Walter Frank Cotton

1892 - 1978

Walter Frank Cotton was born in 1892 near Mexia, Texas and was a descendant of slaves who had been enslaved upon the Stroud Plantation in Limestone County, about six miles west of Mexia.  He was interested in art from an early age.  He recalled “I used to draw pictures on the ground with a nail when I was a child…my teachers let me draw on slate…..I’m a natural…I believe being able to paint is inborn.”  Cotton grew up on the farm and did the usual tasks that farm boys perform, attended the Methodist church and community school, then went to college.  He served in World War I and when he returned worked as a railroad mail sorter until he became an educator. Cotton, a self-taught painter, began painting in the late 1930's after he saw paintings in a Catholic Church in Chicago that impressed him. He returned to Texas and began painting Biblical scenes, historical events, and portraits of African American leaders and family members. Cotton also wrote books and illustrated them with his own drawings and paintings. One of Cotton's largest and well known paintings is "Reading the Emancipation Proclamation on the Gouverneur Stroud Plantation, June 19, 1865.”  Cotton had a desire to preserve history which is shown in his paintings and histories. Because of failing health, he ceased painting in 1969. ⁷