A documentary on the artist Winfred Rembert, whose paintings depicted bigotry in America in the latter part of the 20th | dG1fUHl6WWx2eGNqVDg
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00 [singing]
00:16 This is leather that I'm dying on.
00:19 And you can't use paint when you're working with leather.
00:28 Doing pictures and wallets and billfolds.
00:32 Because if you use paint, you can't do that.
00:38 You can't bend it because it'll crack.
00:41 Just think of all the folk that have picked cotton from the time they got in this country.
00:50 Even on past when slavery was abolished.
00:54 Green notes represent the money that they make on the back of colored folk.
01:03 You know, it's tough work and then you ain't making no money.
01:07 You get two cents for every pound that you pick.
01:11 You know, and I couldn't make but 50 cents.
01:15 I didn't want to be in the cotton fields.
01:17 I would hear the old people in the pool room and in the juke joints and things, I hung up talking about civil rights.
01:26 So I got very, very interested in that.
01:30 They had this protest in America's Georgia.
01:33 Things got out of hand.
01:35 I got caught.
01:37 And they shipped me off to the Reedsville State Penitentiary.
01:44 I learned this technique in prison.
01:49 I just try to remember the true scene.
01:56 I try to put myself back there as a worker and men around me working.
02:02 That's what I do when I do one of these.
02:06 I might not remember all these guys' names, but I got their faces.
02:11 The chain gang is a big part of my life.
02:15 55147, that's my prison number.
02:21 I was the 55,147th person to go through the door of Reedsville State Penitentiary.
02:34 And boy, do I thank God for seeing fit.
02:40 For me to come through that door for the last time.
02:44 [singing]
03:07 [BLANK_AUDIO]