and chose Bedloe's Island for the statue's location. Though small,
its position made it a landmark noticeable to every ship
entering the harbor. He envisioned the statue greeting all who
entered the port and thus the nation. The first phase
of construction began in France in eighteen seventy six. Bartoldi

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created the arm holding the torch first. In eighteen seventy
eight he finished the head and shoulders. He finally completed
the statue in eighteen eighty four. While Bartoldi and his
team in France put the final touches on the statue,
a crew in the US built the pedestal. In eighteen
eighty five. All that remained was shipping the Statue of

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Liberty to her new home. Workers disassembled the statue and
carefully packed it in over two hundred crates. The Zaire,
a French frigate, arrived in New York that June. The
laborers got to work erecting the pedestal and the statue.
On October of eighteen eighty six, President Grover Cleveland stood
before a crowd of thousands to dedicate the three hundred

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and five foot tall statue. From that moment, Bartoldie's vision
came to life. The Statue of Liberty greeted everyone who
entered the harbor. In eighteen ninety two, when Ellis Island opened,
immigrants viewed the statue as a symbol of freedom, hope,
and a new way of life. It remained both monument
and working lighthouse until nineteen thirty three, when the National

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Park Service took over its care and maintenance. Though they
shut down the lighthouse, the Park Service opened the Statute
of Visitors The iconic plaque and poem of the New
Colossus by Emma Lazarus became a favorite photo opportunity for tourists,
and like the statue itself, the poem, with its famous
lines welcoming the tired and huddled masses, had its own story.

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New York born Emma and her siblings wanted for nothing.
Her father owned a successful sugar refinery and provided his
family with a comfortable lifestyle, and private tutors taught them German, French,
and Italian, in addition to other subjects. In eighteen sixty six,
seventeen year old Emma authored her first book, titled Poems
and Translations. Her father loved her work and published the

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book to support his daughter. Emma sent a copy to
Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the famous writers shared her father's
praise and mentored the very talented Emma For several years.
She wrote more books expressing her opinions on life. In
eighty three, she donated a sonnet to help raise money
for the pedestal. The words became synonymous with immigration, yet

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the poem didn't become part of the statue until after
Emma's death. She died a year after Cleveland's speech, and
mostly her sonnet was forgotten. The new Colossus wasn't memorialized
until nineteen o three, when one of Emma's friends pushed
to make the sonnet a permanent part of the monument.
While we recall the names behind many famous works of art,

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others remained in the shadows of their creations. This is
one such story. I'm Lauren Vogelbaum. Welcome to American shadows US.
What many people born to the lower socioeconomic status at
the time. We don't know what year and Monia Lewis

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was born. When asked, she gave different responses for different situations.
It could have been eighteen forty two, eighteen forty four,
or even eighteen fifty four. What we do know is
that she was born in New York sometime in July Catherine.
Her mother was Afro indigenous of the Ojibwe people and
lived in the Credit River Reserve on Lake Ontario. Her

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father was as mysterious as her birth year. Some believe
her father was Samuel Lewis, a valet of Afro Haitian heritage.
Other sources speculate that African and Native American writer Robert
Benjamin Lewis was her father. Proper birth certificates were rare
at the time, and none appears to have been recorded
for her. And Monia had a half brother, Samuel, from

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her father's first marriage, and even though Sam was nine
years older, the two siblings were inseparable for a while.
The children enjoyed a perfect family life with loving parents
and time spent growing up in Greenbush, New York, and
by the time Edmonia turned nine, however, both parents had died.
Sam and Agmonia went to live with their mother's sisters

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near Niagara Falls. Despite the tragedy, the children thrived. Edmonia
continued to make the traditional a jibwei crafts her mother
had taught her. Tourists loved her artwork, often buying whatever
Edmonia and her aunt's maide. She ran through the forests
in the summer with her brother and other local children.
They fished, swam, and explored the great outdoors, even hunted

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together for the rest of her days. Agmonia recalled this
part of her childhood as some of the best times
of her life. But life moved on, and one day
her brother told her he was leaving. He had caught
what people called gold fever. Men across the country were
leaving their families and droves, hoping to strike it rich
out west. The moment that sparked the gold rush happened

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on January forty eight one. James Wilson Marshall, a carpenter
from New Jersey, caught a glimpse of something shiny in
the American River at the base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
He discovered an abundance of gold flakes. Marshall originally moved
west to work on a sawmill for John Sutter, who
set up a colony that would later become Sacramento, and

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the men swore each other to secrecy so that the
gold would be all theirs. A Sutter had already claimed
quite a bit of land, enslaving hundreds of Native Americans
who helped colonize the area. The amount of gold the
men found made it impossible to hide. Soon, gold miners
from miles around appeared for their steak in the riches.
Sam Brannon, a storekeeper in San Francisco, proudly displayed the

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vial of gold had panned from Sutter's creek. Within weeks,
most of the men in San Francisco converged on the
settlement to pan for gold, words spread, bringing in people
from around the world. In December of eighty eight, President
James Cape Holp announced the California had gold. California's population
jumped from twenty thousand to over a hundred thousand the

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following year. Most of those heading to the gold mines
in eight were men, known as the Forty Niners. The
men left everything behind, including wives and children. In the
men's absence, women struggled to keep businesses afloat the farms running,
and raised children alone. Many of the forty Niners found
the wealth they saw it holding onto It was another matter.

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Businesses charged extra pushing up the cost of living. Many
lost their fortunes to gambling, drinking, and time spent in
brothels that San Francisco storekeeper Sam Brannon never went back
to seek out more gold. Instead, he bought nearly all
the local supply of mining equipment, then marked it up
and sold it to miners. His business model inspired the

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saying during a gold rush cell shovels. While Stutter went bankrupt,
Brannon became the state's first millionaire. Others also made their fortunes,
including Edmonia's brother Emuel Lewis. It's unclear why sam took

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Edmonia away from her aunts and left her with one,
Captain S. R. Mills, But Edmonia fell into a deep depression.
Her parents were dead, her brother abandoned her, and she
had been taken away from her aunt's and the place
she called home. Gone were her forests with animals and trees.
Gone where the fields where she ran and played with
other children. She was living with a man she didn't

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know in Manhattan, a crowded, dirty city, and though she
waited for her brother, he never returned home. Samuel headed
to San Francisco and opened a barbershop while searching for
his fortune in gold. He made enough to travel to
Europe and eventually returned to the States, settling in Idaho.
His business ventures failed, though, and some of his buildings

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caught fire. He moved Montana and opened another barbershop. Fifteen
years later, he built a home, married and had a son.
Though he never returned to see his sister, he sent
money for her housing, food, and schooling, and after four
years in Manhattan and Monia left to attend the New
York Central College Upstate, established in eighteen forty nine. The

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school offered black and white students in education. Higher education
was rare for black people, much less women at the time.
The school focused on grammar, reading, math, and geography, while
the male students took additional science, natural history, and astronomy classes.
The women learned needlework and knitting. Edmonia studied at the

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school from eighteen fifty six to eighteen fifty seven. In
eighteen fifty nine, she resumed her studies at Oberlin College
in Ohio. The founders prided themselves on the school's Christian values.
Like Central College, they accepted students black and white, men
and women. The school also became the first in the
country to offer co ed classes. Though many departments offered

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coed learning, most women's studied in the school's ladies department,
earning a literary degree at the end of four years.
Edmonia received a well rounded education, but of all her studies,
she demonstrated a rare talent in her favorite subject art.
As a woman of color, Edmonia felt at home there.
Oberlin had strong ties to the abolitionist movement and took

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part in the underground railroad that helped enslaved people escaped
to Canada. One reverend John Keep and his wife welcomed
her into their home, and she lived with them from
eighteen fifty nine until eighteen sixty three. The community also
reflected the school's ideals. Both black and white residents lived
and worked alongside each other. But while the school in

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town seemed progressive and somewhat idyllic, black people, Native Americans,
and women still lacked equality. Politics and contentions surrounding slavery
led to arguments and other conflicts. Several classmates participated in
John Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry. Brown hoped to start
a rebellion that would result to freedom for all enslaved people.

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While the uprising failed, it sparked conversation. The tensions on
both sides grew. Oberlin's leaders feared something terrible would eventually happen.
They were right. The headlines for February eleventh of eighteen
sixty two read that two women at the college had
been poisoned and a suspect was in custody. A month earlier,

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Edmonia had joined classmates Maria Miles and Christina Ennis for
an unschaperoned slave ride with a few young men. All
enjoyed the rod despite the bitter cold Afterward, Amnia asked
the other women to join her for a hot drink.
The women eagerly accepted. Ammonia poured two glasses of spiced
wine and handed them to the women. The three sat

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and talked until the glasses were empty. Maria and Christina
bad Edmonia good night and retired to their rooms. Not
long afterward, the two became violently ill. The school administration
sent them home to their parents until they recovered. A
couple of days later, both women accused Agmonia of lacing
their drinks with the drug popularly known as Spanish fly.

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Though most often historically used as an aphrodisiac in large doses,
it's a poison. In retrospect, Agmonia realized that asking them
to join her and not participating in the drinking had
made her instantly suspect. No matter how much the reverend
insisted Agmonia was innocent, she was arrested without any evidence.
The court and jury found Ammonia not guilty. At first,

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she thought life might go on as it had before,
but that was before the second incident. Agmonia struggled through
her studies and was preparing for her final paper when

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professor accused her of theft. The subsequent investigation proved she
had not stolen the missing art supplies, but innocent or not,
the controversy around Agmonia too much for the school's reputation.
Oberlin asked her to leave and not return for the
false semester. She had worked hard, but Edmonia would not
finish her degree. Determined nonetheless, to make a career from

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her artistic talents, Agmonia moved to Boston with financial help
from her brother. She mingled with abolitionists and confided that
she would love to make fine art. She never told
anyone how she came to leave Oberlin. One day she
saw a statue of Benjamin Franklin and thought she could
learn to make statues too. The three male sculpting tutors
turned her down. Male sculptors usually learned sculpting by taking

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anatomy classes. First women didn't have that luxury. Finally, she
found Edward Augustus Brackett, who specialized in creating busts. Oh
With his mentoring, Edmonia began to make and sell claim medallions,
and prominent Boston women began to commission her. But it
was her rendition of Robert Shaw that brought her fame.
A Shaw, a white man hailing from Massachusetts, had headed

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into this of a war with America's first all black regiment.
He stood by his men when they were ambushed and
died with them. Confederate soldiers unceremoniously tossed them into a
mass grave, and Mania made enough money on creating busts
that she began setting aside money for her ultimate dream
to move to Europe and find more inspiration for her art. Meanwhile,

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she wanted to help others with the war over, and
Monia traveled to Richmond to give newly freed black people
basic educations. By August she had enough money to set sail.
She chose Florence, Italy, where neoclassical sculpture was popular due
to the number of marble quarries, and Monia was pleased
to discover that Italy widely accepted women, artists with color

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and sects were not nearly as controversial. Soon she felt
right at home with local artists and American expats. In time,
she traveled to Paris and London for more inspiration before
returning to Italy and settling in Rome. At the time,
sculptors often paid stone crafters to help with their statues.
Admonia locked the resources and did the work herself. She

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created traditional busts of famous and influential people. However, most
of her work comprised African American and Native American subjects.
Native American sculptures weren't unheard of, but Admonia's depictions stood out,
and one of her better known works was a series
of statues inspired by Henry Wadsworth Longfellows The Song of Hiawatha.

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Admonias versions of Native Americans possessed a more respectful reality
than the stereotyped and fantasized versions that her fellow artists created.
She told stories with her sculptures. In one of her works,
an African American couple has broken free from their shackles.
The beauty and depth of emotion in her subjects made
her very successful. In eighteen seventy she returned to the

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United States for a while. She tried to reunite with
her brother. Though she made several attempts, he never reciprocated
the effort. In eighteen seventy three, she traveled to San France,
Cisco for a major art show, praising the West Coast
for being much more friendly than the East Coast. The
show wasn't as profitable as she had hoped, and disillusioned,

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she tried seeing her beloved brother once more. When he
still wouldn't see her, she returned to Europe. Edmonia would
never see Samuel again. Back in Rome, she created her
most famous work, inspired by Cleopatra's legendary suicide, and Monia
chiseled the queen's image slumped back on her throne, a
smile on her face as venom from a poisonous snake

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took hold. Her message seemed to say that Cleopatra died
on her own terms as queen. Edmonia first revealed the
sculpture during the eighteen seventy six Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, and
judges were astounded. While some viewers considered the dying queen's
image ghastly and graphic, others praised it as masterful. The

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statue failed to find a buyer when the expo ended,
and it went into storage, but a Monia returned to Rome.
She continued to create more sculptures and inspire other artists,
and then Edmonia disappeared from history almost Ammonia Lewis died

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in London on September seventeenth of nine seven. She never
married and had no children. In her will, she requested
two things, a dark walnut casket and for her death
notice to appear in the British Roman Catholic publication The Tablet.
Edmonia faded from history until two women dug into her past,
biographer Marilyn Richardson and ROBERTA. Bobby Reno, historian in East Greenbush,

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New York, where Edmonia grew up, Richardson tracked down at
Monia's most famous sculpture, the Death of Cleopatra. It wasn't easy.
Edmonia left the sculpture in Philadelphia. Richardson first tracked a
twist saloon in Chicago. After that, it marked a racehorse's
grave a track. The racetrack eventually fell out of favor

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and was sold to become a golf course. The Cleopatra,
still on her throne, stood vigil over the changes that
came and went. The golf course gave way to a
munition site, which later became a center for bulk mail.
Through all sorts of weather, neglect and abuse, andedmonious work
of art. Endured boy scouts attempted to cover the graffiti
with paint. But finally the sculpture found its way to

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a mall. From there, Richardson managed to find it in
a storage room. The Forest Park Historical Society rescued the
sculpture in the nineteen eighties. Ten years later they donated
it to the Smithsonian. Along the Way another sculpture surface
of two sleeping infants, simply called Night. Along the Way
another sculpture surface of two sleeping infants called simply Night.

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The Baltimore Museum of Art purchased the piece at a
Southeby's auction for a hundred and thirty thousand, seven hundred
and twenty dollars. Other pieces were sent to the Howard
University Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum, and the Detroit
Institute of Arts. The historian Bobby Reno was a devoted
fan of Ammonia's, though she knew very little about her life,

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In fairness, no one did. Dedicated to finding out more
about this former Greenbush resident, Reno began searching for Admonia's
grave site. Eventually, it was found under an unmarked slab.
Reno restored the grave site and added a simple marker
per Admonious Will. But Reno and Richardson weren't finished. They

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wanted to do one more thing in honor of Ammonia.
In Reno sent a request to Oberlin College to write
a wrong. The college took their request to grant Aedmonia
Lewis an honorary degree before a committee. Meanwhile, Reno lobbied
for more public recognition. On January, Ammonia appeared on a

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U S postage stamp honoring her talent and heritage. In April,
the college finally got back to re Now the committee
would not grant the request for an honorary degree. Instead,
Oberlin decided to give it Monia Lewis the full degree
she had nearly completed a hundred and sixty years ago.
On June five, Oberlin President Carmen Ambar stood before the

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graduating class and awarded Edmonia Lewis her degree in Ladies Courses.
Posthumous and Monia, who her aunts and family sometimes called Wildfire,
had finally received the recognition she had earned all those
years ago. There's more to this story. Stick around after
this brief sponsor break to hear all about it. In nine,

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the good times of the Roaring twenties came to a halt.
The New York stock market crashed, People lost their life savings.
Businesses failed, leaving what in four workers unemployed. Many had
to stand in long breadline for rations to feed their families.
For those struggling to survive, it seemed that no one cared.

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Banks defaulted on mortgages and evicted families. President Hoover believed
that dead all get through it if people just helped
one another. Families moved in together. Philanthropy increased with food drives.
Communities came together to help farmers through a sort of
collective action that's come to be known as penny auctions.
After foreclosures, they bid on the houses, farming equipment, and

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livestock the banks had seized for only pennies and returned
them to the farmers who had supplied their food. But
it wasn't enough. Neighbors often had no more to give
than those in need. Without anything left to share, Americans
turned to the government for assistance, but Hoover remained unmoved.
Americans who had once lived in apartments and houses now

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lived in makeshift huts made of cardboard, tar, paper, or
other discarded supplies. Some dug holes in the ground and
used whatever might count as a roof to keep the
a now, others took up residence inside water mains and
under bridges. The settlements became known as Hooverville's. The residents
referred to the newspapers they used as blankets as Hoover blankets.

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Empty pockets turned inside out were called Hoover flags. When
people wore out the soles in their shoes, they placed
Hoover leather, which amounted to pieces of cardboard, into their shoes.
It's easy to see that the President's reluctance to help
Americans didn't win him many fans. Typically, Americans looked down
on those seeking handouts. People thought taking state welfare was

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shameful unless it was someone they knew who had fallen
on hard times. The general sentiment was that people on
welfare did little to nothing to help themselves. Droughts in
the Plain States made the situation worse. Without water, crops,
animals and people died. Some government officials insisted the situation
was hardly as dyer as people made it out to be.

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If they didn't see it, then it didn't exist. But
a group of bographers was about to change that. In
March of nineteen thirty six, Dorothea Lange passed a sign
the Long Road in California. Sensing a story, she turned around.
The handmade sign read pe Pickers Camp. Lange worked as
a photographer for the Farm Security Administration. Her job was

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to help raise awareness of the American farmer's plight. She
grabbed her camera equipment and got out of the car.
The thin, disheveled woman and her children were friendly enough.
The woman told Lange that she and her children had
been living on vegetables from a nearby field and whatever
birds the children managed to catch. A thirty two year
old Florence Owens. Thompson and her seven children allowed Lange

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to take several photos, including a close up of Thompson's
tired and desperate face. This was the face of rural America.
Thompson's portrait came to represent the Great Depression and made
Lange one of America's top photographers. She had always loved art,
but especially photography. In nineteen four teen, she had worked

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for the famous Pictorialist movement photographer Arnold Genta. In nineteen seventeen,
she had studied at the Clarence H. White School of Photography.
After graduation in nineteen nineteen, she had opened a portrait studio.
Lang's gift for photography had captured the Farm Security Administration's attention.
They asked if she and other photographers, predominantly men, could

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document the effects the Great Depression had had on America.
Between nineteen thirty five and nineteen forty four, Lange and
the others took eighty thousand photographs of struggling Americans and
the drought bridden dust Bowl migrant mother. The portrait Lang
took of Florence and her children spread across the nation. Florence,
an indigenous woman, had lost her husband in nineteen thirty one.

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Since then she had worked in the fields for minimal
pay and scraps. Americans called Florence the Madonna of the
dust Bowl. Without a word, she had described the plight
of rural farmers. Lange took more heartbreaking photos of malnourished
children in breadlines and farm workers from all kinds of backgrounds,
hunched over crops and sparse fields. Her photography captured the

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moments where Americans, regardless of heritage or upbringing, shared compassion.
Lang went on to say that she strove to create
photos that created social change. The day after Lang's photo
of Florence and her children appeared in the San Francisco News.
The state Relief Administration arrived with food rations. In nineteen forty,

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Lang became the first woman to be awarded a Guggenheim
Fellowship Grant for her exceptional talent and creativity in the arts.
Like edmonious Statue of Cleopatra, Lang's art reflected reality. Lang
died in ninety five, though she is not forgotten. She
inspired a host of photographers to prioritize humanity in their

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photos and influenced the development of documentary photography. American Shadows
as host it by Lauren Vogelbaum, this episode was written
by Michelle Muto, researched by Ali Steed, and produced by
Miranda Hawkins and Trevor Young, with executive producers Aaron Mankey,

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Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. To learn more about the show,
visit grim and mil dot com. For more podcasts from
iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts.