“I didn’t think it would affect me, but it has. That’s what makes it Black Mountain. It’s still living.”
– Mary Parks Washington
Mary Parks Washington (1924-2019) attended Black Mountain College’s 1946 summer institute, where she met with Ruth Asawa and Gwendolyn Knight, among others. whom she remained friends with. She arrived from the very traditional Spelman College in Atlanta, “with my new dungarees specially purchased for the occasion because I had never worn pants.” She was excited by classes taught in a circle rather than in rows; students in bare feet; and to have her own studio.
She reflected on her experience as a Black student at Black Mountain, which despite being progressive was nonetheless in the segregated South. “All over the South, there was colored water and white water. But I lived in a sort of an insulated community. I would describe it as being surrounded by cellophane. Not glass, you could punch out. But you couldn’t go out but so far. And you would observe, but you were still protected.” She also noted that racism meant that students of colour did not have the same freedom as white students to attend a college that didn’t offer official qualifications: “I couldn’t go to Black Mountain and say that I went. I had to have a degree to get a job.”
She later settled in California, got an MA in painting, and developed “histcollage”, incorporating photographs and documents into her paintings. She described an early example of this form resulting from meeting sculptor Leo Amino at Black Mountain. He told her about the Japanese internment camps during the war, and she made a collage using the War Relocation Authority flyer.
Like many of her peers from Black Mountain, she was also an arts advocate and activist. She worked to improve art in schools; champion public art; and provide opportunities for public participation in the arts. She was a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the first intercollegiate historically African American sorority, and Jack and Jill of America, an organisation formed by African American mothers during the Great Depression to bring together children in a social and cultural environment, as well as the NAACP.
Follow our #WomenOfBMC series to discover some of Black Mountain’s pioneering women.
Banner image: Mary Parks Washington at Black Mountain College, summer 1946. Photograph by Beaumont and Nancy Newhall. Courtesy Western Regional Archives, State Archives of North Carolina.