Edmonia Lewis (1845-1890) was America's first Black artist recognized for her reliefs and busts of great anti-slavery leaders and forForever Free, a composition of marble (completed in 1867) showing a man and woman overcome with emotion on hearing news of the emancipation from slavery. Lewis began her art career in Boston between 1862 and 1865 where she studied under Edmund Brackett and did a bust of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the Commander of the first Black regiment organized in Massachusetts during the Civil War. Working from her studio at 89 Tremont Street, she created sculptures of Boston military heroes and abolitionists which were sold at the Soldier's Relief Fair to raise monies for the Civil War veterans' relief fund.