From a Chain Gang to Art Museums.

This article focuses on the life and artistic legacy of Winfred Rembert, a self-taught African American artist who used tooled and painted leather to depict his experiences growing up in the Jim Crow South. Born in Georgia and subjected to severe racial violence, including near-lynching and imprisonment on a chain gang, Rembert later chronicled these events in his 2021 autobiography, *Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist's Memoir of the Jim Crow South*, which won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in biography. Encouraged by his wife, Patsy, he began creating vivid, narrative artworks that combine personal history with broader themes of racial injustice, civil rights activism, and daily life in Black rural communities. His work gained recognition after a 2000 exhibition at the Yale University Art Gallery and has since been featured in major galleries and a documentary, highlighting his unique contribution to outsider art through both visual and literary storytelling.