1899. (Maria) Howard Weeden, using her largely self-taught talents with brush and pen, made a unique contribution to an era in the history of the South, with faithfulness to fact and with respect and dignity to the individuals recorded. Harris writes in the introduction to Bandanna Ballads, The art with which the facts are set forth is so felicitous in its touch, so faithful and so informing, that it goes deeper than character and individuality; it revives and resurrects the period; in some mysterious way, it restores the atmosphere and color of the time. And each portrait stands out as a little masterpiece, harmonious, powerful, charged with feeling, and illuminated by the imagination that makes its creations more real than life itself. Contains 23 dialect poems, ballads and portraits of African-American folks of the Old South.