The Medford Historical Society & Museum welcomes Patsy and Mitchell Rembert and author Erin I. Kelly to discuss Winfred Rembert’s memoir, “Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South,” which in 2022 was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in biography. This program will include slides of Rembert’s remarkable paintings on leather. Rembert grew up in Cuthbert, Georgia, where he picked cotton as a child. As a teen-ager, he got involved in the civil rights movement and was arrested in the aftermath of a demonstration. He later broke out of jail, survived a near lynching, and spent seven years in prison. Following his release, in 1974, he married Patsy, and eventually set­tled in New Haven, Connecticut. At age 51, he began carving and painting memories from his youth onto leather, using skills he had learned in prison. Rembert died on March 31, 2021.

Patsy Rembert met Winfred while he was in prison and doing forced labor near her home in Turner County, Georgia. After four years of letter-writing, the two married upon his release in 1974 and moved north, settling in New Haven, where they raised eight children and Mrs. Rembert became a longtime youth advocate.  It was Patsy who first convinced her husband to pursue art seriously, and to tell his life story visually, using the leather-tooling skills he’d learned in prison.

Erin I. Kelly is a professor of philosophy at Tufts University and co-author of “Chasing Me to My Grave.” Mitchell Rembert is an artist who works on leather using the tooling techniques he learned from his father. See more of his work here. He will demonstrate his technique after the presentation to those who may be interested.

Register for the program on Eventbrite.