Jim Crow Times

Clip from upcoming PBS documentary, The Highwaymen, Legends of the Road. Coming to PBS in May 2008.

They were an unlikely group of black landscape painters that emerged from the American South in the 1950's and 60's. Segregation locked them out of selling their works in white owned art galleries. So, the artists took to the road to sell their paintings.

They formed a loose knit cooperative of artists and door to door salesmen and started mass producing decorative landscape paintings of Florida. The artists churned out the paintings in assembly line fashion and the salesmen packed them in their cars to sell to businesses and home owners all over the South. It is estimated that collectively the artists may have produced as many as 200,000 paintings and they sold every one.

In the 1970's and 80's the art had largely been forgotten and many paintings were sent to either the attic or the trash can. But, in 1994 a savvy art buyer re-discovered their art and labeled the group of black artists, "The Highwaymen". The title stuck, creating an art world identity that fueled their popularity and the value of their art.

The Highwaymen, Legends of the Road reveals the artists' inspiring journey and profiles the three remarkable men who initiated it. The one-hour feature documentary features exclusive interviews and never before seen images and paintings.

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• highwaymen
• florida
• art
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• PBS
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[vyrgo84]

@zark78 that dude is laughing about hard times! damn, !!  respect !!!

[zark78]

It's hard to imagine those days existed. As a northerner, I always wonder how white southerners feel about jim crow.

[SexyRaww]

Every time I watch a documentary on the past, it makes me always wonder why adults acted the way they did. It's beyond me how they justified in giving these people power to commit to these things. Look at the holocaust. That is just ridiculous. Those things SHOULD NOT and CANNOT happen. Period.

[98bigbutt]

@EbonyNewsChannel,That's true. Didn't notice that.

[EbonyNewsChannel]

@98bigbutt The word you should pay attention to in re-GENTrification is GENTILE..

[98bigbutt]

There were also some types of segregated laws in the Northern US cities as well.Such as blacks or Hispanics couldn't live in white neighborhoods or buy a house in an all white neighborhoods.But it wasn't as bad as it was in the Southern US cities.Today a new type of racial discrimination that's focusing on every black and hispanic neighborhoods in every major US cities.It's called gentrification.

[shipmaker14]

Man! and I thought it was hard to be a Door-to Door salesman anyway!

[Deadman7Inc]

Its inspiring to see his optimism on the whole situation. You have to respect a man like that.

[imadokieve13]

you can tell he had patients

[HerrSchenkel]

@zark78 Today, we white southerners feel the same way about Jim Crow laws as you do. I worked in a factory a few years ago, and when I was told by some of the older folks that it used be segregated, I found it hard to imagine. About half of my coworkers were black, as was my trainer (a man that I enjoyed talking to when we had time who helped convince me to become a little more conservative when I was much more liberal) who later became my supervisor.

[The313boi]

10-14 Is that Emmet Till?