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painting of 1952, Grandfather's House, evokes the nostalgic quality of her youth. She employs a relatively dark palette combining brush and palette knife strokes to place figures in a tree lined yard, reclining lazily in the summer's heat. As a young child, Alma evinced an interest in making things. The Georgia clay, plentiful near her home, was collected in pails and cans, which she made into little cups and plates.⁷ Her concern for three dimensional objects would remain with Thomas for decades as she completed sculpture and fashioned marionettes. In addition, the beautiful flower gardens and circular floral beds created by her parents around the family home nurtured her seminal interest in nature. Her aunts, who had established cultural clubs in Columbus, invited lecturers and colleagues from Atlanta to discuss world history, Shakespeare, the classics, and Latin twice a month. These factors laid an important foundation for the life of Alma Thomas. Regrettably, the one library in the city did not allow African Americans. As Thomas recalled: "...the only way to go in there as a Negro would be with a mop and bucket to work and scrub something."⁸ With the turn of the century, racial tensions increased, as did anti-black activities in Georgia. On September 22, 1906, Alma's fifteenth birthday, a riot erupted in Atlanta. Incited by several days of newspaper articles alleging assaults on white women by black men, white citizens pulled black passengers off trolley cars, led raids on black establishments such as barber shops, tailor shops, restaurants, as well as pool rooms and saloons with black clientele, and randomly 4