Correspondence with Ferguson's wives, family and friends, among them political cartoonist for The Militant, Laura Gray, ceramist Cleo Bell, and mathematician Frederick Rodney Holt, one of the founders of Apple Computers; photographs of Ferguson, his family, his sculptures and reliefs, and studio pictures; several issues of The Militant and the International Socialist Review; minutes from meetings of various socialist and civil rights organizations; and printed material.
Biographical / Historical:
Sculptor, teacher; La., Ohio, and Calif. Ferguson was born in Shangai, China. He studied art with Albert H. Atkins and Robert Laurent. He worked on the WPA art project on the facades of the Louisiana State Office Building and Agricultural Building in Baton Rouge, and the U.S. Post Office in Leesville. He taught at Louisiana State University in the 1940s and was also an instructor in Cleveland on the Federal Art Project for Karamu House, a neighborhood art center designed to provide instruction in the visual and performing arts. He was active in the Socialist Workers Party and other socialist and left-wing groups. He died in Los Angeles in 1974.
Provenance:
Donated 1996 by Jerry Estruth, who had been asked to retrieve them from storage by Ferguson's friend, Frederick Rodney Holt.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C., Research Center. Contact Reference Services for more information.
