Born into slavery on an Alabama plantation in 1853, Bill Traylor worked as a sharecropper for most of his life. But in 1928 he moved to Montgomery and changed his life, becoming a self-taught lyric painter of extraordinary ability and power. From 1936 to 1946, he sat on a street corner--old, ill, and homeless--and created well over 1,200 paintings. Collected and later promoted by Charles Shannon, a young Montgomery artist, his work received star...