Mary Edmonia Lewis was an American sculptor who worked for most of her career in Rome, Italy. She was the first woman of African-American and Native American heritage to achieve international fame and recognition as a sculptor in the fine arts world. Her work is known for incorporating themes relating to black people and indigenous peoples of the Americas into Neoclassical-style sculpture. She began to gain prominence during the American Civil War; at the end of the 19th century, she remained the only black woman who had participated in and been recognized to any degree by the American artistic mainstream. In 2002, the scholar Molefi Kete Asante named Edmonia Lewis on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.
Edmonia Lewis's birth date has been listed as July 4, 1844. She was born in Greenbush, New York, which is now the city of Rensselaer. Her father was an Afro-Haitian, while her mother, Catherine Mike Lewis, was of Mississauga Ojibwe and African-American descent. Lewis's mother was known as an excellent weaver and craftswoman, while her father was a gentleman's servant. Her family background inspired Lewis in her later work.
By the time Lewis reached the age of nine, both of her parents had died. Her father died in 1847. Her two maternal aunts adopted her and her older half-brother Samuel. Samuel was born in 1835 to Lewis's father and his first wife in Haiti. The family came to the United States when Samuel was a young child. Samuel became a barber at age 12 when his father died.
The children remained with their aunts near Niagara Falls for about four years. Lewis and her aunts sold Ojibwe baskets and other souvenirs, such as moccasins and blouses, to tourists visiting Niagara Falls, Toronto, and Buffalo. During this time, Lewis went by her Native American name, Wildfire, while her brother was called Sunshine. In 1852, Samuel left for San Francisco, California, leaving Lewis in the care of a Captain S. R. Mills. Samuel provided for her board and education.
In 1856, Lewis enrolled at New-York Central College, McGrawville, a Baptist abolitionist school. At McGrawville, Lewis met many of the leading activists who would become mentors, patrons, and possible subjects for her work as her artistic career developed. During her summer term there in 1858, Lewis took classes in the Primary Department in preparation for college. Lewis was enrolled in primary courses in order to help advance reading and writings skills along with other subjects of academia that were not quite advanced enough for the Academic Department. In a later interview, Lewis said that she left the school after three years, having been "declared to be wild."
Until I was twelve years old I led this wandering life, fishing and swimming… and making moccasins. I was then sent to school for three years in [McGrawville], but was declared to be wild,—they could do nothing with me.
In 1859, when Edmonia Lewis was about 15 years old, her brother Samuel and abolitionists sent her to Oberlin College, one of the first U.S. higher-learning institutions to admit women and people of differing ethnicities. She changed her name to Mary Edmonia Lewis and began to study art. Lewis boarded with Reverend John Keep and his wife from 1859 until she was forced from the college in 1863. At Oberlin, with a population of one thousand, Lewis was one of only thirty non-white students, meaning that Lewis had been especially noticeable in such an environment. Reverend Keep was white, a member of the board of trustees, an avid abolitionist, and a spokesperson for coeducation. Despite Oberlin's status as the first higher-learning institution to accept black women in a co-educational space with white men, Lewis was subject to daily racism and discrimination. She, and all female students, were rarely given the opportunity to participate in the classroom or speak at public meetings. During the 1859-60 school year, Lewis enrolled in the Young Ladies' Preparatory Department, which was designed "to give Young Ladies facilities for the thorough mental discipline, and the special training which will qualify them for teaching and other duties of their sphere."
During winter of 1862, several months after the start of the Civil War, Edmonia Lewis was attending Oberlin when an incident occurred between her and two classmates, Maria Miles and Christina Ennes. The three women, all boarding in Keep's home, planned to go sleigh riding with some young men later that day. Before the sleighing, Lewis served her friends a drink of spiced wine. Shortly after, Miles and Ennes fell severely ill. Doctors examined them and concluded that the two women had some sort of poison in their system, apparently cantharides, a reputed aphrodisiac. For a time it was not certain that they would survive. Days later, it became apparent that the two women would recover from the incident, and, because of their recovery, the authorities initially took no action. There is no evidence that Lewis actually poisoned the two students, or that doctors actually found any traces of poison in the bodies of Miles and Ennes.

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