The first comprehensive overview of an important genre of American art, Souls Grown Deep explores the visual-arts genius of the black South. This first work in a multivolume study introduces 40 African-American self-taught artists, who, without significant formal training, often employ the most unpretentious and unlikely materials. Like blues and jazz artists, they create powerful statements amplifying the call for freedom and vision.

The first comprehensive overview of an important genre of American art, Souls Grown Deep explores the visual-arts genius of the black South. This first work in a multivolume study introduces 40 African-American self-taught artists, who, without significant formal training, often employ the most unpretentious and unlikely materials. Like blues and jazz artists, they create powerful statements amplifying the call for freedom and vision.

The first comprehensive overview of an important genre of American art, Souls Grown Deep explores the visual-arts genius of the black South. This first work in a multivolume study introduces 40 African-American self-taught artists, who, without significant formal training, often employ the most unpretentious and unlikely materials. Like blues and jazz artists, they create powerful statements amplifying the call for freedom and vision.

My Soul Has Grown Deep considers the art-historical significance of contemporary Black artists and quilters working throughout the southeastern United States and Alabama in particular. Their paintings, drawings, mixed-media compositions, sculptures, and textiles include pieces ranging from the profoundly moving assemblages of Thornton Dial to the renowned quilts of Gee’s Bend. Nearly sixty remarkable examples—originally collected by the Souls Grown Deep Foundation and donated to The Metropolitan Museum of Art—are illustrated alongside insightful texts that situate them in the history of modernism and the context of the African American experience in the twentieth-century South. This remarkable study simultaneously considers these works on their own merits while making connections to mainstream contemporary art. Art historians Cheryl Finley, Randall R. Griffey, and Amelia Peck illuminate shared artistic practices, including the novel use of found or salvaged materials and the artists’ interest in improvisational approaches across media. Novelist and essayist Darryl Pinckney provides a thoughtful consideration of the cultural and political history of the American South, during and after the Civil Rights era. These diverse works, described and beautifully illustrated, tell the compelling stories of artists who overcame enormous obstacles to create distinctive and culturally resonant art. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Verdana}

Contains brief biographical sketches and well-known and obscure works by African American authors from the late 1700s to the early 1900s, including Phillis Wheatley, Olaudah Equiano, Ida B. Wells, and Paul Laurence Dunbar.

“This small snapshot of the protest movement pays homage to both the determination of ordinary folk and the power of Dr. King’s words. . . . An intergenerational story filled with heart and soul.” — Kirkus Reviews When Alex spies a mule chomping on greens in a nearby garden, he can’t help but ask about it. “Ol’ Belle?” says Miz Pettway. “She can have all the collards she wants. She’s earned it.” And so begins the tale of an ordinary mule in Gee’s Bend, Alabama, that played a singular part in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. When African-Americans in a poor community — inspired by a visit from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — defied local authorities who were trying to stop them from registering to vote, many got around a long, imposed detour on mule-drawn wagons. As Alex looks into the eyes of gentle Belle, he begins to understand a significant time in history in a very personal way.

The original book on the renowned Freedom quilters of Gee's Bend In December of 1965, the year of the Selma-to-Montgomery march, a white Episcopal priest driving through a desperately poor, primarily black section of Wilcox County found himself at a great bend of the Alabama River. He noticed a cabin clothesline from which were hanging three magnificent quilts unlike any he had ever seen. They were of strong, bold colors in original, op-art patterns—the same art style then fashionable in New York City and other cultural centers. An idea was born and within weeks took on life, in the form of the Freedom Quilting Bee, a handcraft cooperative of black women artisans who would become acclaimed throughout the nation.