Posthumous Recognition
The people of Columbus, Georgia, raised a commemorative headstone for him in 1976. He was the subject of a play titled HUSH: Composing Blind Tom Wiggins, which was performed on the Atlanta stage with Del Hamilton as director.
Between 1970 and 2000, Dr. Geneva Handy Southall wrote a three-volume thesis titled Blind Tom: The Black Pianist Composer; Continuously Enslaved; it was published by Scarecrow Press in 2002.
In 1981 he was the subject of a film, "Blind Tom: The Story of Thomas Bethune" directed by Mark W. Travis.
In 1999 John Davis recorded an album of Tom's original compositions on a CD entitled John Davis Plays Blind Tom. The cd package included essays by Amiri Baraka, Ricky Jay and Oliver Sacks.
A full-length biography, The Ballad of Blind Tom, Slave Pianist, by Deirdre O'Connell, was published by Overlook Press in 2009.
Read more about this topic: Blind Tom Wiggins
Famous quotes containing the words posthumous and/or recognition:
“One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.”
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963)
“In a cabinet of natural history, we become sensible of a certain occult recognition and sympathy in regard to the most unwieldy and eccentric forms of beast, fish, and insect.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)