Painter, sculptor, printmaker, educator, and poet Jewel Woodard Simon was an important presence in Atlanta’s African American artistic community. Her career encompassed both artistic achievement and a sustained effort to overcome the barriers of segregation. Working across landscapes, portraits, figurative sculpture, and abstraction, she developed a varied practice while helping expand opportunities for other Black artists.

Born in Houston, Texas, Simon grew up in the city’s Fifth Ward and graduated from high school as valedictorian at fifteen. She studied mathematics at Atlanta University, graduating summa cum laude, and returned to Houston to teach at Jack Yates High School in 1931. Within six months, she became head of the mathematics department. Following her marriage to Edward Lloyd Simon in 1939, she settled with her husband in Atlanta in 1941, where she raised their two children while continuing to develop her art. Her training included painting with Hale Woodruff and sculpture with Alice Dunbar.

The Atlanta University Annual Art Exhibitions provided an especially important setting for Simon’s work. Established by Woodruff to support African American artists, these national juried exhibitions offered recognition and professional opportunities often unavailable through segregated museums and galleries. Simon became the Annuals’ most decorated woman artist. Paintings such as City Slums (1953) and February Lace (1962) demonstrate her interest in the expressive possibilities of urban and natural environments, using color and movement to animate familiar subjects.

Simon’s work ranged from atmospheric observation to imaginative interpretations of the world around her. In the watercolor February Lace, foreground trees frame a winter landscape, establishing depth through branching forms and contrasting patches of vegetation. In the oil painting Ghost Harbour City, intersecting horizontal and vertical lines organize buildings, water, and moored boats, while shifts in color convey light and shadow. Her sculptural practice included Margaret (1955), a plaster bust whose carefully described facial features and hair reflect her attention to individual character. These works, preserved at Clark Atlanta University Art Museum, reveal the breadth of her interests and command of different media.

Simon also played a pioneering role in integrating Atlanta’s art institutions. After years of seeking admission, she entered the Atlanta School of Art in 1963 and became its first African American graduate in 1967. Her persistence helped open an institution closely associated with the High Museum of Art to Black students. Beyond her own practice, she supported younger artists and participated in organizations including the Atlanta Art Promoters League and the National Conference of Artists.

Her creative life extended to music and poetry. Following her husband’s death in 1984, she increasingly pursued writing, drawing upon her experiences as a Black woman, wife, and mother; published collections incorporated her artwork alongside her poems. She continued making art into her later years and died in the Atlanta area on December 16, 1996.

Recent scholarship has brought renewed attention to Simon’s achievements. Mark N. Taylor’s 2024 study in The Georgia Historical Quarterly, “Jewel Woodard Simon and the Struggle to Desegregate the Atlanta School of Art,” documents her contribution to the city’s cultural transformation. Her legacy rests both in her surviving artwork and in the opportunities her determination helped create for subsequent generations.