Bernard L. Herman is the George B. Tindall Distinguished Professor of Southern Studies and Folklore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He’s edited a fine exploration of artworks assembled by the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, which began with Atlanta collector William S. Arnett and serves to promote Black artists in the American south, mostly unappreciated beyond local circles until the Foundation’s promotion. Maxwell Anderson III, an experienced Museum Director and founding Board Member—not Black himself—was appointed the Foundation’s Director in 2016.

In the chapter, “The South Has Always Had Something to Say,” Elijah Heyward III points out that the sensibility of the artists in this book is not only racial but regional. Until reading this rich volume, my own understanding of African-American art was rooted in northern artists of the industrial Midwest and northeast. I’ve written in this publication of noted artist and educator Ashley Bryan (1926–2022),...

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