May Howard Jackson

{{Short description|American sculptor}} {{Infobox artist | honorific_prefix = | name = May Howard Jackson | honorific_suffix = | image = May Howard Jackson.jpg | image_size = | alt = | caption = | native_name = | native_name_lang = | birth_name = May Howard | birth_date = {{birth date|df=yes|1877|09|07}} | birth_place = Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. | death_date = {{death date and age|df=yes|1931|7|12|1877|9|7}} | death_place = New York, New York, U.S. | resting_place = Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, New York | resting_place_coordinates = | education = Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts | alma_mater = | known_for = Sculpture | style = | movement = | spouse = William Sherman Jackson | awards = Harmon Foundation, 1928 <!-- {{awd|award|year|title|role|name}} (optional) --> | elected = | patrons = | memorials = | website = | works = {{plainlist| ''Portrait Bust of Paul Lawrence Dunbar'' (1919) *''Portrait Bust of Dean Kelly Miller'' (1922) *''Mulatto Mother and Child'' (n.d.)}} }}

'''May Howard Jackson''' (September 7, 1877 – July 12, 1931) was an African American sculptor and artist. Active in the New Negro Movement and prominent in Washington, D.C.'s African American intellectual circle in the period 1910–30, she was known as "one of the first black sculptors to...deliberately use America's racial problems" as the theme of her art.<ref name="Bontemps">{{Cite journal|last1=Bontemps|first1=Arna Alexander|last2=Fonvielle-Bontemps|first2=Jacqueline|date=|title=African American Women Artists: An Historical Perspective|journal=Sage: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women|volume=IV| issue = 1 (Spring 1987)|pages=17–24}}</ref> Her dignified portrayals of "mulatto" individuals as well as her own struggles with her multiracial identity continue to call for the interpretation and assessment of her work.

== Early life == left|thumb|May Howard Jackson, ''Portrait Bust of an African'', 1899. Kinsey African American Art & History Collection,

===Education=== May Howard was born to a middle class couple, Floarda Howard and Sallie (Durham) Howard, in Philadelphia on September 7, 1877.

She attended J. Liberty Tadd's Art School in Philadelphia, where she was trained with "new methods in education." Tadd, the school's founder, was an educational innovator who "emphasized the importance of visual arts training" to strengthen the brain, advocating an ambidextrous teaching model and six years of early-school art education. At Tadd's school May Howard studied "drawing, designing, free-hand drawing, working designs in monochrome, modeling, wood carving, and the use of tools".<ref name="Farrington-2014">{{Cite book|last=Farrington|first=Lisa E.|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Df0aBwAAQBAJ&dq=May+Howard+drawing,+designing,+free-hand+drawing,+working+designs+in+monochrome,+modeling,+wood+carving,+and+the+use+of+tools&pg=PT106|title=Women Artists of the Harlem Renaissance|date=2014-08-04|publisher=Univ. Press of Mississippi|isbn=978-1-62674-207-9|editor-last=Kirschze|editor-first=Amy Helene|location=Jackson|language=en|chapter=May Howard Jackson, Beulah Ecton Woodard, and Selma Burke}}</ref>

She continued her art training, with the support of a full scholarship, at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1895), as the first African American woman to attend PAFA,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.culturetype.com/2018/07/21/pafa-acquires-landscape-painting-by-may-howard-jackson-first-african-american-woman-to-attend-the-philadelphia-art-school/|title=PAFA Acquires Landscape Painting by May Howard Jackson, First African American Woman to Attend the Philadelphia Art School|date=22 July 2018|language=en-US|access-date=2019-03-31}}</ref> studying under various known artists including the renowned American Impressionist William Merritt Chase, Paris-trained academic sculptor Charles Grafly, and John J. Boyle (who had been a student of former PAFA faculty member Thomas Eakins).<ref name="Farrington-2014" /> Her surviving work from this period expresses the Beaux-Arts aesthetic that emphasized naturalism and dynamic treatment of surface and form.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Tolles|first=Thayer|date=October 2004|title=From Model to Monument: American Public Sculpture, 1865–1915|url=https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/modl/hd_modl.htm|access-date=2022-02-15|website=www.metmuseum.org}}</ref>

Meta Warrick Fuller, Jackson's contemporary at Tadd's and PAFA<ref name="Farrington-2014" /> (like Howard, b. 1877), offered Jackson the opportunity to accompany her and study abroad in France during this time (Fuller herself had enrolled in classes at the École des Beaux Arts). Jackson declined. She would later declare she thought it unnecessary to travel to Europe to further her art.<ref name="Farrington-2005">{{Cite book|last=Farrington|first=Lisa|title=Creating their own image : the history of African-American women artists|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2005|isbn=978-0-19-976760-1|location=Oxford|pages=77|oclc=712600445}}</ref>

After four years of study at PAFA, Howard met and "married well" a mathematics teacher and future high school principal, William Sherman Jackson.<ref>{{Cite book|last1=Bontemps|first1=Arna Alexander|title=The Harlem Renaissance, 1920-1940: Analysis and Assessment, 1980-1994|last2=Fonvielle-Bontemps|first2=Jacqueline|publisher=Garland Publishing|year=1996|isbn=978-0-8153-2218-4|location=New York|pages=Reprint, Original publication cited above (Bontemps. "African American Women Artists: An Historical Perspective". Sage: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women. IV, no. 1)|language=en|chapter=African American Women Artists: An Historical Perspective|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UpvXRkS-HmMC&dq=May+Howard+Jackson&pg=PA445}}</ref>

=== Washington, D.C. and the M Street High School === By 1902, May and William were living in Washington D.C., where William was teaching at the M Street High School, the first public high school for African Americans in the United States, and, at that time, the premier preparatory academy in the nation for students of color.<ref name="Stewart-2013">{{Cite book|last1=Stewart|first1=Alison|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vDOpBVMqPZcC&q=lison+Stewart,+the+author+of+First+Class:+The+Legacy+of+Dunbar,+America's+First+Black+Public+High+School,|title=First Class: The Legacy of Dunbar, America's First Black Public High School|last2=Harris-Perry|first2=Melissa|date=2013-08-01|publisher=Chicago Review Press|isbn=978-1-61374-012-5|pages=3, 54|language=en}}</ref> The faculty at M Street High School were "arguably superior to the white public schools, whose teachers typically were graduates of normal schools and teacher colleges." Many M Street teachers (William included) were the pioneering alumni of American's top academic institutions, unable, post graduation, to find employment at college institutions.

Because of these circumstances, in the first decade of the new century, the M Street High School found itself center stage for the nation's debate about the future of Black education. On the one side, Booker T. Washington, former child slave, urged Black Americans to recognize that "the masses of us are to live by the productions of our hands... No race can prosper until it learns that there is as much dignity in the tilling of a field as in the writing of a poem," and worked for access to the vocational training that could elevate and secure colored peoples' place in the American economy. On the other side was Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, the Massachusetts born, Harvard educated leader of the New Negro Movement and a central figure in the 1908 formation of the NAACP. Du Bois's recently published book of essays, ''The Souls of Black Folk'' (1903) had catalyzed the thinking of many African Americans, countering what Du Bois saw as Mr. Washington's "cult of submission"<ref>{{Cite book|last=Du Bois|first=William Edward Burghardt|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZdV1AAAAMAAJ&q=Booker+T.+Washington|title=The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches|date=1903|publisher=A. C. McClurg & Company|pages=43, 53–54|isbn=9780527253301 |language=en}}</ref> with the contention that Black Americans must enjoy the "right to vote," "civic equality," and the education of their youth "according to ability."

For the M Street School, in competition with the nearby colored vocational school for the D.C. school department's support and resources, and straining to build the nation's first college preparatory program for colored students, Du Bois's final point here would prove a particularly contentious rallying call. Washington, approved to speak at the 1904 M Street Graduation,<ref name="Stewart-2013" /> recommended that Blacks focus on gaining "common school and industrial training," first and foremost. Principal Anna J. Cooper countered this by inviting Du Bois to deliver a speech at the M Street School, in the winter of 1903, opposing vocational education as an acceptable standard for Black Americans. The DC director of schools accused Dr. Cooper of insubordination and disloyalty.<ref name="Robinson-1984">{{Cite journal|last=Robinson|first=Henry S.|date=1984|title=The M Street High School, 1891-1916|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40067848|journal=Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C.|volume=51|pages=123, 124|issn=0897-9049|jstor=40067848}}</ref>

Cooper's tenure as Principal survived the accusations, but in 1906, she ceded her position to Jackson's husband William. May came on as faculty to teach Latin. William would step back from his role as Principal in 1909, but the couple's central role in maintaining the M Street High School's reputation for academic excellence through a difficult period left them with an invaluable social credential in Washington's Black community and beyond.<ref name="Robinson-1984" />

== Career == [[File:May Howard Jackson working on a bust of Dr. Du Bois.jpg|thumb|Jackson working on a bust of W. E. B. Du Bois]] After Jackson's move to Washington, "she had expected to continue her studies at the art school connected with the Corcoran Art Gallery but was refused admission because of her color," a rejection that, for a time, discouraged her from pursuing public work in her field. She would later maintain that "It was chiefly through Dr. Du Bois's influence and urging that she again took up her work with the determination to make the most of her gifts for the encouragement it would be to her people."<ref name="La Follette-1912">{{Cite book|last1=La Follette|first1=Belle Case|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=b3ZNAAAAYAAJ&q=May+Howard|title=Home and Education: Women of the Hour|last2=Hunt|first2=Caroline L.|date=June 1912|work=La Follette's Weekly Magazine|publisher=Robert M. La Follette Company|volume=IV, No. 25|location=Madison, Wisconsin|pages=10|language=en}}</ref>

Du Bois not only personally encouraged her, but used her images to illustrate ''The Crisis'', his newly established journal and, from 1910, the official magazine of the NAACP.

With this support, Jackson became "the first to break away from academic cosmopolitanism to frank and deliberate racialism" in her artwork.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Locke|first=Alain|url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1j6675s|title=The New Negro: Readings on Race, Representation, and African American Culture, 1892-1938|date=2021-06-08|publisher=Princeton University Press|isbn=978-1-4008-2787-9|editor-last=Gates|editor-first=Henry Louis|pages=543|chapter=The American Negro as Artist (1931)|doi=10.2307/j.ctv1j6675s.112|jstor=j.ctv1j6675s|s2cid=236278802|editor-last2=Jarrett|editor-first2=Gene Andrew}}</ref> This determination is evident from her best known surviving pieces: the dignified portrait busts she created of the period's black leaders "decent portraits of decent men", and her intimate family groupings of mothers—mixed race themselves—caressing children—their own children—of mixed racial heritage. For the next two decades, these works would be the headliners of her exhibited work.

Jackson arranged for Dr. Du Bois to sit for her in 1907. Although the in-person sessions were discontinued before her portrait bust was finished, Du Bois arranged for photographs to be sent from New York so she could bring the piece to successful completion.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Letter from W. E. B. Du Bois to May Howard Jackson, May 2, 1907|url=http://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b003-i101|access-date=2022-01-14|website=credo.library.umass.edu|language=en}}</ref> Last, and perhaps most helpfully, Du Bois published news of her exhibitions and work in the pages of The Crisis, through to 1931 and the artist's early death.

=== Public exhibitions === ==== Washington gallery scene ==== In 1912, her portrait bust of Du Bois, among other works, was exhibited at the Veerhoff Gallery in Washington.<ref>{{Cite news |title=Franklin's paper the statesman., August 17, 1912, Page 4 |url=https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn91052311/1912-08-17/ed-1/seq-4/#date1=1890&sort=date&rows=20&words=Howard+Jackson+May&searchType=basic&sequence=0&index=18&state=&date2=1963&proxtext=%28may+howard+jackson%29&y=12&x=16&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1}}</ref> She received a positive review from ''The Washington Star'' commending the work's structure: "the expression is vital and good, the turn of surface, the intimation of mobility are well rendered."<ref>{{Cite book|last=|first=|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HVoEAAAAMBAJ&dq=may+howard+jackson&pg=PA169|title=The Crisis|date=August 1912|publisher=The Crisis Publishing Company, Inc.|volume=!V, No. 4|pages=169|language=en|chapter=Along the Color Line}}</ref> The ''Star'', reviewing her bust of ''Assistant Attorney General WIlliam H. Lewis,'' later that same fall, took the compliment further, "A portrait to deserve the name must be more than a likeness; it must interpret character; it must have personality. Of this bust as much can truly be said."<ref name="Evening Star-1912">{{Cite news |date=23 Nov 1912 |title=News and Notes of Art and Artists |pages=Page 9 |work=Evening Star |url=https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1912-11-23/ed-1/seq-21/#date1=1890&sort=date&rows=20&words=Howard+Jackson+May&searchType=basic&sequence=0&index=19&state=&date2=1963&proxtext=%28may+howard+jackson%29&y=12&x=16&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1}}</ref>

Exhibiting a broader collection of sculptures at the Veerhoff in 1916, her ''Star'' review was again effusive: Jackson's "work has always shown promise, but these pieces now on exhibit indicate exceptional gift, for they are not merely well modeled, but individual and significant".<ref name="Farrington-2005" />

As a woman defined by the color of her skin, finding public venues to display her work was a constant challenge. "It is not at all customary for Washington art stores to exhibit the works of colored artists," a contemporary reviewer observed, "particularly if the subjects are too colored, and the fact that Mrs. Jackson's work has been displayed, is evidence of her talent."<ref name="La Follette-1912" />

In 1917, Jackson exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, from whose art school, she had been rejected, on a racial basis, on her arrival in DC fifteen years before. The event was written up in a brief newspaper piece ("First Recognition for the Race") that ran in papers across the United States as widespread as Omaha<ref>{{Cite news |last= |first= |date=1917-03-17 |title=MRS. JACKSON, SCULPTRESS: Work of a Colored Woman Exhibited at Corcoran Art Gallery, Washington. First Recognition for the Race |pages= |work=The Monitor |agency=National Endowment for the Humanities |publication-place=Omaha, Nebraska |url=https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/00225879/1917-03-17/ed-1/seq-1/ |access-date=2022-04-08 |issn=2768-5535}}</ref> and Salt Lake City.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Humanities |date=1917-03-24 |title=MRS. JACKSON, SCULPTRESS: Work of a Colored Woman Exhibited at Corcoran Art Gallery, Washington. First Recognition for the Race |work=The Broad Ax |agency=National Endowment for the Humanities |publication-place=Salt Lake City, Utah |url=https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84024055/1917-03-24/ed-1/seq-1/ |access-date=2022-04-09 |issn=2163-7202}}</ref> "What is said to be the first recognition of colored talent by that institution is the exhibition in Corcoran Art Gallery, at Washington, D.C. of a child's head modeled by Mrs. May Howard Jackson."<ref>{{cite news |date=29 March 1917 |title=The Alliance Herald |edition=STOCKMEN'S |pages=5 |work=ed |access-date=8 April 2022|url=https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/2010270501/1917-03-29/ed-1/seq-5/#date1=1890&sort=date&rows=20&words=Howard+Jackson+May&searchType=basic&sequence=0&index=7&state=&date2=1963&proxtext=%28may+howard+jackson%29&y=12&x=16&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=2}}</ref>

And then—the National Academy of Design, New York (1919)<ref name="The American Magazine of Art-1919">{{Cite journal|date=1919|title=Notes|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23925595|journal=The American Magazine of Art|volume=10|issue=9|pages=352|jstor=23925595|issn=2151-254X}}</ref>)

==== Segregated exhibitions ==== thumb|New Dunbar High School Building, 1917. "The Greatest Negro High School in the World"|250x250px Artists like Jackson responded to the lack of gallery support by pressing alternative public spaces into service, such as the "War Service and Recreation Center" of the Washington Y.M.C.A., where, in May 1919, a solo "exhibition of 25 sculptures of May Howard Johnson" was held.<ref name="American Art News-1919">{{Cite journal|date=1919|title=Sculptures by Mrs. Jackson|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25589473|journal=American Art News|volume=17|issue=31|pages=1–10|jstor=25589473|issn=1944-0227}}</ref>

The M Street High School moved to new buildings and was renamed Dunbar School in 1916 for the noted African-American intellectual and poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar (d. 1906) (Jackson would complete a portrait in his honor, a casting of which, in bronze, would become the property of the school). The school's expansion brought new ambitions. Dunbar formed the Tanner Art League in 1919, and an attempt was made to institute an annual show for colored artists. The first show displayed the work of artists from fifteen states and included pieces from Laura Wheeler, Julian Abele, Meta Warrick Fuller, and recent work from Jackson ("a bust and statuette").<ref name="The American Magazine of Art-1919" /> The Dunbar's 1922 show included works by William Edouard Scott and William McKnight Farrow, as well as the inaugural D.C. showing of Jackson's sculpture, ''The Brotherhood'', which had "had a prominent place in a recent exhibition of the Society of Independent Sculptors at the Waldorf Astoria," along with others of her work.<ref>{{Cite news|last=|first=|date=1922-04-30|title=Art Objects Exhibit at Dunbar High School|page=5|work=The Evening star|publisher=|location=Washington, D.C.|url=https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1922-04-30/ed-1/seq-5/|access-date=2022-01-16|issn=2331-9968}}</ref>

=== Teaching === In Washington, Jackson maintained a sculpture studio in her home. Aside from portrait sculpting, she continued to teach, with two years at Howard University as an art instructor for Howard's newly implemented School of art (1922–1924). At the university she taught and influenced James Porter, who went on to write one of the first comprehensive histories of African-American art.<ref name="Farrington-2005" /> As an art historian, though, Porter was not impressed by her work and said that there was "no great originality in any of the pieces she attempted."<ref>{{Cite book|title=Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance|year=2012|isbn=978-1-135-45537-8|pages=169}}</ref>

=== Recognition === With legal racial segregation in force across the South since the turn of the century, topics such as racial mixing were taboo in general. Laws against miscegenation had been proposed in both federal and state legislatures as far North as Massachusetts after Democrat Woodrow Wilson was elected as president in 1912.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Miletsky|first=Zebulon|date=2016|title=The Dilemma of Interracial Marriage|url=https://www.westfield.ma.edu/historical-journal/|journal=Historical Journal of Massachusetts|volume=44| issue = 1, Winter 2016|pages=138}}</ref>

Her work was recognized with a Harmon Foundation Award in 1928. Five works were exhibited in the subsequent Harmon show, two featuring as illustration in the exhibition catalogue ("Bust of Dean Kelly Miller" and "Head of a Negro Child"). Leslie King-Hammond, an art historian, later praised Jackson's "efforts to address...without compromise and without sentimentality, the issues of race and class, especially as they affected mulattos".<ref name="Farrington-2005" />

Despite this recognition, Jackson was dissatisfied with her progress. 1929 she wrote, "I felt no satisfaction! Only deep sense of injustice, something that has followed me and my efforts all my life."<ref>{{Cite book|last=Farrington|first=Lisa E.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=I7TS6bFWCbUC|title=Creating Their Own Image: The History of African-American Women Artists|date=2005|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-516721-4|pages=77|language=en}}</ref>

== Race == thumb|359x359px|May Howard Jackson, ''<nowiki>Portrait of Mother and Child | Mulatto Mother and her Child</nowiki>'' (~1916)<ref name="Mother and child">{{cite news|date=October 1916|title=A story in clay|pages=278–179|work=The Crisis}}</ref> Jackson could "pass" for Caucasian, but the racial politics of the early 20th century created an environment that pushed her in a different direction. She cooperated with pioneering African American anthropologist Caroline Bond Day, providing details (including photos) regarding the Howard family's racial background that would later be published in Day's 1932 Harvard University Master's thesis, ""A Study of Some Negro-White Families in the United States"<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Day|first=Caroline Bond|title=(1932). A Study of Some Negro-White Families in the United States. .|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KqclVTt4toMC&q=Varia+Africana+May+Howard+Jackson|journal=Varia Africana|year=1932|publisher=African Department of the Peabody Museum of Harvard University|volume=V|pages=42–3}}</ref> (the year following Jackson's death)

Her personal experiences of racism were ongoing through her life and sour: whether her initial rejection from Corcoran Gallery or her experience with the National Academy of Design. After showings in 1916 and 1918, the academy sent a representative to Jackson's home to ask if she was of "Negro blood"—and, on receiving an affirmative response, subsequently excluded her work from future exhibits.<ref name="Farrington-2005" />

Jackson expressed a fascination with the wide variety of phenotypes among African Americans. This was expressed in "Shell-Baby in Bronze" (1914), "Head of a Negro Child" (1916), and "Mulatto Mother and Child" (1929) - the last piece in particular also an address of her own racial identity and "near Whiteness". These three pieces define her most original surviving work. thumb|May Howard Jackson, ''Portrait of Paul Laurence Dunbar'', bronze (1918) Her style was provocative for its time because it explored the features of America's multiracial society. As a result of not traveling in Europe, Jackson was somewhat isolated from her peers and was able to create her own vision that infused her work with a unique style.<ref name="rubinstein" /> This style was ignored at first because it was so different from the popular style of the time. Though she had developed her own unique style, this style still adhered to academic tradition. Many galleries were not interested in her subject matter, as she dedicated most of her work to objective portraits of children, family members, and influential African Americans.<ref name="Farrington-2005" /> It was not until the inauguration of the Harmon Foundation Awards, in 1926, for "Distinguished Negro Contributions," that there was even a National prize for Black Artists.

Jackson's racial identity was questioned after her death. While many may have questioned her racial identity it definitely became clear as she was listed as one of the colored women in the March 13, 1913 woman's suffrage parade.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Dubois |first=William Edward Burghardt |title=Suffrage Paraders. |year=1913}}</ref>

== Final years ==

The Harmon Foundation exhibits, intended to showcase the works of Black female artists in America, virtually coincided with events of the Great Depression. The period's dream of the "New Negro Woman," lost its focus, and Jackson's death, in 1931, brought a period of obscurity during which crucial early cataloguing of her work was neglected. Her "sensitive and humanistic approach to the portrayal of Black Folk types," was in some ways anathema to certain "Black art critics and historians," uncomfortable with its portrayal of racial ambiguity in a period when the "near-white" were granted privilege unavailable to the darker-skinned.<ref name="Bontemps" />

== Legacy == Jackson and her husband took in William's nephew Sargent Claude Johnson at age fifteen, following his parents' deaths (father, 1897, mother 1902). Johnson was one of six siblings, several of whom chose to live as white in their adulthood.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Sargent Johnson |publisher= Smithsonian American Art Museum|url=https://americanart.si.edu/artist/sargent-johnson-2484|access-date=2022-01-15|website=americanart.si.edu|language=en-US}}</ref> Johnson, who went on to become a well-known sculptor of the Harlem Renaissance himself, was first exposed to sculpture through his aunt's work and studio.{{citation needed|date=May 2020}}

Jackson died in the year 1931, and is buried at the Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York City.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Women's History |publisher= Woodlawn Cemetery • Crematory • Conservancy|url=https://www.woodlawn.org/conservancy/notable-residents/womens-history/|access-date=2022-01-16|website=www.woodlawn.org}}</ref> Du Bois memorialized her death in his closing notes to the October 1931 issue of ''The Crisis'': "With her sensitive soul, she needed encouragement and contacts and delicate appreciation. Instead of this, she ran into the shadows of the Color Line... In the case of May Howard Jackson the contradictions and idiotic ramifications of the Color Line tore her soul asunder."<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Du Bois|first=W. E. B.|date=October 1931|title=Postscript: May Howard Jackson|journal=The Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races.|location=New York|publisher=The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People|volume=20th Annual Children's Number|pages=351}}</ref>

Francis T. Moseley<ref>{{Cite news |last=Moseley |first=Francis T. |date=21 Jul 1940 |title=Negro Art--1851 to the Present |pages=16 |work=Sunday Chicago Bee. ) 1925-19??, July 21, 1940, SECTION TWO, Image 16 |agency=National Endowment for the Humanities |publication-place=Chicago, Ill. |url=https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82015409/1940-07-21/ed-1/seq-16/ |access-date=2022-04-09 |issn=2769-4682}}</ref> was among the first to recognize the complex "daringly ventured to express in her work something of the social situation."

Jackson's contributions to American art were not widely appreciated until after her death, and a conclusive assessment of her work among "the Pantheon of great American Sculptors" remains to be determined. The African American Registry places her in the "annals of great American sculptors."<ref>{{Cite web|title=A great sculptor ahead of her time, May Jackson|url=https://aaregistry.org/story/a-great-sculptor-ahead-of-her-time-may-jackson/|access-date=2020-05-03|website=African American Registry|language=en}}</ref>

She was an artist who pushed the boundaries of her time, unique in the body of her work and vision. Her "completely American" training, initially derided as a lost opportunity to study with European masters, is now seen as an element vital to her status as a woman, if not a sculptor, of "intense and lucid temperament."<ref name="Porter-1942">{{Cite journal|last=Porter|first=James A.|date=1942|title=Four Problems in the History of Negro Art|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2715087|journal=The Journal of Negro History|volume=27|issue=1|pages=33–34|doi=10.2307/2715087|jstor=2715087|s2cid=146888246|issn=0022-2992|url-access=subscription}}</ref>

== Exhibitions ==

=== Public exhibits === * The Veerhoff Gallery, Washington D.C. (1912,<ref name="rubinstein">{{Cite book|last=Rubinstein|first=Charlotte Streifer|url=https://archive.org/details/americanwomenscu0000rubi|title=American Women Sculptors: A History of Women Working in Three Dimensions|date=1990|publisher=G.K. Hall|isbn=978-0-8161-8732-4|location=Boston, MA|pages=204–5}}</ref> 1916<ref>{{Cite book|last=|first=|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KloEAAAAMBAJ&dq=May+Howard+Jackson&pg=PA114|title=The Crisis|publisher=The Crisis Publishing Company, Inc.|year=1916|location=New York|pages=114–5|language=en|chapter=Along the Color Line: Music and Art}}</ref>) * The New York Emancipation Exhibition (1913) * The Corcoran Art Gallery (1915)<ref>{{Cite book|last=Hammond|first=Lily Hardy|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ajozAAAAMAAJ|title=In the Vanguard of a Race|publisher=Council of Women for Home Missions and Missionary Education Movement of the United States and Canada|year=1922|location=New York|pages=x|language=en}}</ref> * The National Academy of Design (1916) * ''May Howard Jackson: 25 Sculptures''. War Service and Recreation Center, Y.M.C.A., Washington, D.C. (May 1919) * Exhibit of Fine Arts by American Negro Artists, The Harmon Foundation, International House, New York (1929)<ref name="International House-1929">{{Cite book|title=Exhibit of Fine Arts by American Negro Artists|work=Exhibition Catalogue, the Harmon Foundation & The Commission on the Church and Race Relations, Federal Council of Churches|publisher=International House|year=1929|location=New York|pages=10}}</ref> * ''An Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture by American Negro Artists at the National Gallery of Art'' (1929)<ref name="Harmon Foundation-1929">{{Cite book|title=Catalogue of an Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture by American Negro Artists at the National Gallery of Art|publisher=Harmon Foundation|year=1929|location=Smithsonian Institution Archives Record Unit 311, National Collection of Fine Arts, SIA-SIA2016-011412.}}</ref>

=== Posthumous group === * 3 Generations of African American Women Sculptors: A Study in Paradox (1996) Afro-American Historical and Cultural Museum, Philadelphia<ref>{{Cite book|last=King-Hammond|first=Leslie|title=3 generations of African American women sculptors: a study in paradox (Exhibition Catalogue)|collaboration=|publisher=Afro-American Historical and Cultural Museum (Philadelphia, PA), in collaboration with the Equitable Gallery (New York, N.Y.), the Museum of African-American Life and Culture (Dallas, Tex.), and the California Afro-American Museum (Los Angeles, CA)|year=1996|isbn=978-0-9652110-0-0|location=Philadelphia|language=English|oclc=35706071}}</ref>

== Catalogued work == thumb|302x302px|May Howard Jackson, ''Bust of Kelly Miller, Dean, Howard University, College of Arts & Sciences'', bronze (~1912) * ''Slave boy'' / ''Portrait Bust of an African'' (1899) bronze, Kinsey Family Collection<ref>{{Cite web|last=Jackson|first=May Howard|date=1899|title=Portrait Bust of an African|url=https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/portrait-bust-of-an-african-may-howard-jackson/xAELFkirtfVbfw|access-date=2022-01-16|website=The Kinsey African American Art & History Collection|language=en}}</ref> * ''Portrait Bust of'' ''Paul Lawrence Dunbar'' (Dunbar High School, Washington D.C.).<ref>{{Cite web| title=May Howard Jackson statue | url=https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/e3/88/13/e3881301f8d9b25b009405ac8215d67b.jpg | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151208161409/https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/e3/88/13/e3881301f8d9b25b009405ac8215d67b.jpg | archive-date=2015-12-08}}</ref> * ''Massachusetts Senator George Frisbie Hoar'' (1906)<ref>{{Cite news |date=22 Jul 1906 |title=Art & Artists |pages=9 |work=The Washington Times |department=Metropolitan Section |url=https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026749/1906-07-22/ed-1/seq-21/#date1=1890&sort=date&rows=20&words=Howard+Jackson+May&searchType=basic&sequence=0&index=11&state=&date2=1963&proxtext=%28may+howard+jackson%29&y=12&x=16&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1}}</ref> * ''Portrait Bust of W. E. B. Du Bois'' (1912) * ''Assistant Attorney General WIlliam H. Lewis'' (1912)<ref name="Evening Star-1912" /> * ''Morris Heights, New York City'' (1912) oil on linen, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts<ref>{{Cite web|last=Jackson|first=May Howard|date=1912|others=Oil on linen, 12 1/4 x 16 in. (31.115 x 40.64 cm.)|title="Morris Heights, N.Y. City"|url=https://www.pafa.org/museum/collection/item/morris-heights-ny-city|access-date=2022-01-16|website=PAFA - Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts|language=en-US}}</ref> * ''Portrait Bust of Dean Kelly Miller'' (1914) bronze, Howard University)<ref>{{cite web|title=Artists You May or May Not Know :)|url=https://www.pinterest.com/pin/231583605813021417/|access-date=30 May 2017|website=Pinterest}}</ref> * ''Shell-baby'', bronze (1915, exhibited 1929)<ref name="rubinstein" /><ref>{{Cite news |date=23 January 1915 |title=News and Notes of Art and Artists |pages=13 |work=Evening Star |url=https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1915-01-23/ed-1/seq-13/#date1=1890&sort=date&rows=20&words=Howard+Jackson+May&searchType=basic&sequence=0&index=0&state=&date2=1963&proxtext=%28may+howard+jackson%29&y=12&x=16&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=2}}</ref> * ''Head of a Negro Child'' (1916). * ''William H. Lewis'' (bef 1919) * ''William Stanley Braitewait'' (bef 1919)<ref name="American Art News-1919" /> * ''Portrait Bust of Reverend Francis J. Grimke'' (1922)<ref>{{Cite book|last=|first=|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MMa0AAAAMAAJ&dq=May+Howard+Jackson+Grimke&pg=PA587|title=The Works of Francis J. Grimke|date=1942|publisher=Associated publishers, Incorporated|editor-last=Woodson|editor-first=Carter G.|volume=IV: Letters|location=Washington, D.C.|pages=346|language=en}}</ref> * ''Suffer Little Children to Come Unto Me'' (n.d.)<ref name="Porter-1942" /> * ''Bust of a Young Woman'' (n.d., plaster, held by Howard University)<ref>{{Cite web| url=http://www.askart.com/photos/SWN20130214_75847/4.jpg | title=Statuette of a child | access-date=2015-12-04 | archive-date=2015-09-06 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150906071621/http://www.askart.com/photos/SWN20130214_75847/4.jpg | url-status=dead}}</ref> * ''Mulatto Mother and her Child'' / ''Mother and Child'', plaster ((exhibited 1918) * ''William Tecumsah Sherman Jackson'' (exhibited 1929)<ref name="International House-1929" /> * Negro Dancing Girl (exhibited 1929)<ref name="Harmon Foundation-1929" /> * Resurrection, exhibited 1929)<ref name="Harmon Foundation-1929" />

== Awards == * Harmon Foundation Award in the Fine Arts (1928) Bronze Medal

== See also == {{Portal|Biography}} * African American firsts

== References == {{Reflist}}

==Further reading== *{{cite book|last1=Farrington|first1=Lisa E.|title=Creating their own image: history of African American Women Artists|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=Oxford|year=2005|isbn=978-0-19-976760-1|pages=71–75|oclc=712600445|edition=}} *{{cite book|last1=Kirschke|first1=Amy Helene|title=Women Artists of the Harlem Renaissance|date=2014|publisher=University Press of Mississippi|location=Jackson|isbn=978-1-62846-033-9|oclc=861671304|edition=}} *{{cite book|last1=Heller|first1=Jules|title=North American Women Artists of the Twentieth Century|date=1995|publisher=Garland Publishing, Inc.|isbn=978-0-8240-6049-7|pages=[https://archive.org/details/northamericanwom00hellrich/page/280 280]|url=https://archive.org/details/northamericanwom00hellrich/page/280}}

== External links== {{Commons}} *{{Cite web|title=May Howard Jackson, Sculptor Born|work=African American Registry|url=https://aaregistry.org/story/a-great-sculptor-ahead-of-her-time-may-jackson/}} * {{cite web|website=Amherst College|last=Albright|first=Evan J.|date=2007|title=A Slice of History--the 1892 African American Graduates of Amherst College|url=https://www.amherst.edu/amherst-story/magazine/issues/2007_winter/blazing/slice}} Includes a short biographical piece on William Sherman Jackson, husband of May Howard Jackson.

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Jackson, May Howard}} Category:1877 births Category:1931 deaths Category:African-American sculptors Category:Artists from Philadelphia Category:History of racism in the United States Category:20th-century American sculptors Category:Sculptors from Pennsylvania Category:20th-century African-American artists Category:Burials at Woodlawn Cemetery (Bronx, New York) Category:20th-century American women sculptors Category:African-American women sculptors Category:20th-century African-American women artists