During her life, she made many pieces of public art and often created portraits of prominent African-Americans such as Duke Ellington, Booker T. Washington and Mary McLeod Bethune.

Ms. Burke was born in Mooresville, North Carolina and was the seventh of 10 children born to Reverend Neil and Mary Elizabeth Burke. As a child she often played with the riverbed clay she found near her home. It was introduction to sculpture. Her grandmother, who was a painter, encouraged her. However, her mother believed she should pursue a more financially stable career. Ms. Burke graduated from St. Agnes Training School for Nurses in Raleigh.

She married a childhood friend in 1928. The marriage ended with his death less than a year later. She later moved to Harlem to work as a private duty nurse for a wealthy heiress, who became her benefactor. After moving to New York, she began taking art classes at Sarah Lawrence College. In 1935, she became involved with the Harlem Renaissance through her marriage to writer, Claude McKay. The relationship was short, but it introduced her to an artistic community what would embrace and support her.
She began teaching for the Harlem Community Arts Center and went to work for the Works Progress Administration on the New Deal Federal Art Project.

Ms. Burke traveled to Europe twice in the 1930s. She studied sculpture in Vienna. She returned in 1936 to study in Paris with Aristide Maillol. While in Paris she met Henri Matisse, who praised her work.

After returning to the United States, she won a graduate school scholarship to Columbia University, where she received a Master of Fine Arts.

Selma Burke founded two schools in New York City – the Selma Burke School of Sculpture in 1940 and the Selma Burke Art School in 1946.

In 1968, she opened the Selma Burke Art Center in the East Liberty neighborhood in Pittsburgh. From 1968 to 1981, the center encouraged African American children and adults to make art of all kinds. Local and national artists of color were featured prominently in the center’s gallery.
Ms. Burke had a one woman show in the Scaife Gallery at the Museum of Art at the Carnegie Institute (Carnegie Museum of Art) in 1975.

Also, in 1975, she dedicated a sculpture, entitled “Together,” to the newly opened Hill House Association. “Together” was installed on the side of the Kaufmann Auditorium and reflected one of her favorite themes- family love. One hundred seventy-five guests were present for the unveiling. Gulf Oil Corp. paid for the casting.

In 2001, the Michener Art Museum commissioned the casting of “Together” sculp from the resin mold used to produce Selma Burke’s original 1975 bronze bas-relief.

The bronze remained on the auditorium until 2008, when it was taken down for renovations to the building was renovated.
In 1979, President Jimmy Carter awarded her with a Women’s Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement award. She received honorary doctorates from Livingstone College in 1970 and Spelman College in 1988. Her papers are housed at Spellman College in Atlanta.

In 2012, the Kingsley Association gifted the Hill House Association a self-portrait Ms. Burke created in 1939.

Today, “Together” and the Selma Burke self-portrait are displayed in ACH Clear Pathways building. Treasures can be found in communities of color if you just look for them.