MS01.01.03.B02.F10.024

eighteenth century attributed to ^ [Neptune] Thurston [ strikethrough: Morton, Scorpio Morehead] ^Scipio Moorehead and others of comparable skill. But few persons other than those who could be characterized as sympathetic masters were willing to permit [crossed out: B] black aspiring artists the [crossed out: chance] opportunity to test their skills in [crossed out: the leisure oriented arts of] painting and sculpture. Moreover, few people felt that Blacks had the intellectual ability to engage in any form of art which was not closely associated with labor. Margaret Just Butcher, writing on the subject of {crossed out: B] black acceptance by the white establishment in [inserted: ^ American] are summarized[crossed out: s] the situation in the following manner:

"The task of the early Negro artist was to prove to a skeptical world that the Negro could be an artist. That world did not know that the African has been a capable artist in his native culture and that, independent of European culture, he had build up his own techniques and traditions. It had the notion that for a Negro to aspire to the fine arts was ridiculous. Before 1865, any man or woman with artistic talent and ambition confronted an almost impossible barrier. Yet, in a ling period of trying apprenticeship, several Megro artist surmounted the artificial obstacles with sufficient success to disprove but not dispel the prevailing prejudice. [crossed out: 15] 15 [INSERT** arrow to (5 pages)]

Robert [crossed out: Ssott] Scott Duncanson was born of mixed parents in 1821 in New York State. [Written: His father, a Canadian by birth, was of Scottish descent.]
At an early age he accompanied his family to the town where his mother had grown up, a village fifteen miles from Cincinnati now called Mt. Healthy. The City of Cincinnati, located in a strategic position [inserted: comma] neither North nor South, absorbed [inserted: comma] at that time [inserted: comma] much public opinion in regards to the question of slavery as it was still an issue yet unsettled in American society.

[crossed out: 15] 15 Butcher, Margaret Just., The Negro In American Culture (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1967)