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Showing posts with the label librarian

Augusta Savage (1892-1962)

African American sculptor, teacher, and advocate for black artists Augusta Savage was born Augusta Christine Fell in Green Cove Springs, Florida on February 29, 1892, the child of Edward Fells, a laborer and Methodist minister, and Cornelia Murphy. She retained the last name of her second husband, a carpenter named James Savage; they were divorced in the early 1920s.  After moving to Harlem in New York in 1921, Savage studied art at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art where she finished the four-year program in three years . She was recommended by Harlem librarian Sadie Peterson, for a commission of a bust of W.E.B. DuBois.  The sculpture was well received and she began sculpting busts of other African American leaders. Savage’s bust of a Harlem child, Gamin (1929), brought her ...

Nella Larsen

Nellallitea "Nella" Larsen , born  Nellie Walker  (April 13, 1891 – March 30, 1964), was an American novelist of the  Harlem Renaissance . First working as a  nurse  and a  librarian , she published two novels— Quicksand  (1928) and  Passing  (1929)—and a few short stories. Though her literary output was scant, she earned recognition by her contemporaries. A revival of interest in her writing has occurred since the late twentieth century, when issues of racial and sexual identity have been studied. Her works have been the subjects of numerous academic studies. Nella Larsen was born  Nellie Walker  in a poor district of  Chicago  known as the Levee, on April 13, 1891, the daughter of Peter Walker, likely a mulatto  Afro-Caribbean  immigrant from the  Danish West Indies  and Marie Walker,  née  Hansen, a  Danish immigrant . Her mother was a seamstress and domestic worker. Her fat...