Jesse was born August 24, 1941 at the height of sharecropping times in Tupalo, Mississippi. His life was split between days in school and days working the cotton fields. Jesse was named for his great-grandfather on his mother’s side, Jesse Lucas. The name has biblical significance, and in Hebrew means “gift.” Perhaps this is what his birth meant to his parents, or was their hope for what he would bring to the world. His mother, Dorothy, gave him the middle name Franklin after the man whom she saw as a compassionate leader, Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Although Jesse would move north as a young adult to obtain his Master's Degree in Education and pursue an eclectic working life as a "jack of all trades": teacher, construction worker, vocal and guitar performer, radio disc jockey, and community organizer, his paintings continue to reflect the images from his childhood. Jesse’s inspiration often comes by way dreams or visions of a particular scene, like a gift brought through time on some old southern breeze. Once the idea has been planted, he will work fervently a painting for days, as though the image is haunting him until it has been fully expressed.

"These pictures represent the African Americans in the north who are now in their 60's, 70's and 80's," Jesse says. Struggle was the constant companion for African Americans of his generation. It was considering hopeless to profit from sharecropping; a "new system of slavery" set in place by the landowner so that you could never succeed. When he speaks of growing up in the south, an intense hunger plays over his face. You can see how his body remembers that time when he prepares to tell of what it was to be a black man in America when he was growing up: he squints as though the afternoon sun were high above, his shoulders hunch forward, and his fingertips grip onto hard-skinned knuckle.

"The bigger the family, the bigger the farms, the bigger the debt," Jesse recalls. The Key family boasted 7 children, 4 boys and 3 girls. Jesse's mother, father, sisters, brothers, and the white landowner are central figures of his paintings. It was Jesse's parents who dealt directly with the landowner and knew the tricky ins and outs of the system. The painting "Weigh In: The Unfair Scale" frames a moment in which Jesse's mother, affectionately known as Mama Key, took the essential risk of weighing her bale of cotton with bricks hidden inside, something she never allowed her children to do. While the landowner thought he had won by permanently tipping the scale, Mama Key had cleverly flipped the script in her family's favor to make things come out even in the end.

Another character figures strongly in the watercolor dialogue of Jesse's work. From open space to open space, from line to line, the earth speaks through the rolling fields and ruffled trees of his southern landscapes. When I ask my father about the earth's relationship to his work and the sharecropping system, his eyes brighten and the edges of his sweet smile lift. He leans easily back on his chair and muses, "The earth was our hope, our foundation, our support, our lifeline! The earth was always our savior and the skies were never unjust."

Jesse's poetic words paint a spiritual relationship between sharecroppers and the land that supported them, a bond that eased the pain of heavy labor and constant hunger. Jesse describes his work on the land as energizing and nourishing; plowing, turning the earth and seeing the cotton and corn grow connected them to the land, a dear friend and ally. And there was more to the earth's riches than the plants which grew from the soil upon which he had sweat. The cattle, mules and horses all lived off the land and provided their rich milk to keep the family strong.

When I ask Jesse about the landowner who "controlled" the system, his voice is nonchalant and dismissive. "To us," he says as he shrugs his shoulders, "the sharecroppers were unimportant because we knew their position...and what they wanted [was] for us to continue working for them." Despite the distant power of the landowner, Jesse describes a different sense of ownership and power that he had as a boy. "As young children we were hungry, [but] we could run and play and work. We could have ownership in the sunlight and the air!"

Jesse’s paintings are displayed around Buffalo, NY in the Center for the Arts at the University at Buffalo, Public School #53, Our Savior Lutheran Church and the popular East Side joint, Gigi's Soul Food Restaurant. Jesse graduated in 1959 from the Baldwin Colored High School and went on to earn a B.S. from Central Sate and later a M.S. from Buffalo State University. He currently lives in Buffalo, NY and where, when he is not painting or singing, he cares for a small apple tree in the backyard and attempts to defend himself from the constant phone calls from his wife, 7 children and 2 grandchildren.