“This Gifted Sculptress of the Race”: The Intersectional Art of May Howard Jackson Available to Purchase

As a well-educated, middle-class African American woman, sculptor May Howard Jackson's (1877–1931) career was affected by racism and sexism at every turn. The social and class-based aspects of her larger artistic practice, which was formed in an era when a “New Negro” and the “Talented Tenth” politics of racial uplift were ascendant, are evident in her work, little of which survives. This essay examines Howard Jackson's place in a segment of a conservative Black art world that is today largely forgotten or ignored.