On This Day In Alabama History: Folk Artist Jimmy Lee Sudduth Died

By Alabama NewsCenter Staff

September 2, 2007

Born in 1910 in the rural Caines Ridge farming community near Fayette, Jimmy Lee Sudduth spent his entire life in Fayette County. His adoptive parents were itinerant farm laborers and moved often, which disrupted his education. Attending a one-room schoolhouse through the fourth grade, Sudduth struggled to write his own name and never learned to read. Encouraged by his mother, though, art became his talent. He collected natural materials, particularly mud, to use for pigments and created additional colors mixing them with house paint and juices from leaves, grass and berries, as well as soot from his chimney. As a Southern folk artist, Sudduth rose to national prominence in the 1970s, appearing on the “Today Show” and “60 Minutes” in 1980. He died at the age of 97 on Sept. 2, 2007.

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.

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