Maquette of Lift Every Voice and Sing (The Harp)

Narrator: Lift Every Voice and Sing (The Harp). Maquette of sculpture by Augusta Savage. 1939. Bonded bronze. About 11 inches high by 3 inches wide by 7 inches deep.

This small model in bronze is in the shape of a harp. Instead of strings, the harp has the standing figures of twelve Black singers. Their bodies are shown as simplified sweeping forms as if in long robes, hands behind their backs. The heads show mouths open as if in song. The figures stand closely one behind the other. Some have their faces turned slightly outward as they sing.

The sounding board of the harp—that’s the curved structure where the strings attach at the base—is in the shape of a forearm and hand, holding the standing figures. Given the upward curve of the sounding board, the upper figures become increasingly small as they approach the fingertips of the cupped hand.

At the front of the harp, on its oval base, is a kneeling figure of a Black boy. He is in front of the foremost, and tallest, of the singers and facing in the same direction as them. He wears loose trousers and is bare from the waist up. He stoops to hold in front of his knees a rectangular music book, or plaque, with the words “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”

Interpretive commentary follows.

Music: “Lift Every Voice and Sing” by James Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson.

Anna Deavere Smith: Imagine this sculpture towering over you, its robed figures standing 16 feet tall. That’s what visitors to the 1939 World’s Fair saw. Artist Augusta Savage created the work to celebrate African American contributions to music. She crafted the massive sculpture from painted plaster because she could not afford bronze.

Savage called her work Lift Every Voice and Sing. Schomburg Curator of Art and Artifacts, Tammi Lawson:

Tammi Lawson: “Lift Every Voice and Sing” is the title of what was then called the “Negro National Anthem.”

And it goes, ”Lift every voice and sing ’til earth and heaven ring, ring with the harmony of liberty.” And it goes on. So it was like a clarion call.

Anna Deavere Smith: Sadly, the original sculpture was destroyed when the Fair ended, along with most of the other temporary structures. Only rare bronze souvenirs like this remain.

But Savage was more interested in her educational legacy than in physical monuments. In the 1930s, she established an art school in Harlem, at the 135th Street branch library—now the home of the Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Tammi Lawson: Jacob Lawrence is her student. Norman Lewis, a famous abstract artist, is her student.  Charles Alston is one of the teachers. Selma Burke. So it‘s just so many different artists who are prominent now who came through her school.

Anna Deavere Smith: For Savage, that’s what really mattered.

Tammi Lawson: She said: I have created nothing really beautiful, really lasting. But if I can inspire one of these youngsters to develop the talent I know that they possess, then my monument will be their work.