I want Black people to be proud of what their families sacrificed and how they survived. I want people who have lived in the South to talk about their history.

I’ve been sharing my story, as an artist, for the last twenty-five years. My pictures are carved and painted on leather, using skills I learned in prison. Some people in Cuthbert never knew what happened to me. I want people, especially the people I knew, to understand what happened and why I spent seven years on the chain gang.

The more I thought about putting the things that had happened to me on leather, the more love I felt for Mama—Lillian Rembert—and for other people in Cuthbert, Georgia who were good to me. Mama went through a lot in her life and she gave me great love—all the love she could muster. I want her to be remembered.

It was my wife Patsy’s idea for me to become an artist. She kept telling me, listen, you can do it, and she kept pushing me. There were times in my life when it seemed to me there was no future. Every day Patsy pushed me to be positive. She gave me hope. I’d be dragging my feet and then all of a sudden I come up out of it like a champ.