FREEMAN VINES

It’s been 90 years since Oliver Moore, a 29-year-old North Carolina man was abducted at midnight from the Edgecomb County Jail. Moore had been accused of sexual improprieties with two young white girls. He didn’t fight as he was hosted up a tree by dozens of angry white men, tortured, and some accounts say, shot as many as 200 times. No one was ever convicted of his murder. Now, almost a century later, that very tree has been cut down, and the wood sold. Artist and guitar maker, Freeman Vines, purchased some of the wood, and talks to our Lisa Godley about the haunting images that surfaced as he carved the ‘Hanging Tree Guitars.’ The exhibit is on display now through September 12th at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. And they will be on display at the Portsmouth Art and Cultural Center, starting in the spring of 2022.