They sold a Booker T. Washington coin, my auction buddy Janet told me when I finally sat down next to her at a recent auction. I had avoided sitting, choosing instead to roam around the auction house previewing the same stuff over and over rather than nodding off during an hour of coin sales.
I had not even looked at the coins on the catalog sheets because I had no interest in them and very little knowledge about numismatics.
But when she mentioned the Booker T. Washington coin, I was suddenly curious. Checking the catalog sheets, I saw that the 1946 half-dollar had been sold in a cardboard book with a group of 20 commemorative coins made from 1892-1954. The group included state and city coins, and Daniel Boone and Gettysburg coins. The book also included a 1952 combined Washington and George Washington Carver coin. The coins were deemed to be in good condition.
In another lot, another set of the same Washington and Washington/Carver coins were sold, but these were tarnished from heavy use. The bid sheet noted that 500,000 of the single Washington coins were minted, while 2 million of the Washington/Carvers were struck.
Obviously, I Googled, and learned that both coins were designed by an African American artist named Isaac Scott Hathaway. Washington was the first African American to have his face on a commemorative coin, and Hathaway was the first African American to design a U.S. coin.
Commemorative coins are minted to raise money for a specific cause or occasion, or to celebrate history. They are minted in limited amounts and are not put into circulation for the general public. They are normally purchased by collectors.
Congress authorized the Washington half-dollar in 1946 to commemorate his life and teachings. The law permitted five million coins to be minted over the next five years. They were struck at U.S. mints in Philadelphia (no mark), San Francisco (has an S mark) and Denver (a D mark). Money derived from the sale of the coins was to be used to restore Washington’s birth site in Franklin County, VA.
The Booker T. Washington Birthplace Memorial Commission selected artist Charles Keck – who had done other commemorative designs – for the project. The U.S. Mint approved Keck’s model, but meanwhile, Hathaway learned about the project. He offered his own design for free based on a life mask that he had sculpted of Washington. It’s not clear if he knew that a model had already been chosen. The birthplace commission apparently presented each design to the Commission of Fine Arts, and Hathaway’s was chosen. Although not picked, Keck was paid for his design.
Keck was not unfamiliar with Washington. The artist had created a large sculpture titled “Lifting the Veil of Ignorance” in the 1920s that was erected on the grounds of Tuskegee Institute, which Washington had founded in Alabama.
The 50-cent coin shows Washington’s bust on the obverse side and images of the Hall of Fame for Great Americans in the Bronx, NY, and the cabin where he was born on the reverse, along with some wording. About 1.7 million of the 1946 coins were produced, selling for $1 to $1.50. The coins, however, did not sell well as expected, and half were later melted. Other coins were struck over the subsequent five years.
The Washington/Carver coin was produced from 1951 to 1954. The coins were made from unsold Washington coins that had been melted.
I was very familiar with the lives of Washington and Carver, both of whom had a long and illustrious history at Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University), but Hathaway was new to me. He knew both men because he had set up the college’s ceramics department in 1937. He also created sculptures of them.
Born in Lexington, KY, in 1872, Hathaway realized that he wanted to be an artist after visiting a museum with his minister-father as a child. He wandered off looking for a sculpture of his hero Frederick Douglass among the great Americans featured at the museum and found none. He decided then that he’d change that.
He went on to sculpt such major African Americans as Douglass, Washington, poet Paul Laurence Dunbar and activist/scholar W.E.B. DuBois. He started his own company called the Afro Art Company (later changed to the Isaac Hathaway Art Company) to sell miniature busts of Washington, Douglass and Bishop Richard Allen. He is said to have created more than 100 busts and death masks.
In 1945, Hathaway realized that the white kaolin clay of Alabama was a perfect medium for sculpting. He used it in his teaching and most of his own works (some of his pottery was sold at another auction in 2011).
He taught ceramics not only at Tuskegee, but also at Branch Normal College (now University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff), Alabama State College (now Alabama State University) and Alabama Polytechnic Institute (now Auburn University).
A museum in his name operated for several years in Lexington but appears to have been closed.
As for the coins at auction, the book sold for $650, and the group of 12 coins, for $40. Although the Washington coin isn’t worth much monetarily, its value is in its history.
