Tag Archives: black history month

Oliver LaGrone: Sculptor of “Mercy”

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Black and white photo of an African American artist in a studio covering a figurative sculpture with plaster.
Works Progress Administration sculptor Oliver LaGrone casting “Mercy” for installation at the Carrie Tingley Children’s Hospital for Crippled Children in Hot Springs (Truth or Consequences), NM, ca. 1936. Palace of the Governors Photo Archives 019936

Oliver LaGrone (1906-1995), younger brother of Hobart LaGrone, is a nationally-recognized artist, educator, and poet. After moving with his family from the Midwest to Albuquerque in the early 1930s, Oliver LaGrone quickly became involved in his community. In 1933, both Oliver and Hobart became members of the first African American Boy Scout troop in Albuquerque. Oliver was also the director and member, along with Hobart, of the Harmony Four, a quartet that regularly sang at the Grant Chapel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, where they were also members with their family.

Newspaper clipping with headline: Ex-Student Here Hailed As Sculptor
Albuquerque Tribune 21 February 1952

Oliver LaGrone began his studies at the University of New Mexico, and refined his skills in the fine arts. In 1936, the WPA hired Mr. LaGrone to create a sculpture for the future Carrie Tingley Hospital for Crippled Children in Hot Springs, NM. Upon graduating from UNM in 1938 with a Bachelor of Science degree, Mr. LaGrone met and married Irmah Cooke and moved to Michigan shortly thereafter, though he moved back to Albuquerque briefly in 1977.

Oliver LaGrone continued making sculptures throughout his life, while he worked as a representative for the American Federation of Labor (AF of L) in Detroit’s auto industry, while he worked as a teacher in Detroit public schools, and throughout his tenure as a faculty member at Pennsylvania State University.

Oliver LaGrone was also known for his activism and wrote poetry on Black history, identity, and the fight for civil rights in the United States. His sculptures can be seen at the Albuquerque Museum sculpture garden, the Schomberg Center at the New York Public Library, and Pennsylvania State University, among other locations.

Newspaper clipping with headline: Detroit Sculptor Ends Visit Here
Albuquerque Journal 31 December 1962

Clara Belle Drisdale Williams: Trailblazing Educator

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Black and white photo of a young African American woman, seated, wearing a white dress

Clara Belle Drisdale Williams [1885-1993] was the first African-American graduate of New Mexico State University. Many of her professors would not allow her inside the classroom, she had to take notes from the hallway; she was also not allowed to walk with her class to get her diploma. She married Jasper Williams in 1917; their three sons became physicians. She became a great teacher of black students by day, and by night she taught their parents, former slaves, home economics. In 1961, New Mexico State University named a street on its campus after Williams;

in 2005 the building of the English department was renamed Clara Belle Williams Hall. In 1980 Williams was awarded an honorary doctorate of laws degree by NMSU, which also apologized for the treatment she was subjected to as a student. She died at 108 years old.

More information on Clara Belle Drisdale Williams in articles on NMSU.edu

Mr. Hobart Lagrone: Instrumental figure in New Mexico’s drive to de-segregation

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Did you know that the Albuquerque chapter of the NAACP was established in January 1915 – nine years after the national organization was founded in 1906?

Albuquerque Journal 4 May 1952

Though many notable Albuquerque residents served and continue to dedicate their time to the NAACP, we want to highlight Mr. Hobart LaGrone, a devoted member and former president of the both the local and state chapters of the NAACP throughout the 1950s and until his death in 1966. Under Mr. LaGrone’s leadership, the NAACP Albuquerque Branch welcomed nationally and internationally known African American scholars and artists, namely Dr. W.E.B DuBois, Langston Hughes, and Dr. Ralph Johnson Bunche to speak in town regarding urgent sociopolitical matters. Mr. LaGrone (center) is pictured above in this Albuquerque Journal photo with Dr. Bunche (left of center) from his lecture on the United Nations in May 1952.

Albuquerque Journal 18 February 1953

A postman by day, Mr. LaGrone’s NAACP work shed light on discrimination and racial justice issues in Albuquerque and New Mexico more broadly. He attended GI Forum meetings, worked with state senators to end school segregation in New Mexico, and was instrumental in spearheading the Albuquerque Civil Rights Ordinance in 1952, to name a few key accomplishments. Just three years before his death, the city honored Mr. LaGrone for his dedication to civil rights causes.

Albuquerque Tribune 16 May 1963

Hobart LaGrone and his brother Oliver, a renowned artist, are two members of a dynamic family we’re currently researching at the museum, though we look forward to learning about more family members and their community in Albuquerque. Look for another post this week on the life and work of Oliver LaGrone.

Frederick Douglass Learns to Write – A Palace Press Commemoration

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Imagine a world where Frederick Douglass had not learned to write.

Would the Emancipation Proclamation have been issued in 1863 or might it have withered and waited without the stirring speeches Douglass wrote, published and delivered, advocating against the slavery into which he was born?

Historians and what-if theorists can argue that for days, but the rest of us can be satisfied in knowing that, thanks to Douglass’ writing skills, we have a stirring, first-person account of what life was like in an America that regarded black people as property.  

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass was first published in 1845, seven years after its author escaped from slavery. It remains a classic autobiography, unflinchingly recounting the terrors that Douglass experienced as a slave, the brutalities of his owners, and his narrow escape to the North. (An escape that was endangered by the book’s publication; once his former owner knew where to find him, he went to court – unsuccessfully – to get his “property” back.)

Just in time for Black History Month comes a new broadside from the Palace Press at the New Mexico History Museum. And though we’re mentioning its tie to that month, the excerpt featured from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass serves us in a timeless way, reminding us of how difficult it can be for anyone to learn how to fit words together and how crucial it is to master that learning curve in order to make compelling points. In this case, points that changed the course of history.

The excerpt reads:

… The idea as to how I might learn to write was suggested to me by being in Durgin and Bailey’s ship-yard, and frequently seeing the ship carpenters, after hewing, and getting a piece of timber ready for use, write on the timber the name of that part of the ship for which it was intended. When a piece of timber was intended for the larboard side, it would be marked thus–“L.” When a piece was for the starboard side, it would be marked thus–“S.” A piece for the larboard side forward, would be marked thus–“L. F.” When a piece was for starboard side forward, it would be marked thus–“S. F.” For larboard aft, it would be marked thus–“L. A.” For starboard aft, it would be marked thus–“S. A.” I soon learned the names of these letters, and for what they were intended when placed upon a piece of timber in the ship-yard. I immediately commenced copying them, and in a short time was able to make the four letters named. After that, when I met with any boy who I knew could write, I would tell him I could write as well as he. The next word would be, “I don’t believe you. Let me see you try it.” I would then make the letters which I had been so fortunate as to learn, and ask him to beat that. In this way I got a good many lessons in writing, which it is quite possible I should never have gotten in any other way. During this time, my copy-book was the board fence, brick wall, and pavement; my pen and ink was a lump of chalk. With these, I learned mainly how to write. …

“Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is on my list of the most important books,” said Tom Leech, director of the Palace Press. “I just think for us to understand American history and the American psyche, we need to read that book.”

In 1988, Leech first printed the broadside on his own press in Colorado, where he was then living. He gave his 12-year-old son a linoleum block and asked him to write letters in reverse to be carved for the border. (By the way, that 12-year-old, Benjamin Leech, is now an advocate for historic preservation in Philadelphia.)

Copies of the 12½” x 19” broadside (printed on heavy, recycled, acid-free paper) can be purchased for $25. Come by the Palace Press, open 10 am to 5 pm, Tuesday through Sunday, or call Leech at 505-476-5096.

That’s not the only memory of Frederick Douglass available at the Palace Press.

In 2010, the Palace Press exhibited in the museum’s front window a lithographic press (one with an extraordinarily fabled background story), along with a printing stone that held a portrait of Douglass, loaned to us by Landfall Press, Santa Fe’s fine art lithographers. Their printers pulled 10 copies from the stone, and now just a few of those prints are still available and can be purchased for $100.

The prints provide an image of Douglass that’s fitting to gaze upon while considering these other words, ones that haunt the history of our “land of the free,” created by a writer who began with a piece of pavement and a lump of chalk:

… I often found myself regretting my own existence, and wishing myself dead; and but for the hope of being free, I have no doubt but that I should have killed myself, or done something for which I should have been killed. While in this state of mind, I was eager to hear any one speak of slavery. I was a ready listener. Every little while, I could hear something about the abolitionists. It was some time before I found what the word meant. …