Florence Riefle Bahr

Florence Elizabeth Riefle Bahr (February 2, 1909 – January 12, 1998) was an American performer and activist. She made portraits of children and adults, including studies of flora and fauna as she found it. Instead of using a camera, more than 300 pen and ink sketchbooks catalog insights into her life, including her civil and human rights activism of the 1960s and 1970s. One of the many important captured activities included the Washington D.C. event where Martin Luther King, Jr. first gave his I Have a Dream speech. Her painting Homage to Martin Luther King hangs in the (NAACP) National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's headquarters. She created illustrations for children's books and painted a mural in the Works Progress Administration (WPA) for the Johns Hopkins Hospital's Harriet Lane Home for Children. Her works have been exhibited in solo and outfit exhibitions past the 1930s. In 1999, she was posthumously awarded to the State of Maryland's Women's Hall of Fame, as the first girl artist they recognized.

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