All language subtitles for Bill.Traylor.Chasing.Ghosts.2019.DVDRip.AC3.x264-LAA.eng

I'm the great-granddaughter
of Bill Traylor.

My father was the grandson
of Bill Traylor.

Clement Traylor was my father.

That's how I got to know
Bill Traylor was somebody.

You know,
really, really somebody.

Traylor's an inspired visualist.

That's the only way you arrive
at work that's that distinct,

that esoteric,

that visually elegant
and refined.

I think Traylor is
probably the greatest artist

you've never heard of,

but he's getting heard of
more and more.

He put down this entire
oral history in the language

that was available to him,

which was
the language of pictures.

The surrealness of it is that,

in those artworks
that he is creating,

he is engaging
with issues around class,

how we behave
and how we treat one another,

sometimes good
and sometimes not so good,

often not so good.

I see a very animated, agitated,
violent,

mystical realm.

When I see Bill Traylor's work,

I see this yearning for a place
that's beyond here,

it's a place
that's not-not tangible.

It's almost like someone did
something and vanished.

The sign of High John de Conquer

was a laugh,

and his singing-symbol
was a drum beat.

No parading drug-shout
like soldiers out for show...

It was an inside thing
to live by.

And it was sure to be heard

when and where
the work was the hardest,

and the lot most cruel.

It helped the slaves endure.

They knew that something better
was coming.

So they laughed
in the face of things and sang,

and the white people
who heard them

were struck dumb
that they could laugh...

What was Old Cuffy laughing for?

And all that time,
there was High John de Conquer,

playing his trick
of making a way out of no way.

Hitting a straight lick
with a crooked stick.

Winning the jackpot with
no other stake but a laugh.

Local art historian
Miriam Fowler documents

that Traylor got
his blue poster paint

from a white teenage
sign painter.

That was Jay Leavell,

a budding artist himself,

and he told his teacher
Charles Shannon

about the old Black man
drawing on the street corner

in front of the Pekin Pool Hall.

Shannon was a socially
conscious Montgomery artist

who went to check Traylor out.

This is how my involvement
with Bill Traylor started.

I used to come into town
on weekends

to see my family and friends.

Saturday mornings,
I'd go down on Monroe Street.

It was Black territory,

a rich and interesting
world unto itself,

with my sketch pad.

On one such Saturday,

an old Black man
was sitting on a box

on the Monroe Street sidewalk.

When I got close to him,

I could see that he had
a small straight edge stick

and was ruling lines
with a stub of pencil

on a small piece of cardboard.

It was curious
for an old man to be

sitting on the sidewalk drawing
in the first place.

I mean, just as a phenomenon,

this was an interesting one.

That was the way it started.

I was the first
to discover Traylor.

He was a good artist and pure
and self-taught.

He was also a former slave,
he was Black.

Perhaps the only other attribute

that could have lent more
to his popularity now

is if he were a woman.

I was just simply enjoying him.

I loved the street
and the place and all that.

He was part of the fun.

Man, as it went along,
it started to... you know,

it began to shape up.

I mean, wait a minute,
I think this is awfully good.

He had been around Montgomery
for some time.

And when I first met him,

he was drawing very crudely.

He drew on small pieces
of scrap paper

and his pictures were
raw, simplistic sketches

of animals... dogs, cats,

mainly a single figure.

For example, a rat.

Rats, cups, shoes,
all arranged neatly in rows.

In the Blacksmith Shop,

the upward movement that
begins with the angular cut

into the bottom of the board

is picked up by
the legless man's rockers

and the curving tong,

and swings up into the
spinning figures at the end.

The gray patch where the paper
is torn from the cardboard

is so perfectly integrated
into the design

that it's not perceived
as a flaw.

Shannon saw the brilliance
of composition,

of textural choices.

And I think he was bowled over

by the fact that Traylor
just made the work,

he didn't think the work.

He was enamored with it.

When we think about
Charles Shannon's work

in relationship to Bill Traylor,

it seems so divergent.

Charles Shannon paints
with oils and on canvas.

He's really rooted in kind of

an academic approach
and tradition.

And Bill Traylor's work
is some ways

the antithesis of that.

Then came what I called
"exciting events,"

storytelling pictures
such as possum hunts

and drinking bouts.

Soon, I began to bring him
art supplies

such as pencils,
better cardboard,

full range of poster paints,
brushes,

and his work became
more abstract:

thatched baskets,

geometric shapes,

and more complex compositions,

full of wonderful humor,
a sure touch

and a great mastery
of his craft.

He sat quietly.

A kind of beautiful simplicity
came through,

something impersonal, selfless.

"Ancient" is a word
that comes to mind.

You think of something ancient.

Like you were looking through
the eye of an elephant

and seeing something
with a long history to it.

Not just the history of one man,

but of the race or something.

As if you're looking
at something almost eternal.

One senses when you look
at the work of Bill Traylor,

he's on his own,
he's on his own path.

The sources are what's
immediately around him

but also what's
inside of his head.

I always felt
like my studio was church,

you know.

I have all my books.

I have my Bill Traylor books,

and I read
and I try to go back, um,

and try to get a sense

of where he may have been
coming from.

It's very complicated.

I want to walk

to those places
where he once lived.

I want to know those places,

I want to see those things,

'cause I get a better sense.

I mean, it's kind of like

I want to go back
to all those past experiences.

Like the dead-seeming
cold rocks,

I have memories within

that came out of the material
that went to make me.

Time and place
have had their say.

So you will have
to know something

about the time and place
where I came from

in order that you may interpret

the incidents and directions
of my life.

Throw me anywhere, Lord

In that ol' field

Throw me anywhere...

Bill Traylor, the fourth son
of Sally and Bill Calloway,

was born into slavery in 1853

on a small plantation
near Pleasant Hill,

just outside Benton, Alabama,
in Dallas County.

At the time of his birth,

he and the 17 others on the farm

were some of three million
African Americans

held in bondage

in a nation of about 23 million.

Calloway, Bill Traylor's father,

was a skilled bricklayer
and carpenter

who worked with his owner,
John G. Traylor,

on constructing
the built environments

on the plantation,

from the slave quarters,

cotton press,

smokehouses,

and outbuildings,

to much of
the main house itself.

February 25th, 1848:

Bill plowed new ground today.

March 8:
Bill made a horse rack,

cow pen, and stable doors

while George was ditching.

March 22: Bill and me
working on the house...

Bill made a chimney.

Hired a Negro boy to pick cotton

while me and Bill
worked on the house

and the rest of the hands
chopped cotton.

Went preaching;
left Bill in charge.

Went hunting with Bill...

went fishing with Bill.

I, John G. Traylor,
do hereby make this

my last will and testament.

First, I give and bequeath
to my three children

all my property

to be equally divided.

It is my will and desire

that my Negroes
named Bill and wife Sally

with their children and
with their future increase,

be kept together...

And when he died in 1850,

that's the way it happened.

People from outside the South

see slavery and race relations
as, no pun intended,

but black and white,

and there's a lot of gray,
right?

There's all of these
relationships

that developed in the breach.

A family would have
owned slaves,

they may have even
lived in the same house.

The slaves might have slept
in the kitchen,

or on the floor.

So there was
a degree of intimacy.

You have people who,
like people do,

develop very close
connections and friendships,

even in this coercive
environment of slavery.

It's not surprising then

if you have a situation where
relative to other situations,

you feel like, well,
this is not that bad.

Bill Traylor left little
record of his childhood years

when he was enslaved.

We do know
that in 1863, at age 10,

Bill and the family moved

to John's brother
George Traylor's

nearby "Benton Place"
in Lowndes County,

six miles away.

Emancipation was proclaimed,

but slaves were not free
until 1865,

when the South was
finally defeated.

It was, in fact, Union troops
who brought the chaos of war

into young Bill's life.

In the final days
of the Confederacy,

Union General James H. Wilson
staged

the largest cavalry raid
of the war,

in a final push
to break the South.

Some of the stragglers came by
the Traylor place.

They walked through his house

and took the meat
from the smokehouse.

They burned his cotton gin
and 100 bales of cotton.

As one story has it,

when the Yankees rode through
the Benton plantation,

Bill brought his slave owner's
young son Marion with him

when he hid out in the woods.

The orders were
to ride as quickly

to shut down the munitions work
at Selma,

not to liberate the slaves.

Despite efforts
to dissuade them,

Negroes still flocked after
Wilson's horsemen.

The Seventy-Second Indiana

was trailed by
a large group of "contrabands":

There were Negro men, women,
and children on horseback,

ass-back, mule-back, cow-back;

in carts, wagons, wheel barrows,

and every other way
you could think.

They seemed to be
perfectly happy,

thinking no doubt that
the year of jubilee had come.

The soldiers tell us
after the war

that we get food, clothes,

and wages from our masters
'fore we leave,

but there was very, very few
that ever got anything.

Old master says he's not going
to pay us anything.

'Course his money was no good

but he wasn't going to pay us
it if it had been...

Them was bad times,
yeah, them was bad times.

I know folks think
the book tells the truth

but they sure don't.

Us niggers had to take it all.

Then, after the war was over,
we was afraid to move.

Just like terrapins or turtles
after emancipation.

Just stick our heads out
and see how the land lay.

With the war over,

young Bill and his family
decided to stay put.

They took the surname Traylor,

rebuilt the damaged buildings,

and continued farming the land.

The family would stay together
on the Traylor plantation

for 40 more years.

It probably seems highly
unlikely to many folks,

especially folks in the North,

but the Black Traylors
continued to maintain

a relationship
with the white Traylors,

the family that had
for so many years

held them in bondage.

For better or worse,

the white Traylors had been
the Black Traylors' white folks

for almost 60 years.

John Traylor left Bill's family

in the custody
of his brother George,

who was mandated
to free them after the war,

which he did reluctantly.

Post-Civil War,

the blues emerges
as a form of entertainment

on the plantations.

Those troubadours are kind of
moving in between stations,

between plantations.

Often people would make
a reference to Yves Klein

because I use a certain blue.

And it was just
a real rich blue,

and I remember
searching for the blue,

but I picked up the blue
through Bill Traylor,

not through Yves Klein.

And I just remember
searching for this color

and it was poster paint,

it was children's poster paint.

But that was one way,

and it was a reference
to Bill Traylor,

but it's also
a reference to blue

used amongst the Yoruba.

There's a blue that just
say blue, blues.

I'm gon' tell ya what the blues
is really all about.

You got to participate
in the blues,

sing the blues,

dance the blues,

play the blues,

and this will keep
the blues offa you.

So now, if you don't want
to participate in the blues,

then the blues gon' be on you,

so this will help
get the blues offa you.

'Cause if you ain't,
you goin' around every day

with the blues,
sad, feelin' low,

look like nothing
goin' your way.

But you start
to howl you some blues,

and man, you can feel them blues

just gettin' in the wind,

gettin' the blues offa you.

So now, that's the way
I get the blues offa me,

keep the blues off me.

'Cause, man, if you don't,

the blues can take you down.

I mean, under.

They can get on you so heavy.

So you got to...

Howl and whatnot, yeah.

Through the all too brief
Reconstruction period

and the long, dark years
of racist white terrorism,

Traylor stayed put,

worked the land,

and, we assume, caroused
whenever he had the chance.

The transcendent surprise
is that all the while,

as he lived what seemed to be
a very small life,

he was doing something very big.

He was living and seeing

and remembering
a region and a people

that America would
largely ignore or forget.

And he was nurturing
a remarkable gift

that would not be expressed
for decades.

A gift that would bring
the forgotten world

and its marginalized people
back to vibrant, vivid life,

but not always with imagery
that is without mystery.

I'm not thinking
about after slavery.

There's some other kind
of movement that goes on,

that happens, you know,
often when we dream

and things come
in a very fragmented way.

I think it's very typical.

You can talk about any artists

who are working
in this combination

of from memory and from life.

I think the two were
very closely knit for him.

I don't think that
he consciously is saying,

"I'm going to channel
what happened

20, 30 years earlier
on the farm."

My sense is that the reason why
these works are so exciting

and so vital for us
is that they erupt

and they erupt with a kind
of a passion and a verve,

and an insistence
on telling the story.

Traylor had a real knack
for going back and forth

between the simple
and the arcane.

He depicted these scenes

that are impossible
to really unpack,

tell what's going on.

They could be dreams,
they could be nightmares.

Well, I mean,
the iconography tells you

he's the conjure man
of the work.

I mean, these are all a part

of the Black Southern
storytelling tradition

and the Native American
tradition

that it kind of formed
a syncretism with as well.

The people who are
involved in hoodoo

are very much concerned
with trying to provide

means of protection
and healing and fulfillment.

I mean, I just understand it
as part of Black expression,

you know what I mean, and Black
mysticism and spirituality.

And anybody who's spent time

with Robert Farris Thompson's
work knows the connection

between the way it was done in
Africa for thousands of years

and then the way
it reasserted itself

in the Americas in the 19th
and 20th Century.

If we're talking about hoodoo,

if we're talking
about conjuration,

we're talking about the realm
of mystery.

Hambone, hambone,
where you been?

Round the world and back again

There are certain elements
in the work,

the use of animal spirits
and plant spirits

and there's hybrid people,

there's were-people,

but all these speak to someone
operating intentionally

with the desire to render
the fantastic.

So he's giving us a whole
enchanted magical realm.

The figures seem many times
to be apparitions,

you know, just in terms
of the way they float

on the surface of the work.

If that wiggly snake gets smote

There are times when people
have these implements.

We look at the picture
of Chasing Ghosts

and that figure
seems to have an axe.

Is that a ghost
or is that a representation

of the wife's lover?

The mystery prevails throughout.

Around the world
and I'm going again

Now ham

Now ham

Now ham

One subject Bill Traylor
drew more than once was,

he told me, a construction

they made by the river
when he was young.

They would run out on it
and dive into the river,

come out and take a drink,
and return and dive in again.

Close to the time
when he's 18, 19,

young fellow
feel like he's a man.

I know I was feelin' my man,
gettin' up close to grown.

Nature will teach you
like it teaches a stallion

to jump a fence;
you ain't goin' to hold down.

The thing for a boy to do
when he gets old enough

for his nature to teach him,

don't make a dog of himself.

Now, I was always a fellow

that taken well among the girls.

All I had to do
was present myself.

I was a popular young man.

The girls would cut
buttonholes over me.

It was the easiest thing
I ever done in my life,

tamperin' with women.

While most
of Bill Traylor's relatives

seized the opportunity
to farm on their own,

Bill, living at home
with his mother,

worked for day wages
as a field hand.

By 18 7 0, Bill and his
younger brother, Emmitt,

moved out
of their mother's house

and into their own place
next door.

And then, a year later,

he married a neighbor,
Elsey Dunklin.

Years later, he was linked
to another local girl,

- Laura Williams.
- Who ended up having a baby

a few months after
Elsey gave birth

to their third child, Sally.

Sally would change her name
to Sarah.

We don't know exactly
what happened to Elsey,

but we do know
that Bill was left

with their three small children
Pauline, George, and Sarah,

to raise on his own.

Four children.

Bill had also taken in
Nellie as well.

No wonder there's so much tumult

in Bill's farm drawings.

When I look at Traylor's work,

I see this, like,
freedom of expressing

or seeing what's going on
around him,

but also being very lyrical
about it.

Well, when I see them,
I see movement,

I see... I see...

I f... I feel...

I feel jazz,
I feel one with time

and thinking about
their past steps.

It is the lack of symmetry

that makes Negro dancing

so difficult
for white dancers to learn.

The abrupt
and unexpected changes,

the frequent changes
of key and time

are evidences of this quality
in music.

The dancing of the justly famous

Bojangles and Snake Hips

are excellent examples.

The presence of rhythm and lack
of symmetry are paradoxical,

but there they are.

Both are present
to a marked degree.

There is always rhythm,

but it is the rhythm of segment.

Each unit has a rhythm
of its own,

but when the whole is assembled

it is lacking in symmetry.

But easily workable to a Negro

who is accustomed to the break

in going from one part
to another,

so that he adjusts himself
to the new tempo.

When I look at those figures

of people feverishly dancing,

the abstraction of form
and movement there,

and the fact that some
characters are tippling back.

That takes me right into
the juke joints of the South.

They're hearing it all,
they're dancing to it all.

There's this formal vitality
that's kind of irresistible.

There's a tremendous amount
of body language in them

and body motion, you know.

You don't have
little movement marks

around Traylor's figures,
but you feel them.

I mean Friday, Saturday night

were the most important days
in the world

for a sharecropper community.

Let go, release, be yourself,
be among friends.

The music is essential
to that experience,

to that desire.

It's inspired
by conjuration culture,

but so is Louis Armstrong.

After a few years
trying to raise

a houseful of children
on his own, Bill remarried.

Not to his former lover,
Laura Williams,

but to another Dunklin girl,

most probably
Elsey's kin Laurine,

better known as Lorisa.

If, as it's thought,
Lorisa was Elsey's kin,

she most likely knew
all about Bill,

who, despite that, it was clear

he knew how to farm
with the best of them

and who stuck by his kids
whatever the hardship.

So, on August 23, 1891,

during a lull
in the planting season,

Bill and Lorisa took a wagon
40 miles down and back

to the Hayneville courthouse

in the heart of what was once

one of the nastiest places
in Alabama,

Lowndes County, and got married.

Things had always been bad
around Hayneville,

but in the last few years
they'd gotten even worse.

In March, 1888,
there'd been a shootout

between some white drunk
named Gresham

and a Black field hand,
Theo Calloway.

Now, Theo was one
of the Sandy Ridge Calloways

that might well have been kin
to the Benton Calloways.

Related or not, everyone
in Lowndes knew the story.

Most everyone in the country

heard about how Theo
was arrested

and how the town sheriff
accidentally let 200

of Gresham's closest friends
have the jailhouse keys.

Theo Calloway was lynched.

His body was used
for target practice

and left hanging for two days

in front
of the Hayneville Courthouse.

His parents
had to ask permission

to cut down the body.

Local Blacks fought back,
troops were called out,

and over the next ten years,

Bloody Lowndes earned
its nickname ten times over.

Armed skirmishes
and armed retaliation

between Blacks and whites
became a way of life,

until Black church leaders
called on Booker T. Washington

to step in,

saying that if God wasn't
answering their prayers,

maybe Mr. Washington would.

And then the story took

an unexpected turn
for the better.

Sometimes that happens.

So Booker T. Washington
travels to Lowndes

and calls on N.J. Bell,

the richest landlord
in the area.

And by the end
of their little meeting,

Bell had donated ten acres
to the Black community

to build their first school
in Lowndes.

It appears that not only
was "the Wizard of Tuskegee"

a persuasive force
of righteousness,

but Bell apparently so disliked
his boorish neighbors,

giving the land
for a Black school

was a great act of spite.

Traylor has certain themes

that come up time and again
in his work.

Certain themes
such as the house,

which we think probably
refers back to the farm days

since that wasn't
the kind of structure

that he was really living in
in Montgomery.

He also depicted animals
very frequently.

Snakes definitely turn up.

Cats.

Birds.

Plants.

Some kind of animal figure.

Sometimes you could tell
that he was experimenting

maybe with an animal that
he wasn't very familiar with

and he only did it
once or twice.

Other times,

particularly with the dogs,

you can tell
that he knew that animal.

Well, sometimes
they're attacking,

sometimes they're witnessing.

Sometimes they're in conflict
with other animal spirits,

they're both hunted and hunting.

The silhouette, the shape,

how he fills in the space,
and then the space itself.

He's staging scenes.

He learned how to do that.

And I think that
he that also learned

how to make those images
speak on multiple fronts.

Say one thing
to a Black audience

that might be seeing them.

Say something different
to a white audience

that might be more critical
of that message.

These are things
that you look at,

and you say, "yeah,
that's a dog fight."

Yes, there is something
that we can recognize.

But then there's
this other thing,

something that really works
inside of the head,

and gets you to think
about power,

to think about tension,
to think about energy itself.

He's speaking to just the fear

that had been inculcated
within the Black community.

People didn't feel comfortable
even letting white people know

they even had a thought
about anything.

The meta-narratives
of confrontation,

of collision,

of the racial dynamic
that they are living

and experiencing
as they stand and look

at this artist
creating this work

in front of white people.

During his time,

there must have been
some horrific instances.

Certainly, I know he saw
and possibly experienced

some... some pretty bad
situations.

I see pain in a different place
in his work.

I see past pain.

I see...

I see it more like
this is the pill...

His work is the pill
from the pain.

That's how I see it.

Things started to pull together

after Bill and Lorisa
got married.

Lorisa adopted Bill's kids
as her own.

Bill moved up from working for
wages as a simple farm laborer,

to renting his own land
from the white Traylors

and farming it on his own.

Now there are different kinds
of tenant farming.

If you didn't own your own
horse or mule or tools,

you could rent them on credit
from the landlord,

which often led to a debt

and almost slave-like
obligations.

If, on the other hand,

you didn't have to borrow
the means of your livelihood,

you could grow whatever
you wanted on the land,

and farm it pretty much
as your own boss,

if you knew what you were doing.

And Bill knew what he was doing.

While others
were planting cash crops

like cotton, Bill diversified.

He used to say,
"You could have that building

over there full of money,
but you couldn't eat it."

Traylor raised foodstuff
as well as cotton,

and kept on raising animals
of all kinds.

You've got to get up,
get out, go on

So even though
depression and hard times

had hit most of Alabama,

Bill kept the farm
and his family above water,

working hard
and clearly drinking,

which by his drawings
looked like an endless source

for celebration and despair.

When you hear the tone,
it will be exactly...

Time to get a drink

Just a little drink

Any little drink

Will do

Bill said many times
that drink ruined his life.

Drinking will get you
in trouble.

Drinking will make you
lose your wife.

Drinking will send you
to the penitentiary.

He said what little sense
he had whiskey took away.

He knew drink from the inside.

He once said he drew some
people with duck lips,

you know, to show the tingle
you get from that first drink.

But even
at their most inebriated,

his drinkers
still move with grace

and a certain dignity.

Bill loved imperfection,
anomalies,

and making something remarkable

from the abandoned,
discarded, and flawed.

I see these imageries as
kind of a translated freedom,

a way of being your own person,

and whether that meant
that you were free

to do something
important and powerful

or you were free to mess up
and not do the right thing,

it was still a certain...
Certain personal freedom

that was important to have.

Join us in a drink

Or two

Or three

Or four

Or more

Traylor seemed to really prefer

pieces of board that were
found, that were worn.

Discarded cardboard and boxes

and backs of posters
and castoff materials,

whether they're industrial
or from nature.

Everything is used
and it's completely parallel

to the way he's using
the cardboard.

You know, he's getting
everything he can out of that.

Tears and stains and marks.

They kind of carried with them

the story of the road
they had traveled.

Probably the use
of cardboard and stuff

would be considered
more conceptual today.

We call it recycling
and he's just...

...doing it.

He liked drawing on dirty boxes,

I think because the smudges
cracks, stains,

and the irregular shapes
of his boards

generated visual activity
that he responded to.

For example, he found
a counter display card

with staples in it

where men's handkerchiefs
had been attached.

Another window display card
had a thin slot in it

and Bill drew a figure
peeking into the slot.

And in Brown House
with Figures and Birds,

the way the figures are pulled

and tumbling back
into the bulge at the left

and the birds are sweeping up

the right hurling edge
of the board

back into the center
of the picture,

one feels
that had to be in response

to the shape of a given space.

With Traylor in particular,

the mystery really is,

just how did that
come out so quickly,

so clearly?

And you feel like
it was in him for years.

He's 80,
he's seen a lot in his life.

But I really feel
that these are works

that have a kind of insistence.

I think that's why
we like them so much,

that's why we're so moved
by his work,

is that they don't have
this kind of desire

to teach us a story,
or a lesson.

What we're confronted with
is what we see.

And there's such strength
and such beauty

and such poetry in what it is
that we engage with.

It's more powerful
than being taught.

I think the power lies
in self... knowing self,

not being taught self.

Bill said to me the reason
he left the plantation was,

as he put it,
"My white folks died

and my children scattered."

However congenial or genuine
the relation between

the Black Traylors and Marion
might or might not have been,

there was clearly
a personal bond there.

And when Marion,
who was in charge, got sick,

his son George Boyd Traylor
took over.

It's said that he was tough
on the laborers.

So, not just Bill
and his family,

but all the Black Traylors
on the farm

after three generations
in one place up and left.

Nothin' but peace in that...

Bill wasn't just moving
his family

from one anonymous
white-owned farm to another.

Traylor was moving from land
he knew intimately:

land he was raised on,

that he'd worked
most of his life

as his father
had done before him.

For the first time in his life,
Bill Traylor was without a home.

Traylor and his family
eventually settled

50 miles away
where Bill rented land

and continued farming.

While there's no information
about the quality

of the new land or the terms
of the new landlord,

records make clear
that the Traylor family

kept growing.

By the time the Traylors set up
in Montgomery County,

there were nine children living
under the same roof.

Four of them Bill had
with Lorisa,

one possibly
with Laura Williams,

and another four
outside children

Bill apparently had
with other women.

However many other women
Bill had or hadn't had,

by 1910, after 20 years,

Laura Williams is listed
as his common law wife.

What became of Lorisa
is unclear.

Say, honey

Where did you stay at
last night?

Where... where did I stay
last night?

You heard me

Honey, you'd be surprised

No, I won't be surprised

You'd be surprised...

When we look at
the relationships he depicts

between men and women,
we have to be careful

about putting
a contemporary overlay

on what was the reality
of his time and place,

which was very much about
shifting family structures

and making do.

We've been married
'bout one year

That's too durn long

But it seemed like heavenly

It's something that we can't
really go back and understand,

and have to give
a lot of latitude

to the reality
that survival was day-to-day

and it happened both
on practical fronts

and emotional ones.

Traylor's subjects are very
specific and local in a way.

But part of their power
is that they're...

I find them
completely universal.

The ones that intrigue me
the most

are the arguments
between couples,

like you just see a couple
standing on the street

and he knows exactly
what's going on

and he can depict that.

When they're fighting,

everybody's pointing
in a different direction,

because they have
their different opinions,

and she's pointing that way
and he's pointing that way.

They are just like...
They are not on the same page.

We women can be anything
that you men can be

Yeah, but you'll never be
the father of a family

- Now, I'm a woman
- Yes, and I'm a man

- So you can't do that to me
- So you can't do that to me

Hey, hey, boll weevil

By the time Traylor
and his family

started farming
in Kendell, Montgomery County,

the hard times that plagued
the South got even worse.

The boll weevil infestation
decimates

the cotton industry
for several years.

Then there are other places
around the world

that can pick up that slack.

And so you see Black people

leaving the rural area,

not just because of rural
violence and segregation,

but also because
of mechanization

and lower demand

and the lower prices
relative to cotton.

By the 1920s, the Traylors
moved again in response

to the worsening conditions,
physical as well as economic.

It seems the rheumatism
that would eventually cost him

his leg had laid him low.

For the first time since the
post-Civil War census began,

Bill was no longer able
to plow or plant

and his occupation
was now listed as "none."

Laura was no longer
working either,

and their sons
Willie and Clement

appeared to be supporting them
until they also quit the land,

first joining their sister
Nellie in Birmingham

where young Willie,
said to be Bill's favorite,

married and started
a family of his own.

That is until 1928 when he was
brutally shot down by police.

My grandfather Bill Traylor
went to Birmingham

to identify the body.

He felt unending sadness
at the loss of Willie.

Whether they knew it
at the time,

Bill Traylor and his family
were enacting

one of the central rituals
of African American life

in the early 20th century.

Squeezed out and yet locked in
by a Southern world

that both reviled
and needed them,

Blacks were leaving
the rural South for cities,

mostly in the North,
where jobs were more plentiful.

By the time of Willie's death,

all of Bill's children
and Laura Williams

had moved away.

Alone, in his 70s,

cut off from everything
but memories,

Bill Traylor headed
to Montgomery

sometime in 192 7-'28.

Well, I done got old

Well, I done got old

I can't do the things
I used to do

'Cause I done got old

When my grandfather lived
for a time

in a little shack
on Bell Street in Montgomery,

he worked as a shoemaker
for a private family.

He drew with charcoal
and hung his works for sale

on the fence around his shack.

Us grandchildren would also
bring him our shoes for repair.

When he was done with that,
we'd sit and watch the trains.

And sometimes he'd draw me.

And then because of the pain
in his legs,

he couldn't work anymore.

Unemployed and homeless,

Bill had only one place to go:
uptown.

There he placed himself
in what may have been

the most central location
in the city of Montgomery:

Monroe Street.

One of the things
that people talk about

when you go to New York City,
it's a city that never sleeps.

That's the way they talked
about Monroe Street,

that there were always people
on Monroe Street.

It was a hub for entertainment.

The Pekin Theater,
it was very prestigious.

It offered Black people
in Montgomery

an experience to go
to the theater.

It has an orchestra pit,
it's a really top-rate theater.

And then, of course,
the drug stores,

which were really central.

Dean's Drug Store was
a communication hub also.

Everybody knows where it is.

People went to that drug store
to find out what was happening.

The types of materials that
Bill Traylor would have found

would have been consistent
with Black businesses

trying to reach the most people,

and you could do that
at these drug stores.

The Black business class
had a vested interest

in working with,
and being seen as working with,

and being responsive
to the Black community.

So Traylor would have benefitted
from that type of largesse.

It seems like
the whole neighborhood,

Black merchants and white,
took care of Bill.

The Jewish grocer next
to where he sat gave him food;

they fed him and let him wash
up in the back of the store.

The owner's son Nace used
to bring him sandwiches

when he'd be out there
smoking his pipe and drawing

late into the night.

And many of the local merchants
had this thing going

where they'd put up indigents
overnight

in their businesses and shops.

Bill slept in the coffin room
of Ross Clayton Funeral Home

for so long,
that was where the government

would send his relief checks.

Fifteen dollars a month,
I think it was.

It seems like everyone in
the neighborhood liked Bill.

Not everyone.

For over a generation now,
American Blacks

were trying to unite and define
themselves as people,

the key words being
"define themselves."

Urban Blacks, North and South,

were on a crusade to get
as far away as possible

from the racist stereotype
that Blacks, by definition,

were shiftless, lazy,
immoral and dirty,

and here was Bill Traylor,

sitting there
as unapologetic as you please,

representing everything

the nascent Black middle class
despised.

You can see it in the faces
of the women who saw him

as they passed by.

But sit there he did,
reimagining iconic symbols

of white power
and cultural supremacy

alive in the built environment
of Montgomery.

And what better monument
to use over and again

than Montgomery's Greek Revival
Court Square Fountain,

topped with a statue of Hebe,

the cupbearer to the gods
and goddesses of eternal youth,

and festooned
with classical cherubs

and elegant regal birds.

What makes Bill Traylor key
for a lot of people

is his moniker
of "the primitive."

During the Harlem Renaissance,

we have
academically trained artists

who have gone to art schools
and have studied in Paris.

But the only way
that their works

can be embraced by the critics

is that if the critics
see something

that comes from the soil,
that is vernacular,

that is primitive.

And many artists play
with this idea

who recognize the power
and the potential

of an aesthetic sensibility
that is not from the academy,

but comes from the blues,
that comes from folk life.

During that time,

a group of like-minded friends
and artists

rented a meeting place
and called it The New South.

They were definitely
taking a cue

from the Harlem Renaissance,

looking at African American art
and culture

as this really powerful thing
that should be celebrated

and looked at
and was valid in its own right.

It was a third-floor space
in a downtown building

consisting of a few rooms

originally used
for cotton sampling.

I t was here that we hung
Bill Traylor's first show.

We showed maybe
a hundred pieces,

and on the cardboard cover
of the catalogue,

we used
a silk-screen reproduction

of Bill's drawing
"The Sea Cow."

The inside pages
of brown wrapping paper

contained a short essay
and linoleum block-prints

of two more Traylor drawings.

I never felt Charles Shannon
spoke for Bill Traylor.

The only thing that I might say
was speaking for Bill Traylor

was the comment
that they had put together

the exhibition in The New South,

and that Bill Traylor

didn't recognize his own work

being hung on the wall.

I took it at the time as meaning

now that it was
formally presented,

some of the life
had been removed from the work,

not that he didn't really
recognize his own work.

It came up and went down
within the span of a month.

But people took photographs

and documented
a lot of the works

that were made
within that first year

that we know he was working.

And so it provides
a very valuable sort of lens

into what he was doing at
a very specific moment in time.

A newspaper wrote
a little something,

but nobody bought anything
and few people came.

So I decided to travel
to New York

to see if I could find someone
to take care

and protect Bill's work.

Before I left on my trip
to New York in 1941,

we took up a collection so Bill
could get off the street

and visit family.

He headed north to visit
his daughter Easter

in the Black Bottom section
of Detroit.

Eighty-six years old

and Bill Traylor
had spent his whole life

in a 40-mile radius
of Montgomery.

He was now joining the migration

that he had resisted
for a lifetime.

I carried a large group
of Traylor drawings to New York

to show to friends,
one of whom directed me

to a man employed at the MoMA.

The man was interested
in the work.

Later, Alfred Barr and his staff

were shown the drawings.

But the truth is,
no one was seeing the genius

in Bill Traylor
that I witnessed.

Without ever consulting me

as to whether or not
I wanted to sell the work,

or if so, at what prices,

I simply received a check
with a letter telling me

that Mr. Barr and staff
had agreed to pay

$2 a piece
for the larger drawings

and $1 for the smaller ones.

"Hope this meets
your approval."

Taken aback,
I returned the check

and demanded immediate return
of my drawings.

The work remained in storage
till the mid-'70s.

I didn't get any sense
that Shannon

was upset by the dollars,

it was that he had brought
the work in for review,

and rather than getting
a review, he was getting money.

When I got back to Montgomery,

I found that Bill
had returned also.

I never thought
I'd see him again,

but there he was
in his usual spot.

Said he hated the trip.

The bus driver wouldn't stop
to let him use the bathroom.

And then, the war came.

I was drafted in the summer
of '42 and duty called.

Bill left Montgomery
at the same time

and went north to visit family.

As he had before, Traylor
soon returned to Montgomery.

And when Shannon
went into the service,

his wife Blanche went to buy
pictures from Traylor.

Meanwhile the war brought

the defense industry
to Montgomery.

The face and skyline
of the city changed.

Charles Shannon
was back in New York,

where he spent
the final years of the war

as a picture editor for
the Army Information Division.

He returned to Montgomery
for good.

And in 1946, after four years,
Shannon sees Traylor again,

but they do not stay in touch.

Now back in Montgomery for good,

Traylor undergoes surgery
a second time,

to amputate his left leg.

A lot of Black folk
didn't leave.

A lot of Black folk stayed

in their communities,
in the South.

Bill Traylor seems to be
one of those people

for whom Montgomery and Alabama
was kind of his place,

was his land, was his turf,
you know.

During the war,
the government discovered

that Bill had family
to care for him

and they threatened
to cut off his relief money

unless he got off the streets.

That's when Bill moved in
with his daughter,

Sarah Traylor Howard,
and her husband.

I knew Bill had relatives
up north in Detroit

and other places,
but he never mentioned

any family in Montgomery.

My name is Frank L. Harrison,
Bill Traylor's great-grandson.

My name is
Antoinette Staffney Beeks,

and I am the daughter
of Myrtha Lee Traylor Delks,

and she is the granddaughter
of Bill Traylor.

My name is Myrtha Delks.

My children call me Muhdear.

Willie Traylor was my father.

When I was born,
my father didn't think I was his

and they gave me up
for adoption.

It doesn't hurt,

but it's just something
that happened.

I'm Nettie Jean Trayler-Alford.

I'm the great-granddaughter
of Bill Traylor.

My father was the grandson
of Bill Traylor.

Clement Traylor was my father.

Starlene Trayler Williams.

I am the great-granddaughter
of Bill Traylor.

In Philadelphia, as a young boy,
you know, being a boy,

my grandmother would threaten me

with putting me in what
she called the "owl closet."

In that closet
was Bill Traylor's artwork.

They had it up on a top shelf.

I never saw an owl,
a painting of an owl,

but I do remember a pig.

Eight years old,
having to look up,

already in a frame of mind,

I don't really want
to go in here.

So you know...

Well, I'm... 69.

But I was a young kid,
but I remember,

a lot of times
we were over there,

and I used to draw
on the back of his pictures,

playing tic tac toe.

I didn't know that they were
going to be famous paintings.

We thought it was scratch paper.

This is quite nice because you
see his use of the brush here.

The purchasing of images
by Blanche left Shannon

with a large collection
of Bill Traylor's work.

I imagine...

In 1992,
at a Traylor family reunion,

his relatives, many hearing
about Bill for the first time,

showed an interest in owning
some of the work.

This led to a lawsuit
and eventually a settlement

was made to provide drawings
to the family.

Bill Traylor: His Art, His Life.

When I was 1 7,
I decided I was gonna go

and find my family
in Montgomery.

I found out that my grandfather
was still alive

and that was Bill Traylor.

I met him for the first time,
he was wearing a hat.

He was sitting out there
all day,

and he was in Aunt Sarah's
backyard.

That's the way I met him.

My mother said that when she
would go to Aunt Easter's house,

several of his drawings would be
tacked on the wall with a nail.

And she said she asked
her several times,

"What child drew these pictures?
What kid?"

And she said Aunt Easter
got very, very, very upset

with her and said, "Look, those
are the pictures my daddy drew."

I was working for the IRS
at the Detroit computing center.

And a co-worker brought
a newspaper clipping in

and she asked me,
"Well, Nettie,"

by my last name being Trayler,

even though we spell ours
with the "e"

as opposed to the "o,"

"Are you any relation
to this guy?"

So she made a photocopy

and gave it to me
and I took it home.

Well, Uncle Bubba
was living in the house

with my mother
and my father and us,

and I asked him, I said,

"Uncle Bubba, do you know
who this man is?

Everybody's asking about him."

He said, "Yeah,
that was my daddy."

And that was all he said.

Bill didn't stay with Sarah long

before he headed up north
a third and final time,

back to Easter's boarding house.

He visited children
in Detroit, Chicago,

New York, Philadelphia,

and Washington D.C.
during these years.

After losing a foot
and then his leg to gangrene,

Traylor moved back to Montgomery

to live once again
with his daughter,

Sarah Traylor Howard.

Soon after I came back
from the war,

I went to visit him
on Bragg Street

where I found him sitting under
a big tree in the backyard.

He had drawing materials
beside him

but nothing much was happening.

I remember when
they took his leg off.

He cried every day.

When his leg was healed,

he went back
to his drawing board.

He drew all kinds of animals
and men and such.

I didn't save
any of the work he did

after he returned from up north.

Clearly, Traylor's best work
was behind him.

It's a shame, but so much of
Bill Traylor's work is gone.

Even when folks saw
his drawings and tried

to save them, even then,
much of it was lost,

probably because of the
fragility of the materials

Bill liked to work with.

Makes what we do have
so precious,

especially as that old world
dies away.

When we think about
the many, many mules

and horses that Traylor drew,

I return time and time again
thinking about one

where his remark
about the picture was,

"Turned him out
in the pasture to die."

I think it would be
overly simplistic

to understand that
simply as a mule

and not as a greater metaphor
for something.

He is Chasing Ghosts.

He's trying to
quantify that life

and give meaning to it
and also look ahead

at what's coming
and be celebratory of that,

and also understand that

he won't be a part of it.

It's because you are young.

You do not understand.

But we are old
as the jungle trees

that bloomed forever,

old as the forgotten rivers

that flowed into the earth.

Surely we know
what you do not know;

Joy of living,

useless of things.

You are too young
to understand yet.

Build another skyscraper
touching the stars.

We sit with our backs
against the tree

and watch skyscrapers tumble

and stars forget.

Solomon built a temple

and it must have fallen down.

It isn't here now.

We know some things, being old.

You do not understand.

I still have the letter
he had someone write to me.

"Dear Sir,
I am asking you to come"

to the Fraternal Hospital,

42 Dorsey Street, Montgomery.

I want to see you at once.

"Yours truly, Bill Traylor."

The place was a large
two-story house

with a wide hall
down the middle,

rooms off to each side.

I went down the hall and it was
the last room on the left,

a very big room, like a ward
with cots lined up.

There must have been a dozen
other people in the room.

It was an awful place.

Bill could hardly talk.

I remember kneeling down
beside him

and he could barely speak.

I can't even remember now
what was said.

That was the last time
I saw him.

A few days later
I got a letter from Sarah

saying that Bill had died
and would I please pay her

the $25 I was holding for Bill

from a drawing of his
I sold to a man in Chicago.

But Bill hadn't died.

He lived on another two years.

He died at Oak Street Hospital.

He was buried
in an unmarked grave

near where his daughter Sarah
would eventually be buried.

In 1966,
when Easter died in Detroit,

the family found a trove
of drawings

Bill had done up there.

Sarah immediately went up

and brought all the work
back with her.

When Sarah died in 1974,

no one claimed
any of her possessions,

and the realtor
threw all of her belongings,

including all of Traylor's work,

into the trash.

The only time
that I can remember,

vividly, actually coming
to Montgomery,

was for the burial

of my great-grandfather
Bill Traylor.

I vaguely remember
that the grave-site,

there were no graves behind me.

It would be like here, here,

it would have been on the edge.

Certainly there was
nothing beside it.

My real remembrance

is physically standing
at the grave-site

with my grandmother
and other people.

And...

I would have been right in here.

Big Ma would have been
about here.

And it was comical in a sense,

but very frightening,

because she lunged toward it.

Yeah.

She was very emotional.

Yeah.

Well, she just wanted
to go with him.

She was very frightened.

And it frightened me
because what she said is,

"Papa, I want to go."

And that scared me.

Long time ago,
I remember standing here.

There's no question.

Wow.

After Bill Traylor passed,

and before my grandmother
Lillian died,

it's something
that she had just said,

"Buddy, you know this
was your great-grandfather's.

Why don't you keep it?"

And I said,
"Big Ma, what is this?"

And she said,
"Well, it's a pipe holder."

And I said, "A pipe holder?"

I didn't smoke, you know,
so I didn't realize.

I've had it for decades

and it's, you know,

the same patina is in there.

You know.

He's pretty cute.

I'd like to have his paint
brushes, you know.

I'd like to have his boots.

You know, yeah, yeah.

But this I'll keep
in the family.

Yeah, yeah, this is great.

I don't mind waiting

I don't mind waiting

Bill Traylor came
to art-making on his own

and he found his creative voice
without guidance.

On you, Lord

His existence was divided almost
equally between two centuries.

The family he was born into
was enslaved,

and his life thereafter
spanned multiple worlds:

Black and white,
rural and urban,

old and new,
as well as the crucibles

that indelibly shaped America.

The headstone
that will now mark the place

in which his body
was laid to rest,

is long overdue,

but from here forward,
will honor him

as an important part of both
Alabamian

and American history.

It is not an overstatement
to say

that Bill Traylor
was an American original

and that his body of artwork
that he left behind

is an American treasure.

In honor of Bill Traylor,

and the gift he used
to share invaluable insights

of his life experiences,

do hereby proclaim
March 2 7, 2018

as Bill Traylor Day
in Montgomery, Alabama.

How great is our God

Sing with me,
how great is our God

All will see how great

What a momentous moment.

How great is our God

God's been good,

that those who once
picked cotton

were able to pick a president.

What a befitting moment
for us to be here today,

to celebrate one who's dead,

but yet to celebrate his works.

Let everybody sing

And so today, we see that
the character of Mr. Traylor,

though dead so many, many years,

still lives on.

It reminds me of what
Henry Longfellow said,

that when you live this life,

you, in fact, leave footprints

on the sand of time.

Mr. Traylor today
has left a footprint.

I want to encourage all of us,
because one day,

one day, it will be you.

What footprints
will you have left?

This little light of mine

I'm gonna let it shine

This little light of mine

I'm gonna let it shine

This little light of mine

I'm gonna let it shine

Let it shine, let it shine

And all along,
there was ol' John de Conquer,

fighting a mighty battle
without outside showing force

and winning his war from within.

Really winning,

for he was winning
with the soul of the Black man

whole and free.

Making a way out of no way.

Bill Traylor wasn't just
a chronicler

of some distant time and place,

he was bearing witness
to a community

in an ever-changing now.

And in doing so,
teaching the future.

Persevere, rejoice,

endure, remember.

He reached this moment
when he knew

that he could
put down his story.

So when you put it all together,

it is this very deep well
of memories.

It's just a trove.

What is humanity but a story,
a history,

about engagement
or disengagement,

or collision.

And we get this from his work.

It doesn't get tired,
it doesn't get old.

What I see is a very strong man.

Wow, very strong man,
had to have been.

He's a major figure,

and there's nothing
like him really.

He's getting his reward.

Now, now, now, now.

And I believe that he knows it.

He still says what he says,
the way he says it.

He's like the person who walked
in off the street and...

...made a nod at you
and walked away.

I'm gonna let it shine

Let it shine, let it shine,
let it shine

Going downtown

I'll be drunk

Don't like it,
you can move your trunk

Hey, hey, hey

Hey, hey