Curious Objects: Bill Traylor on the Silver Screen, with filmmakers Sam Pollard and Jeffrey Wolf Editorial Staff Photograph by Horace Perry, courtesy of the Alabama State Council on the Arts. In April of 1853 a child was born into slavery on an Alabama cotton plantation owned by George Traylor. His first name was Bill and he would take the plantation owner’s last name for himself. A sharecropper and laborer for most of his life, in the decades since his death in 1949 Bill Traylor has become known to the world as an artist. Now, a new documentary tells Bill Traylor’s story on film for the first time. Ben Miller speaks with executive producer Sam Pollard and director Jeffrey Wolf about