A
native of Houston, Melvin Edwards attended Phillis Wheatley High School in the
mid-1950s, where he was one of two students in his class to also enroll at the
School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Upon graduation he moved to Los
Angeles, where he attended Los Angeles City College and the University of
Southern California. In 1967 he moved to New York, and in 1970 he was the first
African American sculptor to be recognized by a solo show at the Whitney Museum
of American Art.

Lynch Fragments, first begun in 1963, are Edwards’s most
extended series of sculptures. Prompted in part by the violence that erupted
during civil rights demonstrations, the title of the series refers directly to
America’s brutal history of racist violence. However, each Lynch Fragment carries specific associations that mirror Edwards’s
life and interests. Good Word from
Cayenne is a tribute to the poet Léon-Gontran Damas (1912–1978) who was
born in Cayenne, French Guiana, and who was one of the founders of the
Négritude movement in Paris in the 1930s.