Jasper and Jessie Mae appear statue-like, flanked by the pine trees. Jasper squares his body to serve as stability for Jessie Mae who was blinded by her former husband. Prior to her injury Jessie Mae served as a domestic employee for the artist’s mother, and the two were very close. Following her debilitating injury, and lacking formal education, Jessie Mae was unable to find employment in her later years.

Jasper attended school until the fifth grade, when he began working in the fields. It is not known whether Jessie Mae attended school as a child. In 1954 the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling legally ended “separate but equal schools” for Black and white people. However, when this photo was taken in 1976, at least forty-two “segregation academies” (private schools created by white families in protest to integration) were operating in Mississippi.