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Raymond Floyd, the first black art teacher in a South Carolina school district, has died at the age of 76.
He died of complications from pneumonia Sunday at his home in Spartanburg, his daughter, Heather Mitchell, tells WYFF.
Floyd taught at Carver High School for African-American students before it became a middle school in 1970, and he inspired many students to pursue careers in art and art education, including Futurist painter and sculptor Winston Wingo and Kitty Black Perkins, former chief fashion designer for Barbie, per the Spartanburg Herald-Journal.
"He showed us that art was a saleable skill if you had it," says Thomas Tucker, an artist and retired art director for Spartanburg County School District 6.
"Ray really believed that art education was a part of what was necessary for developing full people," adds an art professor at Spartanburg Methodist College and one of Floyd's final students.
Mitchell says her father was "always painting whether it was a piece of work or painting the house, or doing a sculpture."
His work was displayed at sites throughout South Carolina, including the Cherokee Alliance of Visual Artists in Gaffney, Spartanburg Methodist College's Ellis Hall, Claflin University's Arthur Rose Museum, the University of South Carolina, Newberry College, and the Read the Entire Article
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