The Cambridge Guide to African American History

Born: ca. July 14, 1843, near Albany, NY

Education: Oberlin College, 1859–63

Died: September 17, 1907, London, England

Art historians consider Lewis the first major black female artist in America. Born free as Wildfire, the child of an Indian mother and black father, she attended Oberlin College, mastered drawing, and renamed herself Mary Edmonia. She also resisted white racism and, though twice acquitted of fighting racist students, was not allowed to graduate. In 1863 she moved to Boston, where the black painter Edward Bannister tutored her. She created a fine marble “Bust of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw” (1865), leader of the Union's 54th Massachusetts US Colored Regiment, and earned money for apprenticeships in Europe.

European training enriched her art. In Italy she produced “Forever Free,” perhaps her best known work. Depicting the Emancipation Proclamation, it presents slaves who are just learning of their freedom. The woman kneels in prayer; the man rests one foot on an iron ball symbolizing slavery and lifts an arm in victory over its broken chain. Lewis won acclaim at the Philadelphia Centennial for “The Death of Cleopatra.” Cleopatra is dead, seated on the throne, with a snake that has bitten her right hand, as her left hand hangs lifeless. Sometime in the late nineteenth century Lewis went back to Italy. She later died in London.