Through Mitti Hicks
October 30, 2025
The college sold four of the six murals by Black American Artist Hale A. Woodruff.
Alabama’s first private historically black college, Talladega College, has sold its historic collection of works by black American artist Hale A. Woodruff amid financial troubles.
The council sold four of Woodruff’s six murals after board chairman Rica Lewis-Payton said so New York Times that the college had difficulty meeting payroll shortly after she took the role.
Over the past year, she said she oversaw the sale of the university’s most prized possessions: Woodruff’s murals.
“The result of more than a year of careful consideration and due diligence resulted in an unprecedented coalition that benefits Talladega College in extraordinary ways and honors those who came before us, including Hale A. Woodruff, whose paintings will now be seen by millions of people in the United States and around the world.” Lewis Payton said a statement.
What you need to know about sales between Talladega College and arts institutions
The Smithsonian American Art Museum describes Woodruff’s 1930s figurative style as “bold” and “muscular.” The lynching of black people weighed heavily on his conscience and inspired him to design a series of his most iconic and impressive block prints.
According to the Smithsonian American Art Museum, his best-known and most praised works the time was Amistad murals, painted between 1939 and 1940, that were installed in Talladega College’s Savery Library. Talladega commissioned Woodruff for a group of six murals, painted between 1939 and 1942.
The murals had a few meanings. First the Amistad murals celebrated the 100e anniversary of the mutiny by enslaved Africans aboard the Amistad in 1849, their trial in New Haven, Connecticut, and after acquittal, returning to West Africa. His other iconic mural is The underground railway.
It has acquired the Toledo Museum of Art, according to a press release on the university’s website The underground railway. The Art Bridges Foundation and the Terra Foundation for American Art have jointly acquired three paintings that represent the Amistad uprising and its aftermath. Woodruff’s two paintings depicting the founding of Talladega and the construction of the school’s Savery Library will remain on campus, the college confirmed.
“This unprecedented coalition has formed a strategic partnership that will jointly manage the paintings and maintain their connection to Talladega, including reuniting all six murals at the College on an agreed upon schedule,” according to a statement on the college’s website.
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