Born: February 29, 1892, in Green Cove City, Florida

Died: March 27, 1962, in New York, New York

Known For: Sculptures

A natural-born artist, Savage, made some of her first sculptures out of the red clay found in her backyard. With the local clay, she sculptured a group of figurines to enter in the West Palm Beach County Fair in 1919. Following her success at the fair, Augusta moved to Jacksonville, Florida, and tried to support herself and her young daughter, Irene, by sculpting portrait busts of prominent black community members.

With a meager $4.60 to her name, Savage moved to Harlem and enrolled herself in the Cooper Union School of Art program. Savage was one of the first artists who consistently dealt with black physiognomy and made busts of W. E. B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey. In 1934, she became the first African-American member of the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors. She was influential in getting the Works Progress Administration to include black artists in its Federal Art Project.

"Gamin"

Medium: Painted plaster

Date: Circa 1929

Location: Smithsonian American Art Museum

In 1929, Augusta Savage’s nephew, Ellis Ford, and his family lived with Savage in Harlem after a hurricane destroyed their house. Ellis became her muse and modeled in a soft newspaper boy’s cap. The French word gamin is inscribed on the base, which refers to a neglected child left to roam the streets.

"The Harp"

Medium: Painted plaster

Date: Circa 1939

Location: Originally Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens

Inspired by NAACP leader James Weldon Johnson’s “Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing,” which subsequently became known as the "Black national anthem, Savage commissioned this 16-foot sculpture for the 1939 New York World’s Fair. The sculpture is made of twelve choir singers who form a harp with God’s hand, as they are “Instruments of God.” Savage sold bronze miniatures of the piece as souvenirs to raise funds to buy the proper materials needed, like bronze. At the end of the fair, bulldozers came and smashed it during the clean-up. It was one of the most photographed pieces from the fair, and over four million people viewed the artwork.

Augusta Savage overcame poverty, racism, and sexual discrimination as an activist-educator and a key figure during the Harlem Renaissance. She was a co-founder of the Harlem Artists Guild, helped establish the Harlem Community Art Center, and opened the Salon of Contemporary Negro Art, the first gallery in the United States dedicated to African American artists.

Savage got a scholarship to the Fontainebleau School of the Arts in Paris at thirty years old. When the American selection committee found out she was black, they rescinded the offer. The committee was fearful of the criticism they would receive from the white community, especially when it came to housing and studio arrangements.

The racial discrimination did not stop her from going to Paris to chase her dreams of art school. After a few years, Savage returned to Harlem during the Depression and gave free art lessons in her studio. She soon became a mentor to Jacob Lawrence and other prominent artists and continued her activism for equal rights for African Americans in the arts.