New US stamp pays tribute to Edmonia Lewis, celebrated Black and Ojibwe sculptor of the 19th century

“I was practically driven to Rome in order to obtain the opportunities for art culture, and to find a social atmosphere where I was not constantly reminded of my colour,” Lewis said in an 1878 interview with the New York Times cited in art historian Kristin Pai Buick’s book Child of the Fire: Edmonia Lewis and the Problem of Art History’s Black and Indian Subject (2010). “The land of liberty had no room for a coloured sculptor.”