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Augusta Savage moved international audiences

Posted 2/19/20

GREEN COVE SPRINGS – On Feb. 29, 1892, Rev. Fells and his wife Cornelia welcomed their seventh child into their two-story home on Middleburg Avenue in Green Cove Springs. They could not have …

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Augusta Savage moved international audiences


Posted

GREEN COVE SPRINGS – On Feb. 29, 1892, Rev. Fells and his wife Cornelia welcomed their seventh child into their two-story home on Middleburg Avenue in Green Cove Springs. They could not have realized the life she would lead.

They named her Augusta and her destiny would be both bitter and sweet but most of all – huge. What she accomplished in the field of art during the time she worked was truly remarkable and against all odds because she was born in the poor, rural south, she was a woman, and she was black.

During the toddler years, Augusta spent most of her days in the shade of the persimmon tree growing in her parent’s front yard.

Sunday was church day, all day, because among his other activities Augusta’s father was a fire and brimstone Old Testament preacher. To support his family, he farmed, raised livestock and did odd jobs to bring in cash to pay taxes and buy land. It’s hard to be the preacher’s kid and it would prove to be especially hard for Augusta.

When she reached the age when she was able to explore beyond the yard, a whole new world opened to her. The Clay County Brick works pulsed with activity not very far from her home and was her greatest treat.

Workers, concerned for her safety, would run her off from peering in the vast drying tunnels and lurking around the fierce ovens but to keep her away they would have to give her a bucket of clay. Augusta spent hours shaping animals (ducks were a special favorite) and setting them in the sun to dry.

But when Rev. Fells discovered her creations, he branded them graven images and forbid her to continue or he would whip her. She persevered and he was true to his word – several times. Years later, Augusta would claim that her father almost whipped all the art out of her.

Sadly, it was here that what would be the recurring cycle of Augusta’s life began – every advance in her artistic achievement seemed to be followed by stunning disappointment.

In 1921, she was welcomed into the group of immensely talented black writers, artists and musicians known as the Harlem Renaissance but patron support for her work was elusive and she struggled to survive. She won a scholarship to study in France which was withdrawn when the award committee learned she was black.

She received a fellowship from the Julius Rosenwald Fund and the Carnegie Foundation to study in Europe, where her work was widely praised and frequently honored. But when she returned to America little had changed and the depression had begun. She survived financially only because she supervised a WPA project in her New York studio.

In 1939, her moving plaster sculpture named Lift Every Heart and Sing depicting near life-sized figures of a black choir in the hand of God was the talk of the World’s Fair, and praised by professional art critics and laymen alike. When the fair ended it was bulldozed with the buildings because the funds were not available to cast it in bronze.

Today her work that has survived is recognized as breathtakingly powerful and she as an immense talent.

Augusta Savage carried the banner for all three – blacks, women and rural southerners, with dignity and relentless determination. That little girl with the dust of Clay County between her bare toes, the hard courage of its people in her heart, and its clay in her magical hands became and remains a true inspiration.