African Americans have made extraordinary contributions to the history and culture of the United States as part of the nation and apart from it. This month, Auction Finds presents “28 days (Plus 1)” of this collaborative history. The additional day is intended to break Black history out of the stricture of a month into its rightful place as an equal partner in the history of America. Each day, I will offer artifacts culled from the auction tables and my research, along with the stories they hold.
Feb. 27, 2022
Isaac Scott Hathaway & the Booker T. 50-cent coin
African American artist Isaac Scott Hathaway designed 50-cent commemorative coins with the faces of Booker T. Washington in the 1940s and the combined faces of Washington and George Washington Carver in the 1950s. 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.
Hathaway decided to become a sculptor as a child after finding no sculpture of his hero Frederick Douglass at a local museum he was visiting with his minister father. He taught ceramics at several colleges, including Tuskegee Institute (now university). While in Alabama, he realized that the state’s white kaolin clay was a perfect medium for sculpting. He used it in his teaching and most of his own works.
He sculpted major African Americans figures, including Douglass, Washington, poet Paul Laurence Dunbar and activist/scholar W.E.B. DuBois. Read the full story.
