North Carolina African American Literature
N C L R ONLINE
23
COURTESY OF SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM
In this house that smells of scrubbed floors, buffed wax, potato salad, lemon meringue pies, and pullets fried for repast, you toddle through the kitchen, retrace your steps into the front room, look for your mother’s face in faces you’ve already searched. You listen for her voice, yearn for mama-arms, as you fight with the sandman.
Untitled (Woman and Child), ca. 1950 (painted red oak, 119.6 x 32.3 x 29.8) by Selma Burke
Birthrights – almond eyes, crinkly hair, deep chocolate skin – picture you a perfect likeness of your mother, innocent before she disgraced the family, unwed with big belly. Leaning against your next-to-youngest uncle’s knee fires the furnace set on pilot in his jailbird soul. He bellows: “Go somewhere and set down, gal, lookin’ like yo’ mama.” Without a whimper, you settle into your grandma’s lap. She covers you with prayer, caresses your face like she’ll stroke your mama in the casket tomorrow.
SELMA BURKE (1900–1995) was an African American sculptor born in Mooresville, NC. She graduated in 1924 from St. Agnes Training School for Nurses in Raleigh but moved to New York City in 1935 where she earned an MFA in 1941 from Columbia University and became part of the Harlem Renaissance. She founded the Selma Burke School of Sculpture in 1940 and the Selma Burke Art School in 1946, both in New York. Also in 1946, she opened the Selma Burke Art Center in Pittsburgh, PA. Her original sculpture of Franklin Delano Roosevelt was adapted for the dime, and her last sculpture is the nine-foot statue of Martin Luther King, Jr., which was placed in Marshall Park in Charlotte, NC, in 1980. Among her numerous prestigious awards is the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women’s Caucus for Art, which was presented to her by President Jimmy Carter.