Born: 9 June 1877, United States
Died: 18 March 1968
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Meta Vaux Warrick
The following is republished with permission from the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail.
Dedicated at a community-wide celebration on June 20, 1999, these two powerful statues by African American women sculptors stand as a testament to the African American drive for freedom. Although Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller (1877-1968) completed Emancipation in 1913 on the fiftieth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, it was not cast in bronze until it was selected to be placed at Harriet Tubman Square. Instead of showing the paternalism of a white president freeing enslaved people, Fuller presented the freedman and freedwoman as active agents moving out of slavery into the world. Fuller was a community activist herself in addition to being a sculptor. She married Solomon Carter Fuller, America’s first African American psychiatrist in 1909.