Mary McLeod Bethune passed from this life 65 years ago in her white two-story house perched in the middle of the school campus she founded against all odds in 1904. Now a part of Bethune is being reborn inside an artists' studio in a tiny 1,000-year-old town on the northern coast of Tuscany.

As master sculptor Nilda Comas carefully chips away at a hulking block of white marble, Bethune's smiling face is emerging. It's as if the 20th century trailblazer has been resting the past six decades inside the marble-rich Alps, and she's coming back to life with each stroke of the chisel that frees her little by little.