Richmond Barthé (1901-1989) was a pioneer in American sculpture in the 1930s and 1940s in that he was one of the first African American artists to focus thematically on the lives of blacks, both in the United States and in Africa.

Trailblazing artist Richmond Barthé's sculpted works were seminal in that they focused on the lives of his fellow African Americans. He depicted African Americans at work in the fields of the South (Woman with Scythe, 1944), African Americans of distinction, and, in Mother and Son (1939), African Americans as victims of racial violence. He also sculpted images of African warriors and ceremonial participants.

Barthé was born on January 28, 1901, in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, to Richmond Barthé, Sr., and Marie Clementine Robateau. His father died before Barthé was a year old, and his mother's sewing supported the family. She later remarried, to William Franklin...