Collage of drawings, photographs, and tapes of Southern revival meetings with recordings of creek baptism, snake handling, foot washing, casting out devils, speaking in tongues, and dancing in ecstasy created by artist Eleanor Dickinson. Pentecostal Videotape and Audiotape Collection (NMAH.AC.0199, ref22) Chapters The Gadarene Demoniac (0:02) Preacher Rev. Roger Powell opens mid-sermon, expounding on the…
Rev. Roger Powell pastor of the Church of God of the Mountain Assembly in Lake City, Tennessee, taught himself to read from the King James version of the Bible. He was a friends with Harrison Mayes and helped him with his truck, distributing the signs. He also connected Eleanor Dickinson with Harrison Mayes. It was…
Eleanor Creekmore Dickinson’s *Revival!* project is best known for its large drawings and black-velvet pastels of Pentecostal and Holiness worship. But from the late 1960s she also built a substantial body of video and audio recordings documenting the same world in motion and sound.
This is a documentary recording by Eleanor Dickinson of Brother Henry Harrison Mayes, the folk-art sign-maker and lay preacher from Middlesboro, Kentucky, near the Cumberland Gap. The recordings are part of Eleanor Dickinson’s Pentecostal Videotape and Audiotape Collection and were made public through the Smithsonian Online Virtual Archives. Chapters Opening Introduction Eleanor Dickinson Brother Harrison…
Thanks to Shawn of Lexingtunes.com who discovered the Newsweek articles about Mayes and also Eleanor Dickinson’s Revival! exhibition. The Jesus Artists The Jesus Artists Both the sights and the sounds of an exhibition called “Revival!” seem out of place at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., or at any museum, no matter how informal or…
Since the beginning of my research, I was trying to locate the Lighted Cross on the map and thanks to new Google Street View material and new angles and close-ups, I was able to locate the cross. In the short documentary ‘The Heartland Show’, they start with a close-up of the Lighted Cross. The cross…
WBIR Channel 10’s ‘The Heartland Series‘ hosted by Bill Landry aired from 1984 to 2009. We hope you enjoy these captivating windows into East Tennessee history. This short documentary shows the lighted cross close up and several prominent markers around Middlesboro. There is still hope that footage of Henry Harrison Mayes will surface. I know…
Every now and then, I receive an email from people who found the Mayes Marker Map (or MMM, as we call it here :)) helpful, and want to contribute new locations, sightings, or send in photos to document a marker’s current state. I can’t express how grateful I am for this, because it helps document…
Ivan Massar, From the Selma to Montgomery, 1965 Like photo-essayist James Karales, photojournalist Ivan Massar documented the fifty-four-mile voting-rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. Like Karales, Massar took a picture of Harrison Mayes iconic roadside marker in the foreground and the marchers on US-80 in the background. Elliott Erwitt, Alabama, 1955 French-American photographer Elliott…
While I’ve rarely seen signs by Henry Harrison Mayes in snapshots, his work and that of other, even more anonymous sign makers is often documented by professional photographers (see With Signs Following, by Joe York). Here is a list of photographers with an interest in vernacular religious signs in the US. Meryl Truett Meryl Truett…
A reader of the blog notified me about a “GET RIGHT WITH GOD” cross on I-65, Wolcott, Indiana. He noted that this might be a copycat marker and according to Google Street View it does look indeed newer, and it’s not Mayes style, and it’s on an Interstate instead of an older highway. Certainly, whoever…
Last time I drove by the Mayes sign in Conway, AR. 2024-03-11
Check out photographer Roger May’s newsletter “The Ground at My Feet”. In issue number 10 he talks about how he first encountered Harrison Mayes roadside markers.
A few updates on Henry Harrison Mayes roadside markers. Devon Tuttle and Roger May provided me with the exact locations and photos of two corrugated metal crosses that were listed here with an approximate location. One outside Rutherfordton, NC and the other outside Steele, AL. Also, it appears that the Montgomery, AL concrete cross was…
Apparently, Conway’s Harrison Mayes Marker, that I documented here and that kicked off my interest in Mayes’ work which resulted in this website, is nominated for the National Register of Historic Places. The Arkansas properties that will be considered by the State Review Board come from all over the state and illustrate the rich and…
Since I began documenting Henry Harrison Mayes work online, I knew I would rely on people who know more than I do and visited places I will never be able to visit. I found that the people who conserved the most knowledge before internet posts on blogs or social media were a thing, were three…
I found references to Mayes markers in the book Mountain Holiness: A photographic narrative from 2003 which can be ordered via the UT Press website or borrowed digitally over at archive.org. It features markers in Ewing, VA, Harlan, KY and this cardboard sign by Mayes. Photography by Warren E. Brunner
Last year I found out that Henry Harrison Mayes and Folk Art legend Rev. Howard Finster knew each other and Mayes even influenced Finster with his sign ministry. The first clue about this relationship I found in Norman Girardot’s book Envisioning Howard Finster: The Religion and Art of a Stranger from Another World. And digging…
The YouTube Channel “The Appalachian Storyteller” features Harrison Mayes story. Found my Conway, AR sign in there, so I assume one or another image was sourced from here as well. Which is cool. I found a few more leads in the comments, so maybe I’m able to add more to the map.
It’s hard to tell if this is a genuine Mayes cross. I’ve seen images of crosses with a similar typeface attributed to him. Those were older, and given the bad paint job and the time frame of William R. Ferris photo, this might be one of those older crosses, painted over by someone who “took…