Lift Every Voice and Sing (sculpture)

She could not afford the fees at his American School of Sculpture and instead studied at Cooper Union, completing a four-year degree in three years due to her experience.

[2] One member of the selection committee, the sculptor Hermon A. MacNeil, disagreed with the withdrawal of the scholarship and offered Savage the opportunity to study with him instead.

One male African-American sculptor was also commissioned, William Grant Still, and at least four other women, including Elfriede Abbe, Malvina Hoffman, Brenda Putnam and Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney.

Savage took leave of absence from the Harlem Community Art Center to focus on the sculpture, but when she returned she found her job had been taken by another person, Gwendolyn Bennett.

The resulting sculpture was 16 ft (4.9 m) high, taking the form of a large harp, with the strings represented by twelve black singers of decreasing size standing in long robes, supported by a long arm and hand representing the arm of god as the sounding board of the instrument – perhaps alluding to the traditional Spiritual "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands".

Savage named the sculpture Lift Every Voice and Sing after the poem and hymn, but the fair's organizing committee renamed it The Harp.

There was no funding available to remove and store the plaster sculpture at the end of the fair, or to cast the large piece in bronze as Savage had with other smaller works.

In 2017, Aviva Kempner suggested in the New York Times that a full-size replica should be erected in front of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., and in 2021 it was announced that a copy of the statue will be installed in the new Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing Park to be created at 120 Lee Street, in Jacksonville, Florida, where James Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson were born, and about 40 mi (64 km) north of Savage's birthplace.