Giving Back at Affordable Employee Benefits LLC

Giving Back to Our Community

Learning to Paint and Sculpt

 In 1923, Mayfield and his twin brother were born on their family’s 100-acre cotton farm in Ecru, MI. When Mayfield was a toddler, his father died of tuberculosis and his mother was left to raise the couple’s 12 children.

Unfortunately, five of Mayfield’s siblings would also die of tuberculosis. For this reason, a teen-aged Mayfield took his own tuberculosis diagnosis as a death sentence. 

Although tuberculosis rendered Mayfield bed-bound for eight years, he spent his convalescence learning to paint and sculpt. He later explained, “[art] is my real life. My art is my family, my romance, my everything.”

Mayfield used flowers and vegetables to make his paints and relied on native clay or papier-mâché for his sculptures.

Pictured (left to right): Andrew Nowlin (son and president of Affordable Employee Benefits), Ken Nowlin (father and businessman), and John Nowlin (son and vice-president of Affordable Employee Benefits).

He eventually created busts of historical figures, including Joe Louis, the former heavyweight champion. Mrs. Mayfield was proud of her son’s artwork and placed M.B.’s bust of Joe Louis on their front porch, which faced Old Highway 15. 

In June 1949, Professor Stuart Purser, the art department chair at the University of Mississippi, drove past the Mayfield’s porch and noticed the bust. The professor met Mayfield and after looking at more of his art, offered Mayfield a job at the university as a janitor. Mayfield accepted the position and was given some painting supplies and bus fare to Oxford, MI.

At the end of each workday, Mayfield would listen to lectures and paint in a broom closet off of Professor Purser’s classroom; he famously called it “my little private one-student classroom.” Mayfield continued learning in this way from 1949 to 1951. 

Although he was never formally enrolled, many have considered M.B. Mayfield to be the university’s first black student; however, Mayfield was known for his humility and shied away from such a distinction. Instead, Mayfield upheld the legacy of James Meredith, the first black man to register at Ole Miss, when he said, “I didn’t accomplish the things [Meredith] did. He was the one who took the punishment.” 

During his time at Ole Miss, students and community members, including William Faulkner, raised money to send Mayfield to see a Van Gogh show at the Art Institute of Chicago. Later, Mayfield’s own art would be shown at the Brooks Memorial Art Gallery (now known as the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art), the Pontotoc Historical Society, and even the University of Mississippi. 

Mayfield’s perseverance in the face of racially segregated Mississippi has drawn people to his work and his life story. In 2004, Mayfield published a brief autobiography, "The Baby Who Crawled Backwards."

Artists and historians alike have written books about Mayfield, including "The Education of Mr. Mayfield: An Unusual Story of Social Change at Ole Miss," by David Magee. Additionally, a film about Mayfield’s life, Door Ajar: The M.B. Mayfield Story, was selected at the Oxford Film Festival in 2019 and is currently available to watch through Amazon Prime. 

Continuing a Legacy