And his friend sold it and gave him the money for it, and that was a spark for him to see that people would be interested in some of the work that he was doing - and that it was good enough to be bought.Įrin Kelly: I think he felt like he had some talent as an artist that he had never realized. And finally, he did a picture, and he gave it to his friend as a Christmas present. And for a long time, he resisted doing it because he didn't feel like anyone would be interested in anything he'd done in that fashion.

And I said, honey, why don't you put your life story on that leather? Nobody is doing that kind of work. He would draw people at our PTA meetings and stuff. And he'd make such beautiful pictures on the pocketbooks until I said, you know - and he could draw. Patsy Rembert: He would make pocketbooks and stuff like that. On learning how to tool leather in prison No one wants to talk about it, but they happen. A lot of things went on in the South that never reached the papers. Even today, some people won't mention what happened to them or what they saw.

And I feel like him telling his story - he's telling a story about a lot of - more Black people who endured these things, who didn't have a voice, who couldn't find a safe refuge to talk about it. 'He would talk to me, and he said, 'no one's going to believe me.' But we got some of this stuff documented. 'So he didn't want to tell his story for a long time,' Patsy Rembert tells NPR. Winfred's wife, Patsy Rembert, also influenced him. His autobiography, written with author Erin Kelly, Chasing Me To My Grave: An Artist's Memoir Of The Jim Crow South, features images of fishing in the culvert or dancing in the juke joint - but also of picking cotton, escaping a lynching and working on the chain gang.Ī Tufts University professor, Kelly worked with Rembert to turn his life into a book. He carved figures in leather and painted scenes from rural Georgia. The late Winfred Rembert documented his life with art. Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist's Memoir of the Jim Crow South, by Winfred Rembert and Erin Kelly

Chasing me to my grave reviews