04 - Women of Achievement by Benjamin Griffith Brawley

This remarkable volume, published in 1919 by the American Womens Baptist Home Mission Society, highlights the vital contributions of African American women. It eloquently addresses the often-overlooked invisible work performed by these women as mothers and wives, while also showcasing their significant roles in various industries, including medicine, education, and the arts. Additionally, this collection features inspiring short biographies of five courageous women who have made a lasting impact. - Summary by kathrinee

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section three of Women of Achievement. This is a LibriVox recording.
All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
by Betty b. Women of Achievement by Benjamin Griffith Brawley,

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Chapter four meta Warwick Fuller. The state of Massachusetts has
always been famous for its history and literature, and especially
rich in tradition is the region around Boston. On one
side is Charlestown, visited yearly by thousands who make a
pilgrimage to the Bunker Hill Monument. Across the Charles River

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is Cambridge, the home of Harvard University, and Longfellow and Lowell,
and numerous other men whose work has become a part
of the nation's heritage. If one will ride on through
Cambridge and North Cambridge and Arlington, he will come to Lexington,
where he will find in the little Lexington Common, one

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of the most charming spots of ground in America. Overlooking this,
he will see the Harrington House and all around other
memorials of the revolution. Taking the car again and riding
about seven miles more, he will come to Concord, and
here he will catch still more of the flavor of

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the eighteenth century. Walking from the center of the town
down Monument Street, he must walk now there is no trolley,
and a carriage or automobile does not permit one to
linger by the wayside. He will come after a while
to the old Manse, once the home of Emerson and
of Hawthorne, and then see just around the corner the

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Concord Bridge and the statue of the Minuteman. There is
a new bridge, now one of concrete. The old wooden one,
so long beloved, at length became unsafe and had to
be replaced in another direction. From the center of the
town runs Lexington Road, within about half a mile, down

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which one will see the later homes of Emerson and Hawthorne,
as well as that of Louisa May Alcott. Near the
Alcott House, back among the trees, is a quaint little
structure much like a southern country schoolhouse, the so called
Conquered School of Philosophy in which Emerson once spoke. It

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is all a beautiful country, beautiful most of all for
its unseen glory. One gives himself up to reflection. He
muses on Evangeline and the great Stone face and on
the heroic dead, who did not die in vain until
a lumbering truck car on the road calls him back
from it all to the workaday world of men. It

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is in this state of Massachusetts, so rich in its tradition,
that there resides the subject of the present sketch, about
half way between Boston and Worcester, in the quiet, homelike
town of Framingham, on a winding road, just off the
main street, lives meadow Warwick Fuller, the foremost sculptor of

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the Negro race. There are three little boys in the family.
They keep their mother very busy, but they also make
her very happy. Buttons have to be sewed on, and
dinners have to be prepared for the children of an artist,
just as well as for those of other people, and
help is not always easy to get. But the father,

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doctor S. C. Fuller, a distinguished physician, is also interested
in the boys, so that he too helps, and the
home is a happy one. At the top of the
house is a long roomy attic. This is an improvised studio, or,
as the sculptor would doubtless say, the workshop. Hither from
the busy work of the morning comes the artist for

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an hour or half an hour of modeling for rest
and for the first effort to transfer to the plastic
clay some leading transient dream. Meta Warwick Fuller was born
in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, June ninth, eighteen seventy seven. For four
years she attended the Pennsylvania School of Industrial Art, and

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it was at this institution that she first began to
force serious recognition of her talent. Before very long, she
began to be known as a sculptor of the Horrible,
one of her first original pieces being ahead of Medusa,
with a hanging jaw, beads of gore and eyes starting
from their sockets. At her graduation in eighteen ninety eight,

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she won a prize for metal work by a crucifix
upon which hung the figure of Christ in agony, and
she also won honorable mention for her work in modeling.
In a postgraduate year, she won a much coveted prize
in modeling. In eighteen ninety nine, Meta Warwick, then best
known by her full name Meda Vaux Warwick, went to Paris,

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where she worked and studied three years. Her work brought
her in contact with many other artists, among them Augustus
Saint Gaudin, the sculptor of the Robert Gouldshaw Monument at
the head of Boston Common. Then there came a day when,
by appointment, the young woman went to see Auguste Rodin, who,
after years of struggle and dispraise, had finally won recognition

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as the foremost sculptor in France, if not in the world.
The great man glanced one after another at the pieces
that were presented to him without very evident interest. At length,
thrilled by the figure in silent sorrow, sometimes referred to
as man eating his heart out, Rodin beamed upon the

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young woman and said, mademoiselle, you are a sculptor. You
have the sense of form. With encouragement from such a source,
the young artist worked with renewed vigor, looking forward to
the time when something that she had produced should win
a place in the salon the Great National Gallery in Paris.
The Wretched, one of the artist's masterpieces, was exhibited here

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in nineteen hundred three, and along with it went The
Impenitent Thief. This latter production was demolished in nineteen hundred
four after meeting with various unhappy accidents in the form
is presented. However, the thief, heroic in size, hung on
the cross, torn by anguish, hardened, unsympathetic, and even defiant,

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he still possessed some admirable qualities of strength, and he
has remained one of the sculptor's most powerful conceptions. In
The Wretched, seven figures greet the eye. Each represents a
different form of human anguish. An old man, worn by
hunger and disease, waits for death. A mother yearns for

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the loved one she is lost. A man bowed by
shame fears to look upon his fellow creatures. A sick
child suffers from some hereditary taint, a youth is in despair,
and a woman is crazed by sorrow. Over All is
the philosopher, who suffers, perhaps more keenly than the others,

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as he views the misery around them, and who powerless
to relieve it, also sinks into despair. Other early productions
were similarly characterized by a strongly romantic quality. Silent sorrow
has already been remarked in Passing. In this a man
worn in gaunt and in despair is represented as leaning

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over and actually eating out his own heart. Man carrying
dead body is in similar Vein the sculptors, moved by
the thought of one who will be spurred on by
the impulse of duty, to the performance of some task
not only unpleasant but even loathsome She shows a man
bearing across his shoulder the body of a calm read

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that is evidently lain on the battle field for days.
The thing is horrible, and the man totters under the
great weight, but he forces his way onward until he
can give it decent burial. Another early production was based
on the ancient Greek story of Oedipus. This story was
somewhat as follows. Oedipus was the son of Laius and Jocasta,

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King and Queen of Thebes. At his birth, an oracle
foretold that the father Laus would be killed by his
own son. The child was sent away to be killed
by exposure, but in course of time was saved and
afterwards adopted by the King of Corinth. When he was grown,
being warned by an oracle that he would kill his

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father and marry his mother, he left home. On his journey,
he met Laus and slew him in the course of
an altercation. Later, by solving the riddle of the Sphinx,
he freed thieves from distress, was made king of the
city and Mary Jocasta. Eventually, the terrible truth of the
relationship became known to all. Jocasta hanged herself, and Oedipus

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tore out his eyes. The sculptor portrays the hero of
the old legend at the very moment that he is
thus trying to punish himself for his crime. There is
nothing delicate or pretty about all such work as this.
It is gruesome in fact and horrible, but it is
also strong and intense and vital its merit was at

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once recognized by the French, and it gave Meta Warwick
a recognized place among the sculptors of America. On her
return to America, the artist resumed her studies at the
School of Industrial Art, winning in nineteen hundred four the
Battle's first prize for pottery. In nineteen hundred seven, she

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produced a series of tableaus representing the advance of the
Negro for the Jamestown ter Centennial Exposition. In nineteen thirteen
a group for the New York State Emancipation Proclamation Commission.
In nineteen hundred nine, she became the wife of doctor
Solomon C. Fuller of Framingham, Massachusetts. A fire in nineteen

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ten unfortunately destroyed some of her most valuable pieces while
they were in storage in Philadelphia. Only a few examples
of her early work that happened to be elsewhere were saved.
The artist was undaunted, however, and by May nineteen fourteen
she had sufficiently recovered from the blow to be able

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to hold at her home a public exhibition of her work.
After this fire, a new note crept into the work
of Meta Warwick Fuller. This was doubtless due not so
much to the fire itself as to the larger conception
of life that now came to the sculptor with the
new duties of marriage and motherhood. From this time forth,

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it was not so much the romantic as the social
note that was emphasized. Representative of the new influence was
the second model of the group for the Emancipation Proclamation Commission.
A recently emancipated Negro youth and maiden stand beneath a gnarled,
decapitated tree that has what looks almost like a human

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hand stretched over them. Humanity is pushing them forth into
the world, while at the same time the hand of
destiny is restraining them in the full exercise of their freedom.
Immigrant in America is in somewhat similar vein an American woman,
the mother of one strong, healthy child, is shown welcoming

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to the land of plenty. The foreigner the mother of
several poorly nourished children. Closely related in subject is the
smaller piece The Silent Appeal, in which a mother capable
of producing and caring for three sturdy children is shown
as making a quiet demand for the suffrage and for
any other privileges to which a human being is entitled.

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All of these productions are clear cut, straightforward, and dignified.
In May nineteen seventeen, Meta Warwick Fuller took second prize
in a competition under the auspices of the Massachusetts branch
of the Woman's Peace Party, her subject being peace halting
the ruthlessness of war. War is personified as on a

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mighty steed and trampling to death numberless human beings. In
one hand, he holds a spear on which he has
transfixed the head of one of his victims. Peace meets
him and commands him to cease his ravages. The work
as exhibited was in gray green wax, and was a
production of Most Unusual Spirit. Among other prominent titles, are

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Watching for Dawn, a conception of remarkable beauty and yearning,
and mother and Child. An early production, and somewhat detached
from other pieces, is a head of John the Baptist.
This is one of the most haunting creations of Missus Fuller.
In it, she was especially successful in the infinite yearning

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and pathos that she somehow managed to give to the
eyes of the seer. It bears the unmistakable stamp of power.
In this whole review of this sculptor's work, we have
indicated only the chief titles. She is an indefatigable worker,
and has produced numerous smaller pieces, many of these being

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naturally for commercial purposes. As has been remarked, while her
work was at first romantic and often even horrible, in
recent years she has been interested rather in social themes.
There are those, however, who hope that she will not
utterly forsake the field in which she first became distinguished.
Through the sternness of her early work speaks the very

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tragedy of the Negro race. In any case, it is
pleasant to record that the foremost sculptor of the race
is not only an artist of rank, but also a
woman who knows and appreciates, in the highest possible manner,
the virtues and the beauties of the home. End of
Chapter four