Oliver LaGrone

William LaGrone had left Mississippi in 1895, in fear of his life following an altercation with two white men over their attack on William's mother.

William had married Lula Evelyn Cochran in Alabama after she and her parents helped him recover from his flight.

They migrated to Texas, seeking safety from potential pursuers.

LaGrone's normal school-educated father served on the school board and as an ordained pastor of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion church.

Education was important to William LaGrone, particularly educating blacks in the importance of their heritage, a legacy that informed his son's life's work.

"My father was a gifted writer, and also a builder, and extremely creative," LaGrone recalled.

"He regaled us with his poems. I was brought up in an environment like that."

LaGrone credited his mother as a pillar in his artistic and emotional development.

"My parents had beautiful voices. I patterned my speech after theirs," LaGrone commented during a newspaper interview in his later years.

The LaGrone family owned property and were community leaders.

Oliver LaGrone (December 9, 1906 – October 15, 1995) was an African-American sculptor, poet, educator, and humanitarian.

Clarence Oliver LaGrone was born December 9, 1906, in McAlester, in Indian Territory, the year before the Territory became part of the new state of Oklahoma.

His father, William Lee LaGrone, born ten years after the abolition of slavery in the United States, to formerly enslaved parents, had settled in Indian Territory because of the relative freedoms it afforded.

After graduation he worked in Washington, D.C., and in 1928 invited his younger brother, Oliver, to live with him while working for a degree.

In the fall Oliver LaGrone enrolled at Howard University, planning to become a lawyer.

LaGrone interacted closely with faculty member Dr. Carter G. Woodson, "Father of Black History".

In 1929, repeated dangerously expressed jealousy over their accomplishments drove them to move from the several small towns in which they had hoped for peace in Okmulgee County, Oklahoma, to Albuquerque, New Mexico.

LaGrone's older brother, Hobart, had attended Fisk University.

During the summer of 1929 he served as an assistant to Woodson, interviewing people in Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma for Woodson and Lorenzo Greene's upcoming volume, The Negro Wage Earner.

Additionally, LaGrone sold books on black culture promoted by Dr. Woodson.

Oliver LaGrone also absorbed interest in unionism from a political science faculty member, young Dr. Ralph Bunche.

The country's Great Economic Depression led to LaGrone having to leave Howard University after completing only his first year.

The precipitous death of his father, and the disabling effects on his mother of a car accident meant his earning power was essential at home.

LaGrone and his older brother, Hobart, opened a funeral parlor to help support the family.

This opportunity to study anatomy later informed Oliver LaGrone's sculpting talents.

He also sang for three years with a semi-professional quartet on radio programs.

LaGrone felt drawn to create, sculpting in the mahogany-like pinyon pine so plentiful in the New Mexico landscape.

He was hoping to find LaGrone's 1930 sculpture, "Black", carved from pinyon wood.

Seventy-five years after first seeing the sculpture, he wrote, "I was shocked and speechless at the grandeur of the figure; then I walked around to look at the back of it and immediately started crying. This magnificent human being, standing so proud, had his hands chained behind his back. It was the most striking thing I had ever seen that depicted the condition of the black race living in this country. My emotional response broke down any barriers that might have existed between us. . . . During that period, there was no way I could buy any of his work, but if I could find the black man with chained hands, I would try to find whatever amount of money was required to own it for the few years I have left."

The work had been long since purchased and later was given to the Detroit chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, but its image remained potent 75 years later.

"Black" was the same displayed sculpture that several years later led to LaGrone's return to college.

The sculpture is now privately held.

Oliver LaGrone was working in Albuquerque at odd jobs, and in the household of a civil engineer whose spouse admired LaGrone's gracious manner.

After seeing one of his sculptures, she took LaGrone to the president of the University of New Mexico (UNM), to assure that the young black man would be enrolled.

In 1974 a post-secondary scholarship was created in his name, enlarged and refocused in 1991 for graduates of the public high school of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

LaGrone's artistic creations focused primarily on honoring African-American capacity and accomplishment.

His sculptures can be seen at three campuses of The Pennsylvania State University (Harrisburg, State College, Scranton), The State Museum of Pennsylvania, at the Unitarian Church of Harrisburg, the Schomburg Center of New York City, the Albuquerque Museum, and at Albuquerque's Richardson Pavilion of the New Mexico Hospitals.

Other of his sculptures are held privately.

His collected poetry is held by the Special Collections Library of The Pennsylvania State University as well as by numerous other academic libraries and private collections.

In 2005 the Unitarian Church of Harrisburg received a letter from an elderly New Mexican man who had met LaGrone while both were attending the University of New Mexico.