Winfred Rembert grew up in a family of Georgia field laborers and joined the Civil Rights
Movement as a teenager. He was arrested after fleeing a demonstration survived a near-lynching
at the hands of law enforcement and spent seven years on chain gangs. During that time he met
the undaunted Patsy who would become his wife. Years later at the age of fifty-one and with
Patsy's encouragement he started drawing and painting scenes from his youth using leather
tooling skills he learned in prison. Chasing Me to My Grave presents Rembert's breathtaking
body of work alongside his story as told to Tufts Philosopher Erin I. Kelly. Rembert calls
forth vibrant scenes of Black life on Cuthbert Georgia's Hamilton Avenue where he first
glimpsed the possibility of a life outside the cotton field. As he pays tribute exuberant and
heartfelt to Cuthbert's Black community and the people including Patsy who helped him to
find the courage to revisit a traumatic past Rembert brings to life the promise and the danger
of Civil Rights protest the brutalities of incarceration his search for his mother's love
and the epic bond he found with Patsy. Vivid confrontational revelatory and complex Chasing
Me to My Grave is a searing memoir in prose and painted leather that celebrates Black life and
summons readers to confront painful and urgent realities at the heart of American history and
society.
