It was painted in Washington, D.C., and is now owned by the New York Public Library, on permanent loan to the New-York Historical Society.

[3][4] Negro Life at the South is considered Johnson's masterpiece, and it gained attention at its first exhibit among more than 800 works at the National Academy of Design in New York City in 1859.

[1] An adult black woman looks out an upstairs window as she steadies a small mixed race child sitting on the partially collapsed roof.

Southerners associated it with plantation life and noted that the Negroes seemed cheerful in their leisure time.

Northerners might concentrate on the top half of the painting, with the dilapidated roof representing the degradation of slavery and the light-skinned woman and child suggesting a theme of miscegenation.