"Isaac Scott Hathaway"[April 4,1872-March 12,1967]

Was an educator and artist known for creating more than 100 busts and masks of prominent African American.He taught what is now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff (UAPB) for more than twenty years as the first chair of the department of ceramics in the college's art department.
Isaac was born in Lexington Kentuck,to Elijah and Rachel Hathaway.He and his two sisters were raised by their daddy and grandparents,their mama died in 1874.Isaac attended Chandler Junior College and the New England Conservatory of Music's Art Department,pursuing his childhood dream of sculpting busts of " famous Negroes." Isaac spent two years at the Conservatory of Music before returning to Lexington to teach English at Keene High School,beginning in 1891.
He developed his sculpting,and patrons-both white and African American-demanded his skills.In 1904,he was commissioned to cast a death mask of a former ambassador to Russia Cassius Marcellus Clay.By 1907,Isaac was living in Washington DC and sculpting busts and life masks of significant figures.The masks he completed during this period included likenesses of author and sociologist Monroe Nathan Work and historian Carter Godwin Woodson.
Isaac married Etta Pamplin of Maryland.She died during childbirth during the first year of their marriage;their son,Elsmer,died in 1941.His second marriage ended in

dIvorce.
In 1915,Isaac moved from Washington DC to Arkansas to teach ceramics at the Branch Normal College in Pine Bluff,now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.Here,he created busts busts of orator Frederick Douglass.Isaac began sketching Frederick's likeness while living in Washington DC and reportedly modeled Frederick's famous hair after the mane of a lion at the Washington Zoo (now the National Zoo).Isaac opened and chaired the department of ceramics at the college and strengthened its arts program for African American students.He met and married his third wife,Umer Porter,in Pine Bluff in 1926.She was also an artists,and she created a bust of her husband that is displayed in the Hathaway /Howard Fine Arts Center at UAPB.
In 1937,he left Pine Bluff to establish the Ceramics Department at Tuskegee University in Tuskegee,Alabama.In 1938,Father Bruno Drescher of Chicago,Illinois,commissioned Isaac to model a sculpture of the Catholic Saint Martin de Pores.In addition to the commission,Bruno requested 100 statuettes.After receiving the statuettes,Bruno praised Isaac's talent,saying,"I do not believe there is a sculptor in the United States who can excel you in producing a likeness."
In a Federal Writers' Project interview conducted in 1939,Isaac compared the molding and shaping of clay to the molding and shaping of children.He said:"This reminds me of our duty to our children.They should be shaped into usefulness as they grow."
While at Tuskegee,Isaac continued to sculpt busts and life mask and,in 1943 sculpted his first bust of George Washington Carver.The original bust stood twelve inches tall.Isaac and George taught at Tuskegee at the same time,and their friendship developed over Isaac's experiments with Alabama clay as a sculpting medium.
In 1945,he was selected to design two commemorative coins honoring African Americans,becoming the first African American to design a coin for the U.S. Mint.The first coin commemorated Booker T.Washington and was minted 1946-1951.The second coin commemorated George Washington Carver from 1951-1954.
As he moved from Lexington to Pine Bluff to Tuskegee,Isaac relocated his art studio and the Isaac Scott Hathaway  Art Company.His twelve-inch busts of notable figures such as Frederick Douglass,Booker T.Washington,and George Washington Carver proved to be popular in African-American homes throughout the South.
In 1948,he became director of ceramics at Alabama State College in Montgomery.Isaac retired from teaching in 1963 and returned to Tuskegee.He died in Montgomery Alabama.