HER WORKS
Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (plaster), 1864
Anne Quincy Waterston, 1866
A Freed Woman and Her Child, 1866
The Old Arrow-Maker and His Daughter, 1866
The Marriage of Hiawatha, 1866–67
Forever Free, 1867
Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (marble), 1867–68
Hagar in the Wilderness, 1868
Madonna Holding the Christ Child, 1869
Hiawatha, collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1868
Minnehaha, collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1868
Indian Combat, Carrara marble, 30″ high, collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art, 1868
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1869–71
Bust of Abraham Lincoln, 1870
Asleep, 1872
Awake, 1872
Poor Cupid, 1873
Moses, 1873
Bust of James Peck Thomas, 1874, collection of the Allen Memorial Art Museum
Hygieia, 1874
Hagar, 1875
The Death of Cleopatra, marble, 1876, collection of Smithsonian American Art Museum
John Brown, 1876, Rome, plaster bust
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1876, Rome, plaster bust
General Ulysses S. Grant, 1877–78
Veiled Bride of Spring, 1878
John Brown, 1878–79
The Adoration of the Magi, 1883
Charles Sumner, 1895
Master of her own Biography
The factual details about her life are fuzzy at best, she would tell different versions of her own story to the press. How else do you make your way in a bigoted man’s world?
Check out the different sources for the different versions of her origin story, but here’s the version believed to be the most accurate.
She was born as Wildfire, a name befitting a woman who blazed her own trail in the 1800s, to an African-Native American mother and West Indian father. Her mother was an artist who made Native American souvenirs to sell to tourists and her father was a gentleman’s servant. Both of her parents died when she was young, somewhere between the age of 5 and 10, so she was raised by her mother’s family in upstate New York.
Her half-brother made a fortune in the Gold rush and financed her education, and Wildfire was eventually accepted to Oberlin college, which was founded on the principles of coeducation, abolitionism, and integration. Despite Oberlin’s progressive foundation, she was one of only 30 students of color and faced daily racism, discrimination and abuse, and Wildfire introduced herself as Mary Edmonia Lewis to try and fit in, although she went by Edmonia the remainder of her life.
Feigned Acceptance
One night, her two white roommates fell ill after drinking some spiced wine, allegedly served by Edmonia. They were seen by a doctor who suggested they may have been poisoned, but they recovered and there was no action brought against her.
Rumors of a “black woman poisoning two white women and getting away with it” spread throughout the town of Oberlin, where the general population was not as progressive as at the college. They were angry and some of the town residents decided they had to take matters into their own hands.
One night when Edmonia was walking home alone, several men grabbed her, dragged her to an open field, severely beat her and left her for dead.
The men were never identified or charged, and after the attack, local authorities arrested Edmonia, charging her with poisoning her friends. John Mercer Langston, who was an Oberlin College alumnus and the first African-American lawyer in Ohio, represented her during her trial. There was zero evidence and Mr. Langston successfully got the charges dismissed.
Although she was innocent, she faced horrible prejudice and isolation in the year following the attack. She was later accused of stealing materials from the school, but found innocent of the charges. Then once again she was accused of aiding and abetting a burglary. By that point she was fed up and left just before she could graduate. In 2022, Oberlin college finally awarded her the degree that was denied to her when she was alive.
Blazing her own Trail
She told the New York Times in 1878, that she was, “practically driven to Rome, in order to obtain the opportunities for art culture, and to find a social atmosphere where I was not constantly reminded of my color. The land of liberty had no room for a colored sculptor.”
Edmonia was unique in her sculpting process; she insisted on enlarging her clay and wax models in marble herself, rather than hire native Italian sculptors to do it for her, which was common practice at the time. She had a mind for business, a trait not always found in artists, and she would make sculptures before receiving commissions for them, or send unsolicited works to Boston patrons requesting that they raise funds for materials and shipping.
Edmonia would go on to explore her African-American and Native American heritage and become one of the most celebrated sculptors of her generation.
One of her more famous works, “Forever Free”, depicted a powerful image of an African American man and woman emerging from the bonds of slavery.
Edmonia was a trailblazer, and she’s finally deserving the recognition she deserves for her incredible talent, bravery and determination.