Transcript of interview of Winfred Rembert

Transcript of interview of Winfred Rembert

Turner County Art Council/Ashburn Historic Preservation Commission Oral History Project

This oral history captures the life story of artist Winfred Rembert, told in a 2003 phone interview with Shelley Zorn for the Turner County Jail Museum project in Ashburn, Georgia.

Rembert recalls his early life in rural Georgia, where he was raised in cotton fields with little access to education. As a teenager, he became involved in civil rights demonstrations. At age 18, after stealing a car during a protest in Americus, he was jailed in Cuthbert. Held in secrecy for two years while the Army listed him as AWOL, he endured harsh treatment, including severe beatings. After fighting back against a deputy, he escaped briefly but was captured.

He describes being taken by law enforcement and local citizens to a secluded site prepared with ropes for lynching. There, he was tortured—hung by his feet, cut, and nearly killed—before one man intervened, sparing his life. He was paraded publicly in chains, convicted in a biased trial, and sentenced to 27 years for larceny, escape, and related charges, though he served seven.

In prison, he was transferred from Reidsville to Leesburg and eventually to the Turner County Work Camp in Ashburn, where he found comparatively humane treatment. At Ashburn, he learned road construction, reading, and writing, and was eventually made a trustee. Most significantly, he met his future wife there, beginning a relationship that connected him permanently to Ashburn.

Throughout the interview, Rembert emphasizes survival, resilience, and the shaping of his later art, which drew directly from these lived experiences of labor, incarceration, racial violence, and community memory.

2003