What Color is Water?:
Growing up Black in a Segregated South
July 8 – 23, 2023
Syd Blackmarr Arts Center
255 Love Ave
Exhibit Hours
Thursday & Fridays: 4 – 7 pm
Saturday & Sunday: 11 am – 4 pm
Opening Reception
Saturday, July 8: 5 – 7 pm
2nd Thursday
Thursday, July 13: 6pm
Dr. Titus Brown Lecture
“The History of Tift County’s Industrial School”
Annie Lucille Greene, Georgia native, painter, craftswoman, and retired educator, is best known for her yarn paintings. Her very recognizable style is distinguished by the use of colorful knitting yarns outlined in black embroidery thread. Her paintings frequently reflect culturally and socially relevant images of her life as an African American in the rural South.
Greene spent her childhood in Hinesville, finished high school in Hogansville, attended Spelman College in Atlanta, completed her undergraduate degree at Albany State College, began teaching in Thomasville in 1954, then took a job in LaGrange in 1955 where she taught until her retirement in 1989. She earned a master’s degree in art education from New York University in 1961 because the State of Georgia gave her an out-of-state tuition voucher. Many southern states used tuition vouchers to avoid the expense of providing “separate but equal” post graduate educational opportunities for blacks.
In her exhibit, What Color is Water?: Growing up Black in a Segregated South, Annie Greene tells her life story from youth until after desegregation. This exhibit reminds us of inequities many would like to forget – racial segregation of all public and private facilities, schools, bathrooms, water fountains, hotels, restaurants, transportation and entertainment. The stories are told in colorful yarn paintings with touches of humor, so they are not depressing but leave us grateful that the stories are of times gone by.
Of particular relevance to Tifton, the subject of one of Greene’s paintings are children playing in front of a Rosenwald School (pictured above). The Rosenwald school project was a partnership between Booker T. Washington, at Tuskeegee University, Alabama, and Julius Rosenwald, a businessman and philanthropist, in Chicago, Illinois. In a creative and collaborative effort these men managed to build almost 5,000 schools across the rural south in the first half of the 1900s to education African-American children. One such school, the Tift County Industrial School, was built with the assistance of a grant from the Rosenwald fund, on land originally donated by Captain Tift.
Links for additional information:
Click here to learn more about Annie Greene’s process
National Trust for Historic Preservation: Rosenwald Schools
*The Tifton Council for the Arts would like to thank the following business sponsors for their contributions to make this exhibit possible: Springhill Suites by Marriott, Comfort Inn & Suites, and The Local. We would like to also thank Dr. Cameron Nixon and Dr. Margaret Richardson-Nixon as well as Beverly Bloodworth for their generous contributions to our exhibit.
*We are also extremely thankful to the Tift Industrial School alumni for collaborating with us on this project. Their participation has added a depth of knowledge that no doubt will enhance the experience of this exhibit for everyone.
