Roland L. Freeman (July 27, 1936 – August 7, 2023) was an American photographer and documenter of Southern folk culture and African-American quilters.
[1] He was the president of The Group for Cultural Documentation, founded in 1991 and based in Washington, D.C.[2] Roland L. Freeman was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on July 27, 1936.
[3] In 1997, Freeman was named the Eudora Welty Visiting Professor of Southern Studies at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi.
The Arabbers of Baltimore, published in 1989, documents the work of fruit and vegetable vendors and their horse drawn carts, including Freeman's uncle.
A Communion of the Spirits was a landmark American quilt history book, as no one else prior to Freeman had performed a national survey of Black quilters.
[34] Also in 2023, the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson acquired 131 quilts collected by Roland Freeman illustrating quilt-making by African-American women, many from Southern American communities, from Liberia and South Africa.
[35][36] In 1991, the Smithsonian American Art Museum acquired ten black and white prints by Roland L. Freeman as a gift from George H.