From a near-lynching and prison to a Pulitzer Prize. A Connecticut artist and writer’s life story resonates today.

Patsy Rembert recalls the first time she met her husband: She was washing clothes in her backyard when he attempted to ask her a question.

Being young, she was startled and ran into the house, telling her father that there was a prisoner in the yard.

Immediately, her father went outside. He was armed with his shotgun and confronted the man and the group of men with whom he was working.

The man, Winfred Rembert, told him that they just wanted some water - as they were working hard, as a part of a prison chain gang.

As it would turn out, Winfred Rembert served seven years in prison and hard labor for car theft, taking a gun from a deputy sheriff and escaping from prison, the New York Times reported.

Winfred Rembert was persistent when it came to Patsy, asking her to write to him until she gave in.

She started sneaking to see him in secret, she said, until she was ratted out by a friend,. After a tough conversation with her father, he gave the couple his blessing.

The now late Winfred Rembert was eventually a New Haven resident and artist. He hailed from Cuthbert, Georgia. His paintings have been exhibited at museums and galleries in Connecticut and around the country, according to the Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School website.

He also is the 2022 Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South.”

To celebrate his life, legacy, and art, The Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School and the Public Humanities at Yale chose to honor Winfred Rembert this week.

The Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School also said that Winfred Rembert was recently cited as one of the century’s most “unique and visionary artist-chroniclers of Black American life.” He was raised in a family of field laborers, joined the civil rights movement at 14, survived a close-call lynching attempt by police, and also spent the seven years on chain gangs.

However, he became fully immersed in his craft at age 51, after listening to the persistent encouragement of Patsy Rembert over the decades, she said. The couple had eight children.

“I could see that he had a story to tell. And I could feel the emotion when he’d be talking to me about it,” Patsy Rembert said. “That is something that he needed to share with the world. And that in some way I was hoping that it would help him relieve some of the hurt…caused [to him], by him doing the work.

“That was my reason, that it would be here for people to look at [his art] forever. People would be able to look at that work. Touch it. It’s touchable,” Patsy Rembert said.

With that love and support by his side, Winfred Rembert delved deep into his art, giving audiences a glimpse into his life experiences of surviving Jim Crow, and using his leather-tool techniques that he acquired while incarcerated - by painting and carving, she said.

The art and life story is chronicled in his memoir, “Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South,” was posthumously given the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in the biography category.

Winfred Rembert’s co-author, Tufts University professor of philosophy Erin Kelly said that his memoir provides an important opportunity to learn about the past, in his unique voice and artwork.

“It’s very important because the story is told in the memoir... from his perspective, and it includes his artwork in conversation with his narrative he tells about his own story, about his own history,” Kelly said.

“So it’s a special opportunity to learn from him about what the Jim Crow period was like for someone who lived it namely himself ‚to be told from his perspective about what that was like. And at the same time, of course, he’s speaking for many other people who had to endure similar things.” Kelly said.

Patsy Rembert said that while her husband was talking about this specific era, she recalls also talking with him about how similar it is to the times of today.

“We’re still living in Jim Crow. We just live in it in a different way. It’s mostly scars now, but it’s the same thing…,,” she said. “The only difference is there’s just so many people with their eyes on it…. So [they have] to do it [in a way] to blind you to what’s going on, but it’s still going on.

“Jim Crow just changed the name…We just can’t see the stripes visually, but mentally…We’ve been abused and mistreated….still being told that [we are] nothing. So we do need to talk about it,” Patsy Rembert said.

Kelly said that one example of what Patsy Rembert is referring to is the ongoing violence against Black men in the country.

“We can understand this era of extreme punitive misconduct, as an era that displays that kind of violence. So locking up millions of people, who are disproportionately Black and brown, is a form of violence,” Kelly said.

“Like Patsy said, it’s removing people from view, so you don’t see the effects of the violence on them. They’re locked away and removed from society, at least for some period of time [or] sometimes for a very long time. But these are acts of violence that have profound effects,” she said.

Kelly said she hopes that Winfred Rembert’s memoir invites people to reconsider the Jim Crow era in order to understand its importance.

“To think about [the Jim Crow era] through what he’s able to teach us about what it meant to him and what it was like for him to experience it. I do think it’s important,” she said. “I hope that it will help to encourage people to both think about the recent past…with empathy and understanding for the people who had to endure conditions of serious social injustice.”

Enduring the conditions of serious social injustice comes with long-lasting repercussions and for Winfred Rembert, he had to often deal with nightmares from the experiences he lived during the Jim Crow era.

Patsy Rembert said she recalls witnessing her husband struggle with PTSD, every time he would create his art - from the painful ordeals he faced during the Jim Crow Era.

She said that there was very little that she could do to help him during those difficult times, as much of the PTSD would occur in the form of dreams while he was sleeping. Yet, she made sure to provide as much comfort as possible, when he was awake.

“I would give him comfort after he was awake. I would say, ‘honey, it’s gonna be okay. It’s OK. Nobody’s chasing you. Nobody’s running after you.’ But at the same time, I’ve felt his pain and I’ve felt the anguish…,” she said.

“...Holding something inside of you for so long and not telling anybody, I think damaged him greatly…he felt like nobody would believe him. Nobody would care about what he had to say. And I thought it was important that the world needed to hear it,” she said.

Despite navigating the ups and downs of life, Patsy Rembert said that it was a wonderful experience for her to share life with her husband day to day.

“When you love somebody, there’s a sense of patience and waiting for him…he lived with me. I was young, immature. He had patience with me…He has an understanding of my deep affection for him. So, in that respect, I think it was wonderful to be married to him, and for him to give me everything that was in his power [that he could],” she said.

Patsy Rembert said that she hopes that people who learn of her husband’s life, art, and legacy will get a deeper understanding of the man behind the art and what he stood for.

“He was a man that struggled. He was a man of happiness, through the trials and tribulations that he had. He was a family man. He loved his family. The things that he wanted for his family, he wanted for everybody,” she said.

“And he was a person that didn’t have animosity…He didn’t hold a grudge. He wanted everybody to love him and he wanted to love everybody. He was about love and consideration of others and their feelings,” she said.

Kelly said she hopes that people appreciate Winfred Rembert as an artist.

“He was a self taught artist. He was a genius in his ability to compose extremely sophisticated, modern and complex works of art with the incredible use of color and a very serious subject matter. So, he’s a special artist with a remarkable talent,” she said. “And I hope people will come to understand his historical significance. I think that bringing his artwork into conversation with his life story in the memoir is a very unique and special contribution that I hope people will both appreciate and learn from.

“I’m happy that he found his place in history, and that he will never be forgotten. He will always be remembered. That’s what I’m hoping…I know that much. He’s never going to be forgotten, given to him,” she said.

“And as Patsy said, Winfred finding a place in history, delivers some kind of justice to him. I think he was seeking a sense of justice for all that he suffered, and that this offers some justice to him,” Kelly said.