George Fuller (1822-1884) was an artist from Deerfield, Massachusetts, who made multiple, extended trips to the American South 1849-1858. Fuller documented in this hasty pencil sketch a large gathering of mourners at an African American burial he observed in Alabama in 1858. Plantation owners often required that deceased slaves be buried in segregated, more remote locations and generally allowed slaves to conduct their own funeral services. This racially motivated arrangement may have provided African American mourners more privacy and control over burial rites.

George Fuller’s sketch is among 57 pencil and 23 pen and ink drawings in a sketchbook he kept over a two-year period that descended in the Fuller family. Fuller’s sketch and his memories of this event formed the basis for his later oil painting, Negro Funeral, Alabama completed c. 1881-1884 and currently in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts.