the September 1945 unveiling of her FDR plaque. Roosevelt had died less than six months earlier.
But, the dime: Burke later said that, in 1945, she’d received a strange phone call in the middle of the night. It was Ruth Wilson, a secretary at the Recorder of Deeds office where Burke’s Roosevelt plaque was on display. Wilson told Burke that John Sinnock, the mint’s chief engraver, had come to look at her plaque not long after its unveiling, and that he had taken at least one of her drawings to the mint. In an interview, Sinnock himself said that he’d consulted the works of several artists, as well as photographs and life studies that he’d made of Roosevelt in the 1930s. The image that Sinnock ultimately created depicted a slightly older Roosevelt than the one on Burke’s plaque. But Sinnock didn’t get much time to defend himself. He died in 1947, just a year after the dime was released.
Burke, however, stated adamantly, from then until her death in 1995, that the design was hers. “I’m so mad at that man,” she said of Sinnock during an interview in 1994. “This has happened to so many black people.” The U.S. Mint has said that the historical record supports Sinnock’s claim, and that anyone who might be able to say otherwise has long since died. Still, Burke remained adamant: “Everybody knows I did it.”
https://www.ourstate.com/artist-selma-burkes-1943-presidential-portrait-mightve-inspired-dime-design/
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