Black Scholar magazine signed by Elizabeth Catlett

I had quickly thumbed through the box of papers, pamphlets and other documents, but even from that cursory look, I knew it was something that I wanted.

I knew that inside – out of my view – were other documents pertaining to African American history that I had missed. The thrill would be in getting the box home and carefully going through it.

Since the items were African American-related, I also knew that there would be several people at the auction who would want it as much as me. So I settled for a long drawn-out bidding war. Black memorabilia and ephemera sell, and it is sometimes tough to get my hands on the stuff because some auction-goers have pockets deeper than mine.

When the bidding got underway, I stuck in there and managed to get the box of documents.

I’m glad that I did because inside were several copies of Carter G. Woodson’s Negro History Bulletin from the 1940s and 1950s. The item that also gladdened me was a copy of The Black Scholar magazine with a signature that I recognized at first glance: Elizabeth Catlett. The artist had signed the front cover in the lower right corner of a black and white image from one of her mother-and-child prints.

One of my most favorite artists, Catlett died in April at age 96. She had been making beautiful sculptures that I could not afford and prints that I could afford for more than 60 years.

The magazine cover was a bit worn, with the spine tearing apart at the top. Unfortunately, the previous owner hadn’t kept it in a plastic sleeve for protection. He had likely asked her to sign the magazine and thought little more about the signature.

This edition of the magazine was November/December 1978. On a page inside, the publishers were offering the mother-and-child print as one of five black and white lithographs by the artist. A limited offering, the set was being sold for $25 (plus $1 for postage and handling), with each print measuring 12 ¾” by 18 ½” inches.

Catlett made many sculptures of mothers with children. It was one of her recurring themes, just as much as her images of African American women. She showed them all with dignity, giving them an identity that they had long been denied.

In this quote from a 1999 article on the website sculpture.org, she explained what she was trying to do:

“If I do a sculpture of a mother and child, I try to give a sense to all black mothers and their children; I want them to feel a sense of dignity in their accomplishment. This I try to accomplish through the shape and movement of form at the same time the sculpture is figurative. I also use abstract qualities within the figurative to strengthen my intention. My intention is to create a work of sculpture which has empathy or a relation to our lives so that they have an aesthetic experience.”

The first of Catlett’s mother-and-child pieces was a sculpture she created in 1939 as part of her master’s thesis at the University of Iowa. It was a limestone sculpture of a seated woman and child that won first place in the sculpture category at the American Negro Exposition in Chicago in 1940. The award medal was designed by artist Hale Woodruff, according to the exposition catalog.

The exposition was organized by African Americans to celebrate their accomplishments 75 years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. It included a hall of 300 pieces of African American art, according to the catalog, organized by scholar Alain Locke at the request of Truman K. Gibson Jr., the executive director of the exposition. That exhibit apparently had its own catalog.

In the main catalog, the fair was dubbed by its organizers as the first Negro World’s Fair.

Catlett created the lithograph on which the cover art of Black Scholar was based around 1970, and it measured 17″ by 12″. Like her sculptures, it was one of several lithographs with that same look and feel of a mother embracing her child as if to protect her progeny.

The magazine also included a children’s story by Walter Dean Myers, and poetry by Ntozake Shange, Ishmael Reed, June Jordan and Alice Walker.