The result is this collaborative memoir, which presents Rembert’s breathtaking body of artwork alongside his story.Ībout the Speaker: Erin Kelly (Philosophy, Tufts)Įrin Kelly grew up in Rochester, Minnesota, seemingly destined for medical or law school, and riding horses or being kicked by them. From 2018 to 2020, she visited his home every two weeks or so to interview him. He told her he wanted to share his life story in his own words but needed help writing it. Erin Kelly met Rembert in 2015, while working on her book, The Limits of Blame. At the age of fifty-one, with Patsy’s encouragement, he began carving and painting memories from his youth onto leather, using leather-tooling skills he had learned in prison. Following his release, in 1974, he married Patsy Gammage, and they eventually settled in New Haven, Connecticut. He later broke out of jail, survived a near-lynching, and spent seven years in prison, where he was forced to labor on chain gangs. As a teen-ager, he got involved in the civil-rights movement and was arrested in the aftermath of a demonstration. Winfred Rembert, artistĬhasing Me To My Grave tells the remarkable life story of Black American artist Winfred Rembert (1945-2021). Rembert grew up in Cuthbert, Georgia, where he picked cotton as a child.

Professor Erin Kelly (Philosophy) discusses her latest book about Winfred Rembert, Chasing Me To My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South.

Chasing me to the grave