Harlem Renaissance Represented the Ideological

Harlem Renaissance represented the ideological start of the civil rights movement. A surge of productivity in intellectual, political, and artistic spheres, the Harlem Renaissance stimulated interest in African-American culture and in some ways helped to create that culture. The figures that emerged during the Harlem Renaissance contributed greatly to the canon of human thought on race relations. However, Harlem Renaissance artists were not necessarily preoccupied with race even though their creative media enabled political discourse.

Augusta Fells Savage has been described as one of the "luminaries" of the Harlem Renaissance ("Augusta Savage"). Savage was one of the Harlem Renaissance's most prominent female artists, too, and helped lay groundwork for feminism as well as racial equality. As a teacher, Savage helped transform social consciousness and through her sculpture she helped mold new identities for African-Americans.

Savage began her work as a self-taught artist who made small sculptures out of clay as a hobby. Born in northern Florida near Jacksonville in a town called Green Cove Springs in 1892, Savage's art was influenced by her perception of social and economic realities. She was born Augusta Fells to parents Edward and Cornelia and was the seventh of fourteen children. The young Augusta worked with the natural clay she found in natural pits in northern Florida. Her first sculptures were mostly animal figurines, which she sculpted on the sly "instead of going to school," (excerpt from Notable Black American Women). Her models depicted ducks and other birds Augusta would encounter in her daily life, but her religious father believed the pieces to be pagan and therefore spiritually dangerous. Thus, when she was a young girl Savage was inadvertently upsetting established religious norms because her figurines were deemed blasphemous. Savage's father was a Methodist preacher and when he found her small figures he scolded her harshly for creating graven images prohibited by the Bible ("Augusta Savage"). In spite of this, the young Augusta persisted in her craft and used it as a means to subvert social norms throughout her life.

Augusta Fells married John Moore when she was 15 and had her first child, Irene. John Moore died soon thereafter and she was forced to move back with her parents. The Fell family then moved from Green Cove Springs to West Palm Beach in 1915. While there, Augusta pursued her art in earnest. She "begged for clay from a small factory called Chase Pottery," because it was not a natural resource in south Florida (excerpt from Notable Black American Women). One of her first sculptures in West Palm Beach was of the Virgin Mary, which pleased her father and encouraged him to take an interest in his daughter's burgeoning talent.

Her father was not the only adult to recognize Augusta's gift. In 1919, one of her sculptures won an award at a county fair. During her senior year of high school, Augusta taught modeling. She married James Savage and took his name, but divorced him shortly thereafter. As Augusta Savage, the artist used her earnings from the prize money and her teaching position to pursue art in earnest. First she moved back to northern Florida to Jacksonville. Stymied there, Augusta Savage moved to New York City. Her move paralleled that of many other Harlem Renaissance figures, who migrated to the northern American city in search of greater opportunities for financial and personal growth. In 1921, Augusta enrolled in a free art program at Cooper Union in New York City. The course helped her acquire formal training for her future career, and Savage washed laundry to earn a living.

In spite of her tremendous efforts, Savage met with serious obstacles because of her race, poverty, and correspondingly low social status. She applied and was accepted to a summer art program in France. The French government turned her away "because of her color," ("Augusta Fells Savage"). Savage used the incident to draw attention to the issue of racism. She therefore contributed to the growing awareness of the systematic oppression of people of color.