Oak Tree is dedicated to the memory of David W. Arthur (1947–2026)—artist, historian, teacher, mentor, and friend.
Oak Tree is a series of paintings developed with deep sensitivity to the historical legacy of racial terror in the United States. Set during the Jim Crow era, the works present a fictional narrative through imagined characters and events that respond to the realities of that period.
At the center of the series is The Dark Wool Cavalry, a fictional African egalitarian community created to protect African people through mutual care, education, poetry, and collective solidarity. While grounded in compassion, the group also embodies the resolve to confront injustice and resist the forces that seek to erase their humanity.
The series emerged from research into the origins, visual culture, and propaganda of the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist terrorist group whose influence expanded significantly during the 1920s. Historical photographs, articles, and propaganda posters informed aspects of the visual language of these paintings, not to recreate or glorify that history, but to examine and transform its symbols through fiction.
The title, Oak Tree, honors the countless lives stolen through racial lynchings of the past and acknowledges the lasting legacy of racial violence that continues to affect communities today. Many of these lynchings were carried out from trees throughout the United States.
This project should be understood as a work of speculative fiction and contemporary art, inviting critical reflection on history and its lasting impact rather than documenting or depicting an existing organization.
Sources:
National Humanities Center. The Twenties in Contemporary Commentary: The Ku Klux Klan. Becoming Modern: America in the 1920s: Primary Source Collection. 2012.
Resources:
Eldridge Cleaver, Soul On Ice, 1968
Eldridge Cleaver, Post-Prison Writings and Speeches, 1969
William Melvin Kelley, A Different Drummer, 1962
C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, 1938
Select an image to enlarge. Transcriptions of the text appearing in the paintings are provided below.
No. 1, oil and pencil on paper, 22.5 × 15 in., 2026
No. 2, pencil on paper, 22.5 × 15 in., 2026
No. 3, oil and pencil on paper, 22.5 × 15 in., 2026
No. 4, oil and pencil on paper, 22.5 × 15 in., 2026
No. 5, oil and pencil on paper, 22.5 × 15 in., 2026
No. 6, oil and pencil on paper, 22.5 × 15 in., 2026
No. 7, pencil on paper, 22.5 × 15 in., 2026
No. 8, oil and pencil on paper, 22.5 × 15 in., 2026
No. 9, oil and pencil on paper, 15.5 × 15 in., 2026
No. 10, oil and pencil on paper, 22.5 × 15 in., 2026
Transcriptions
No 1.
Dark Wool Cavalry
Left Column: As a result, the South has felt keenly the losing of this labor and has suffered heavy financial losses.
Among a small percentage of Southern employers there is a realization that the old order of Negro oppression has passed and definite steps are being taken to eradicate some of the evils.
But, unfortunately, there is a larger element which still holds to the doctrine of "keeping the nigger in his place."
Negroes are to be driven by unemployment and starvation back to the land of lynchings.
REPRISAL
Center: The land belongs to those who work it
WE BELIEVE that under God, the women of the Dark Wool Cavalry is a militant body of American free-woman by whom these principles shall be maintained, our racial purity preserved, our homes and children protected, our happiness insured, and the prosperity of our community, our state, and our nation guarded against usurpation, disloyalty, and
Right Column: Make me a grave wherever you will,
In a lowly plain, or a lofty hill;
Make it among earth's humblest graves,
But not in a land where men are slaves.
I could not rest if around my grave
I heard the steps of a trembling slave;
His shadow above my silent tomb
Would make it a place of fearful gloom.
I could not rest if I heard the tread
Of a coffle gang to the shambles led,
And the mother's shriek of wild despair
Rise like a curse on the trembling air.
I could not sleep if I saw the lash
Drinking her blood at each fearful gash,
And I saw her babes torn from her breast,
From "Bury Me in a Free Land" by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, 1858
No. 2
Women of Moringa
THE SEED THE SOIL THE HARVEST
W D W C (surrounding the central emblem)
Outline of Principles and Traditions
WOMEN OF THE DARK WOOL CAVALRY
Incorporated
Issued by the Grand Council
Women of the Dark Wool Cavalry,
Sacred Grove, Elm.
Black-Root Oak CO., Sacred Grove
No. 3
ELM
DARK WOOL CAVALRY RALLY
Sponsored By
The Third Province, Realm of Foliage
United Cavalry of Moringa Inc.
Soldiers of The Dark Wool Cavalry
ON COUNTY ROAD
405 E. ONE QUARTER
W/ OF THE TALL GRASS
PRESERVE HOLLOW
DATE
29 AUGUST 70
TIME
5:30 P.M.
Left Column:
A Hymn to the Evening by Phillis Wheatley. Public Domain.
Soon as the sun forsook the eastern main
The pealing thunder shook the heav'nly plain;
Majestic grandeur! From the zephyr's wing,
Exhales the incense of the blooming spring.
Soft purl the streams, the birds renew their notes,
And through the air their mingled music floats.
Through all the heav'ns what beauteous dies are spread!
But the west glories in the deepest red:
So may our breasts with ev'ry virtue glow,
Right Column:
The living temples of our God below!
Fill'd with the praise of him who gives the light,
And draws the sable curtains of the night,
Let placid slumbers sooth each weary mind,
At morn to wake more heav'nly, more refin'd;
So shall the labours of the day begin
More pure, more guarded from the snares of sin.
Night's leaden sceptre seals my drowsy eyes,
Then cease, my song, till fair Aurora rise.
L.M. Abreu
Grand Warden
Realm of Foliage
PROGRAM
FORAGING-IN-WILDERNESS — BLUES and DRUM SOUNDS
A GATHERING OF SPIRITUAL KEEPERS
CONCLUSION
WILD AWAKENING
BOYEI MALAMU!
ALL OF MORINGA
No. 4
L. M. ABREU'S
THRILLING STORY BEYOND THE SLAVE BIBLE
The Cavalry
or
"The Rise of a Sun"
Created by L.M. Abreu, in Pursuit of thoughtful
Leadership for the world
Left side:
Negroes
1956
are
1957
Supreme
1947
Right side:
isolate
to be
together
Romance and Wisdom within Historic Landscapes
ELM
Excerpt from The Low Tree by Countee Cullen
Come, let us plant our love as
farmers plant A seed, and you shall
Water it with tears, And I Shall weed
It with my hands until They bleed. 1927
Black Eden
7 Days Initiation
Saturday
Dawn Monday, Tuesday, Friday
Daytime 3:00, Dawn 5:00
Maria Cruz
September 15
Ginger, Turmeric, Basil
No. 5
Àwọn odò igbàani
tí ó ṣókùnkùn
1956
The Dark Wool Cavalry
IS
ANTI–ANTI
June 8, 1921—Dr. K. H. Lenert, of Brenham,
Texas, was whipped, tarred, and feathered by
eight masked men. He was charged with
"disloyalty during the war" and with "speaking
German."
sundown sorrow
On Being Brought from Africa to America
By Phillis Wheatley 1753–1784
'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
"Their colour is a diabolic die."
Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,
May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.
EVIL OVERNIGHT
No. 6
WOMEN OF DARK WOOL
LADIES OF THE
HIDDEN GROVE
THE HONOR OF WOMAN: Her Roots of Yesterday, Her Strength of Today, Her Seeds of Tomorrow.
We pledge our hands to the keeping of memory. We teach our children the names that history sought to erase. Our homes become places where stories are preserved, where the wisdom of our ancestors is carried forward, and where the earth is treated as inheritance rather than possession. We believe that remembrance is an act of resistance, and that each generation bears the responsibility of protecting truth, justice, and one another.
No. 7
THE ROSEWOOD CROSS
BY W.D.W.C.
ECHO BLUES
№ 65
L.M. Abreu
No. 8
163 U.S. 537 347 U.S. 483
DARK WOOL CAVALRY
THE CROWS
CIRCLE ONLY YOUR SKY
TAKE HEED
RISE AT DAWN
MORINGAS KEEP WARD
PROTECT OUR OLD SOIL
Is unlawful in that it cannot exist and function without violating the Constitution and certain statutes of the State, and that it is un-American because it cannot exist and function without destroying that political and religious freedom that is the glory of our institutions. … After a man or woman is whipped, no matter how innocent the victim may be, the most atrocious and libelous stories are immediately circulated about the victim with a view to prejudicing public opinion and preventing investigation and punishment for the criminals who perpetrate the lawless act. There can be little doubt but that the Crow in its present form is a legacy of the World War, the wages of war is Hate; and the End, and indeed the beginning, of Hate is Fear. Surely the Hand of God is leading and the Spirit of God is hovering over His great movement.
LOVELY DARKNESS
FAR AWAY IS AFRICA
No. 9
JOIN THE CAVALRY
No. 10
PRAYER FOR THE FALLEN
Seekers of Freedom — Soldiers of the
DARK WOOL CAVALRY
The Foliage Realm
Proud Tradition of Support
For RESILIENT SOULS
Ancestral Memory and the
Natural Order are UNDER ATTACK
ERASURE OF HISTORY
LOSS OF LAND
DISCONNECTION FROM ANCESTORS
EXPLOITATION OF NATURE
FORGOTTEN ROOTS
SPIRITUAL DISPLACEMENT
They had been duped so long by demagogues,
deluded generation after generation into believing
their sole hope of existence, of the Negro, that
the chains of ignorance and suppression they
sought to fasten on their Negro neighbors had
securely bound them in unbreakable fashion. They
opposed every move for better educational
facilities for their children, for improvement
of their health or economic status or welfare in
general, if such improvement meant better advan-
tages for Negroes. Creatures of the fear they
sought to inspire in others, their lives are lived
in constant dread of the things of evil and the
terror they preached. It is a system based on
stark, abject fear—fear that he whom they
termed inferior might, with opportunity, prove
himself not inferior. Negro—in spite of what he suffers—
always keeps his face towards the sun of achievement.