A painter and quiltmaker, Hunter spent most of her life on the Melrose Plantation in Central Louisiana, where she worked first as a field hand and later as a cook. She took up painting in her 50s, likely after acquiring discarded paint tubes from a New Orleans painter who occasionally visited the plantation.

Self-taught, Hunter worked from memory, creating scenes of multiple generations of Black life in and around Melrose with particular emphasis on the sharecroppers and tenant farmers who grew, picked, and processed cotton on the plantation following the abolition of slavery. Her paintings soon caught the attention of journalists who were drawn to Melrose as a relic of the pre-Reconstruction South, and in 1953 Look magazine featured her art. Hunter was eventually able to earn a modest living as a painter, selling her work to regional collectors.

—Text taken from the Carter Handbook (2023)