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Winfred Rembert

Birth : 1945-11-22, Cuthbert, Georgia, USA

History

Georgia native Winfred Rembert spent his childhood as a fieldworker in the pre-Civil Rights South, joined the movement as a teenager, was forced to work on a prison chain gang and is a rare survivor of a lynching attempt. As a self-taught visual artist, he depicts scenes from the days of segregation in intricate painted works of leather tooling. Though he has endured profound pain, his acclaimed art, which is represented in a number of public and private collections, focuses on positive aspects of black life in the 1950s. He is the subject of Ashes to Ashes (Mountainfilm 2019).

Movies

Himself

America has yet to heal from the trauma of its darkest era, and Winfred Rembert is living proof of that. Rembert, who lived on a plantation, joined the civil rights movement as a teen and was put to work on a chain gang, is a rare survivor of a lynching attempt. Decades later, he still carries the scars. “That lynching is on my back, and it’s dragging me down, even today,” he says. As he etches the history, bloodsoaked and cruel, into leatherwork, fellow artist Dr. Shirley Jackson Whitaker organizes a different kind of ceremony to search for healing. “It’s not just black history,” she says. “This is American history.”

All Me: The Life and Times of Winfred Rembert

All Me: The Life and Times of Winfred Rembert

A documentary on the artist Winfred Rembert, whose paintings depicted bigotry in America in the latter part of the 20th century.