Richard Hunt
American, 1935–2023

From the Ground Up
1989
Cast and welded bronze

The life of Mary McLeod Bethune (1875–1955) inspired this towering bronze sculpture, From the Ground Up. Born into a family of sharecroppers in South Carolina, Bethune spent her childhood working in the same cotton fields her parents worked while enslaved. The family eventually saved enough to purchase the land from their former slaveholder. Educated in Chicago, Bethune returned South to found a school that later became Bethune-Cookman University, a model for historically Black colleges and universities. Bethune led several national organizations that championed racial and gender equity and advised the Roosevelt
and Truman administrations. This work was displayed for three decades near Bethune’s home in Washington, DC.

Private Collection

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