Florence Riefle Bahr

Instead of using a camera, more than 300 pen and ink sketchbooks catalog insights into her life, including her civil and human rights activism of the 1960s and 1970s.

Her painting Homage to Martin Luther King hangs in the (NAACP) National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's headquarters.

[9] During World War II, Leonard joined the Navy March 1, 1943, as a naval officer and was released on December 23, 1945.

[11] Florence Bahr died in a house fire, which resulting water damage destroyed a few, but not all, of her sketches.

The next year she enrolled in the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and took an aggressive course schedule to earn a Costume Design diploma in 1930.

[1] Bahr created sketches, oil and watercolor paintings, lithographs, sculptures, book illustrations, collages and constructions with found objects.

[6][11] Working in multiple media, she often incorporated natural elements - like pebbles, a shell, a feather or other found objects.

[8] As noted before, in the WPA program she painted a mural for the Harriet Lane Home for Children at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Her portrait of an African-American woman, Lily, was shown at the 1936 New York exhibition of the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors.

[13] She said she created Homage to Martin Luther King when, "I heard the news on the radio, and I felt like the world was coming to an end.

In her book Women of Achievement in Maryland History, author Carolyn Stegman wrote: Florence Bahr captured some striking images in her day, and her work remains important.

She had a curious eye, a compassionate heart, a dogged determination, and an undying passion for portraying life in twentieth-century America.

Artist, feminist, environmentalist, consummate social activist – Florence Bahr gave her all to make the world a better place.