William “Bill” Traylor was born on April 1, 1854 and died on October 23, 1949.  He was a self-taught artist born into slavery on a plantation belonging to George Hartwell Traylor near Benton, in Lowndes County, Alabama. After emancipation, his family continued to farm on the plantation until the 1930s.
Bill Traylor in spent the prime of his life working as a sharecropping. Like most blacks of his generation, the first black American citizens, they were expected to farm the land without owning it. Bill Traylor was expected to know his place, stay in it and leave this world with out leaving a foot print. Bill Traylor at the height of the great depression, in his 80s moved to Montgomery, Alabama where he slept in the back room of a funeral home and in a shoemaker’s shop. During the day, he sat on the sidewalk and drew images of the people he saw on the street and remembered scenes from life on the farm.  Traylors art gallery was the fence behind him. Charles Shannon, a painter, who, with his friends from the New South, brought Traylor art supplies and bought his drawings for nominal sums. Despite being homeless, jobless and alone, Traylor pursued his passion which was painting, drawing and documenting the local culture in the thriving African American community. There is no evidence of Traylors drawing before moving to Montgomery, however once there, that is all he did. During the next four years, Traylor produced between 1200 and 1500 drawings. In February, 1940, the New South hosted an exhibition of Traylors drawings, and in 1942, the Fieldston School in Riverdale, New York, hosted an exhibition organized by Victor E. D’Amico. The shows produced no sales. During World War II, while Shannon served in the South Pacific, Traylor moved north to live with relatives. Returning to Montgomery in 1945, he lived on the street again until relief workers insisted that he move in with a daughter who lived in Montgomery. A requiem mass was held for Traylor at St. Jude Church after his death October 23, 1949.

Joseph Osborne Social Curator

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