“Harvesting Cotton/ Bringing to Store”

2013.50.2 – Byron Burford created this oil painting on Masonite entitled “Harvesting Cotton/ Bringing to Store” for submission in the New Deal Art program administered by U.S. Treasury Section of Painting and Sculpture in the 1940s. This program was created to solicit paintings and sculptures for newly designed federal buildings and post offices. Burford, who was born in Jackson and grew up in Greenville, submitted this painting for a post office mural; however, it was not chosen. The scene depicts a cotton field during harvest beside a plantation store. This painting is displayed in the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in an exhibit entitled Cotton Choppers. The artist’s son Kevin Burford donated the painting.