Simka Simkovitch Sites

Now privately owned, the James O. Eastland federal post office and courthouse was constructed in 1933-34. The building contains a controversial New Deal mural painted in 1938 by Simka Simkovitch titled "Pursuit of Life in Mississippi." After being covered up for decades, the mural was rediscovered in 2011. The mural "shows African-Americans picking cotton and playing the banjo alongside a white family... The mural, which is in the main courtroom on the fourth floor, had been hidden behind a curtain since the 1960s when the first African-American judge appointed to the federal court in Mississippi ordered it to be covered, historians said. The...

Simka Simkhovitch painted four oil-on-canvas murals for the Beaufort, North Carolina post office: "Crissy Wright," "Goose Decoys," "Mail to Cape Lookout," and "Sand Ponies". They were installed in the lobby of the post office in 1940.