Argument For a Memorial to Elma Lewis
One example of the significance of Lewis’s work centers upon her work with ballet. Elma Lewis personally taught ballet to her Black students. In “’As Long as They Have Talent’: Organizational Barriers to Black Ballet,” author Lauren Erin Brown discusses the myths that surround the lack of Black representation in ballet and the ways in which postwar funding structures operated to cement the lack of racial integration in the art form. Elma Lewis worked against such theories about a lack of Black interest or opportunities in ballet and directly created venues through which Black students could become accomplished ballet dancers. Further, her institutions taught other forms of dance, some tied directly to the students’ African heritage, thus promoting black nationalism and cultural appreciation.Her lifelong commitment to community- and institution building linked earlier, foundational, social uplift efforts of the 1930s and 1940s to broader, sustained struggles for educational equality, economic justice and community control during the 1960s and 1970s. The cultural programs she developed and the subsequent cultural institutions she founded were integral to the collective articulation of black community consciousness that developed in postwar Boston, especially the call by black residents in the 1960s-70s, for community control and educational equity.[1]
Lewis’s work was also significant for the ways in which it operated to reduce potential risk factors for her students and community. “The Impact of Culture-Based Protective Factors on Reducing Rates of Violence among African American Adolescent and Young Adult Males” is a study focusing on delinquent and violent behavior among the high-risk population of adolescent and young adult Black males. The authors specifically identify “racial identity, spirituality, and communalism” as protective factors with a distinct impact upon violent behavior among young Black men.[2] Elma Lewis’s students included Black boys who would grow up to become part of this demographic. In real ways, by fostering cultural values that acted as protective factors, Lewis's efforts built a safer and healthier community, in turn generating better chances for the members of this at-risk population.
Lewis's pedagogy has been studied by Sonya White Hope in “Elma Lewis, Her School of Fine Arts, and Her Vision of Arts Education as Cultural Emancipation.” White Hope defines Lewis’s pedagogical philosophy as one of “arts education as cultural emancipation,” or AECE.[3] According to White Hope, Lewis prioritized “the perspectives of Africa-descended peoples when working with her Black students,” a focus which relied upon cultural values and behaviors.[4] Further, her AECE strategy used arts education to develop “self-knowledge, self-determination, and unity on the level of the individual and the collective.”[5] This analysis directly connects with the protective factors mentioned by Wallace et. al.
Additionally, it is well-known that the ideas of Marcus Garvey and his United Negro Improvement Association were influential in Elma Lewis’s upbringing, and later, her career. According to Mark Christian, Garvey’s principal beliefs included African unity, self-determination, and self-reliance.[6] Surely, these ideas and values about culture, rooted in Lewis's childhood and expressed in her work, were beneficial to her students and broader community.
Lewis’s work also meaningfully operated against the racial exclusion fostered by what is now recognized as the ‘symbolic economy’ of arts and culture. In Samuel Shaw and Daniel Monroe Sullivan’s “’White Night’: Gentrification, Racial Exclusion, and Perceptions and Participation in the Arts,” it is demonstrated that racial and educational divides can influence individuals’ attitudes about arts involvement and initiatives in neighborhoods undergoing gentrification.[7] Lewis was born in, and did a significant amount of her work in, Roxbury, a neighborhood that has historically faced the struggles of gentrification. Lewis’s ELSFA, NCAAA, NCAAAM, and Playhouse-in-the-Park programs all worked against the cultural capital held by the White middle-class, and also against systems of racial exclusion.
Elma Lewis was a determined fighter against all factors that worked against the community from which she came and the race of which she was a part. She provided direct, real, and valuable opportunities that produced tangible outcomes for those who were touched by her work. Lewis was instrumental in developing education and arts programs that improved the lives of students of all ages and provided wholesome outcomes for all Bostonians, especially Black Bostonians. She opened doors that were – and often, still are – usually closed to Black artists, and called for her students to appreciate their own culture and heritage. For these reasons and more, Elma Lewis has definitively proven that she deserves a memorial to her life and contributions.
[1] McClure, “Brokering Culture,” 55.
[2] Candice M. Wallace et al., “The Impact of Culture-Based Protective Factors on Reducing Rates of Violence among African American Adolescent and Young Adult Males,” Journal of Social Issues 74, no. 3 (2018): 643, doi: 10.1111/josi.12287.
[3] Sonya White Hope, “Elma Lewis, Her School of Fine Arts, and Her Vision of Arts Education as Cultural Emancipation,” Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, no. 219 (Winter 2019): 47, doi: 10.1080/01472526.2018.1518076.
[4] White Hope, “Elma Lewis,” 52.
[5] White Hope, “Elma Lewis,” 53.
[6] Mark Christian, “Introduction to the Special Issue: Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association: New Perspectives on Philosophy, Religion, Micro-Studies, Unity, and Practice,” Journal of Black Studies 39, no. 2 (November 2009): 165, https://www.jstor.org/stable/40282556.
[7] Samuel Shaw and Daniel Monroe Sullivan, “’White Night’: Gentrification, Racial Exclusion, and Perceptions and Participation in the Arts,” City & Community 10, no. 3 (September 2011), doi: 10.1111/j.1540-6040.2911.91373.x.
Image citation: Spencer Grant, Elma Lewis at City Hall ceremony honoring black artists, Boston, 1972, photograph, Digital Commonwealth, https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/2z10wq326.
[2] Candice M. Wallace et al., “The Impact of Culture-Based Protective Factors on Reducing Rates of Violence among African American Adolescent and Young Adult Males,” Journal of Social Issues 74, no. 3 (2018): 643, doi: 10.1111/josi.12287.
[3] Sonya White Hope, “Elma Lewis, Her School of Fine Arts, and Her Vision of Arts Education as Cultural Emancipation,” Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, no. 219 (Winter 2019): 47, doi: 10.1080/01472526.2018.1518076.
[4] White Hope, “Elma Lewis,” 52.
[5] White Hope, “Elma Lewis,” 53.
[6] Mark Christian, “Introduction to the Special Issue: Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association: New Perspectives on Philosophy, Religion, Micro-Studies, Unity, and Practice,” Journal of Black Studies 39, no. 2 (November 2009): 165, https://www.jstor.org/stable/40282556.
[7] Samuel Shaw and Daniel Monroe Sullivan, “’White Night’: Gentrification, Racial Exclusion, and Perceptions and Participation in the Arts,” City & Community 10, no. 3 (September 2011), doi: 10.1111/j.1540-6040.2911.91373.x.
Image citation: Spencer Grant, Elma Lewis at City Hall ceremony honoring black artists, Boston, 1972, photograph, Digital Commonwealth, https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/2z10wq326.