Woodruff was 38 when he received the Talladega commission. (Born in 1900 in Ohio, and raised in Tennessee, he died in 1980 in New York, where he taught at New York University for more than 20 years.) After studying at the JohnHerron Art Institute, Indianapolis, Woodruff broadened his experience at the Art Institute of Chicago's school, Harvard's Fogg Museum School, and in Paris between 1927 and 1931.