Florence Riefle Bahr

Who was Florence Riefle Bahr?

Florence Elizabeth Riefle Bahr was an American artist and activist. She made colored portraits of children, monochromatic portraits of adults, and landscapes. More than 300 sketchbooks catalog insights into her life, including her civil and human rights activism of the 1960s and 1970s. Important captured events 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 hands in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's headquarters. Besides traditional art forms, Bahr also created collages, wood cuts and linocuts. She created illustrations for children's book and made a mural for Johns Hopkins Hospital's Harriet Lane Home for Children. Her works have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions since the 1930s. In 1999 she was posthumously awarded the State of Maryland's Women's Hall of Fame.