And native American History. Her first book, which i have in front of me, black slaves ind yanian masters, slavery, emancipation and citizenship in the native american stuff published by the university of North Carolina press. This book details the untold story of the enslavement of of enslavement by indians in the 18th and 19th centuries. Barbara has also coauthored a photo graphic history of slavery, emancipation and freedom, published in 2013, published by Temple University press, and it is also for sale in our book store. Tonight she will be speaking about her recent work and the talk is entitled envisioning emancipation, blank black americans and the end of slavery. Please welcome barbara. [applause] ms. Krauthamer hello. Good evening. Thank you for staying this late into the night. Thank you for staying awake. Thank you, peter, for the invitation and the introduction. And, alison, who has made sure that everything happened seamlessly from massachusetts to gettysburg. Tonight i want to talk to you about the book that i coauthored with deborah willis. Deborah willis, if you dont know who she is, is the leading scholar on the history of africanamerican photo gravy, macarthur award winner, just a brilliant woman and a dear friend of mine. And she and i were colleagues for many years. Over the years had many conversations about photographs of enslaved people that we came across in the course of doing other research projects. I would say to her, you know, youre the photography scholar. Explain to me why ive never reard read anything about the history of slave rnd and emans situation. She said, you tell me. So for truly a decade she and i would sort of, you know, go out to lunch go out to dinner, have a drink and show each other these photographs and then one day we said, you know, there may shuler actually be a book project here there may actually be a book project here. The book turned out to be envisioning emancipation. Our question in this project and in one that were just starting to get to work on in the upcoming months was what did freedom look like . Right . We know a lot about the legal history and the political history of the debates over slavery, of the civil war, and of reconstruction. But we wanted to really take this question to a visual perspective. And ask, how is freedom, emancipation represented and how did africanamericans represent themselves . Really the heart of our project was a history of africanamericans through their own eyes. How they saw themselves and represented themselves. At the more scholarly level, we were curious about using photographs and seeing them. Reading the visual text, as it were, as both artifact, right, relic of t of the the past, but also as historical sources on emancipation and its legacy. And obviously the most lasting and important legacy for our purpose this weekend is the history of reconstruction. So we were curious to see what we could do with these photographs to understand that history, how it was narrated and how it was preserved by africanamericans and also how africanamericans were represented in a visual telling of that history of emancipation and its legacy. So what im going to do tonight, right, so theres an illuminated coppy of the emancipation proclamation, but what ill do tonight is talk at that is take you through some of the images that we discuss and write about in the book. Theres some that ill just how you quickly. As we were putting this book together we looked through thousands and thousands of images from archives both in the United States and abroad. And early on our editor said, you can include 75 images. And we thought, well, thats just never, ever going to work. Because we came to the idea of about 250. They said, we can do 75. So we went back to our pile of 250 and we got it down maybe to 200, Something Like that. We went back to the editor and said, 75 is not going to work. And they said, ok, 100. And we said 200. We went back and forth. Finally we got to the point where we just didnt tell them how many we submitted. We were hoping they wouldnt count and clearly no one counted too carefully because the book came out. Some of the images ill shoal you show you tonight are in the book and some are not. When we started and we were thinking about what does freedom look like, we saw it was important to think about what does slavery look like in the history of photography. Most of the scholarship on the history of photography, especially in the u. S. Context, argues that tote graphy, when it arrived in the United States from france in the late 1840s, early 1850s had, a really profound democraticizing effect on American Culture. The technology became relatively affordable relatively quickly and that many americans, great and modest, could afford to have their pictures made. As we thought about it, we thought, this line of argument and interpretation didnt fit at all with what we were seeing in the photographs of enslaved people. And so we begin the book by thinking about slavery and photography and really arguing quite strenuously that the history of photography for africanamericans was not one about this democratic expansion of American Culture in the antebellum period, so we began with some of the more famous images that youve probably made in 1850, which is an interesting year that well get back to. Of enslaved africans and their americanborn children. So these were made in South Carolina under the direction of a harvard scientist who wanted to try to document his theories of polygenesis, that there were separate orders of human beings and separate creations of separate species. He had a series of these made. You can see i dont have a laser pointer. But you can see on the left hand side of the screen there that there are these hand written labels. This one says jack, driver, guinea, plantation of b. F. Taylor. From South Carolina. So there are a number of pictures like that that show both african enslaved people and then there are americanborn their americanborn progeny. With the attempt of using photography to present a visual image of human difference and hierarchy. There are others that have women with their breasts exposed. Many scholars have argued that this is really part of the scientific project and wasnt intended as sort of a important graphic endeavor and i would suggest that in fact the two are very closely entertained intertwined. Forcing black women to strip and reveal their breasts for the camera was both part of this quoteunquote scientific endeavor. That in and of itself was very much based in ideas about black womens hypersexual assault, lack of morality, hypersexuality, lack of morality, lack of dignity and lack of respectability. This image is actually one that really got us thinking, we need to pull all these pictures together and doo a book. This is an image thats a wanted notice for a runaway slave. A woman named dolly. One of the first things that caught our attention, of course, was that there is a photograph attached to the top of this hand written in the. Which automatically raised a number of questions for us of, why did this womans master have her picture . What prompted him to have a photograph of this enslaved woman made . We still dont know the answer, though we have some theories. In the text of the notice, he announces that dolly has run away from the yard behind his house in augusta. Its important to note the date of dollys escape. She escapes april 7, 1863. So after the emancipation proclamation. But clearly shes liberating herself. Her master surmises, and do i love this, he describes her body and in this way and both his written words and his presentation of her photograph really conveys that power to own and control and look at and proclaim who she is. He says, shes shy and hesitates when spoken to, but that she has very nice teeth. He says that she must have been enticed away by a white man because she never changed owners and is a stranger to the city. So of course he tells this narrative where never changed owner. As if that would have been her choice. We know of course it would not have been her choice. But so her master, this very prominent South Carolinaan, lewis manigold, creates this narrative of domestic harmony and bliss. When you delve into the manigolders, the overseer reports upon an investigation of dollys disappearance and i should note, of the hundreds of slaves that lewis manigold owned, many of them, dozens of them, escaped over the years. Both men and women. And of all of those who escaped, dolly was the only one who was never captured. She was the only one who was never returned to his possession. When his overseer interrogated the other enslaved people in the household, they told a very different story that did not involve a white man enticing her away, but they in fact told a story of a free black man who worked at a hotel across the street who had been coming around the yard late at night to court dolly. And said that the two of them had run off together. So dolly for us was really the first image of what freedom looks like. But also what those legacies of emancipation looked like. Of autonomy and selfcontrol and selfdetermination. But interestingly also of a certain kind of postreconstruction nostalgia on the part of former slave holders. The reason the document and the photograph survive is that lewis manigold built a remendous scrapbook to the what in his mind were the glory days of slavery in which he pasted the bills of sale, the advertisements for auctions where he purchased people. The receipts for the money he paid to buy people. And he included this. He writes this sort of heartfelt lament that he never saw her again. Which raised some questions about, again, why he had her photograph made in the first place. One of the things we found out that we had not known before doing this research was that some slave holders had photographs made of the enslaved people they owned to present a positive defense of slavery. To present slavery as a benign institution. To present themselves as benevolent masters who clothed and fed other human beings, if thats the mark of humanity. And then often there were images such as this one by thomas easterly, where white families would pose with an enslaved woman usually. Weve seen some poses with enslaved boys, not so many with men. As a way of showing off your wealth and status and prestige and presenting the enslaved person as a favorite pet or valuable object. We suspect that if the photograph of dolly was not one of perhaps a Love Interest for manigold, theyre wanted a photograph of a woman that he desired, we suspect that it was probably a photograph more like this one, where dolly is holding a manigold baby on her lap. And weve looked at the timing of her escape and the timing of the birth of the manigold children and there would have been an older infant in the household at this time. So the entirely possible and that would explain then, excuse me while i go back, why the photograph is cropped. And why you cant see the bottom 2 3 of that image. If she is holding the child. We spent a fair amount of time then after sort of establishing this foundation for ways in which africanamericans were represented. The way in which that history of slavery was told by other people. To looking at how both africanamericans and white americans involved in the Antislavery Movement represented their appeal, made their antislavery cause, so we have images like this, a lapel pin, that has a white hand and a black hand clasping. Of course we had to spend some time with a fair amount of time with Frederick Douglass who wrote extensively about photography. And about the power of selfrepresentation. Wrote about the power for s to be able to present themselves as they saw themselves, as they experienced themselves and each other. And so for douglas, then, it was really important to be able to control his own image. Douglas was terribly displayed, as many of you probably know, when the early editions of his narratives were published at the artists renderings of him. That were included in those early additions. Because he felt that the artist had represented him as a beast and not as a dignified intellectual man. So for douglas, posing for these portraits in very classical style was a way of not only representing himself but about making a larger political argument about africanamerican humanity. For africanamericans, being able to create their own images and for free africanamericans, being able to purchase and acquire the images of prominent africanamericans in the antebellum era was terrifically important both politically and personally. Sojourner truth, of course, another well known abolitionist and woman rights activist, who like doug las, embraced the power of the photograph, to not only represent herself, right, to present herself as a refined and dignified older woman, not as a battered former slave, so she curls her hand. You cant see her hand thats been injured. But she also of course sold her photograph to support herself. And as we were doing the research for the book, one of the things we came across were letters to Sojourner Truth written by freed black women from places like brooklyn, asking to purchase a copy of her photograph, and saying how tremendously important it was and how meaningful it was to be able to support the antislavery cause on the wages of a domestic servant, by purchasing this photograph. And in one letter, a woman writes to truth and says, i wish i had enough money to buy a coppy of your picture for every woman in my family. But i dont. So im going to buy one and im going to share it with every woman in my family. So that you know and that we know that were bound together in this fight. We thought it was very important to include photographs by africanamericans, so we included a series of photographs by the photo graffer, Augustus Washington. An africanamerican man from new jersey, this of course is john brown. Ed to spend some time back to this freedom question of thinking about what freedom looked like for free africanamericans. You heard in the previous talk how northern states eventually stripped free africanamericans of the state right to vote in their state. Freedom eroded in many instances for free africanamericans and for some, like this man pictured here, freedom looked like compile. Mcgill left the United States exile. Mcgill left the United States under duress, under protest, i dont think he wanted to leave necessarily, but he was part of a group that moved to liberia. Believing that he could never achieve full freedom and full humanity in the country of his birth. So after the passage of the fugitive slave law, after 1850, freedom looked like exile. Like another wave of dislocation. So this is another photograph by Augustus Washington of sara mcgill. Her husband of course was john, the famous newspaperman who started the first africanamerican newspaper in the United States. The f35 we do not speak for ourselves, if we do not speak for ourselves, who will speak for us. So, again, that sense of autonomy and selfdetermination. One of our favorite pictures of thinking what freedom looked like is that we know that for many people, for many africanamericans, freedom looked like that selfliberation moment. This is an image from a conference protesting the fugitive slave law from the late summer of 1850. It might be hotter in here than it was there. In august. [laughter] this is a photograph of an event organized by douglas and jerrett smith, who is the tall man in the Center Standing behind douglas. They anticipated 50 people would show up, over 200 people showed up. So they moved outside to the orchards. So the photograph is also historically important because its one of the early examples of outdoor photography. Where you can see the crowd in the foreground and then the panel of speakers in the background. The photograph is also important to us because it showcases two women who had attempted to escape from slavery, mary and emily edmundson, had attempted to escape in 1848 from washington, d. C. , they were captured, their father, paul, made his way from washington to brooklyn to meet with the reverend henry ward beacher to plead with him and say, you know, if these were your daughters, and the slave trading firm was bragging about taking mary and emily to North Carolina to sell them as conch bines. As fancy girls. And paul makes his way to brooklyn and said, how would you feel if these were your daughters that someone was brag being selling as concubines . As sex slaves . The edmundson sisters are then, quote hundred unquote, redepeemed their quoteunquote, redeemed their purchase and given their freedom. Which is a concept i think we all should stop and think about, what that meant. To be given your freedom. As opposed to simply being able to possess yourself and possess your freedom. And the accounts of this convention in upstate new york describe how beautifully and powerfully the edmundson sisters spoke to the crowd. And how it was their speeches and their songs that really moved the crowd to tears in many instances. We thought it was important to include them, to really highlight the role of everyday people and particularly everyday black women in that fight against slavery. The bulk of our study looked at the civil war and that moment of eman pation and then the leg emancipation and then the legacies. Ill go quickly through some of these images which im sure are familiar to you. We wanted to include this one because it shows an africanamerican man driving the wagon of the civil war photographier. One of the things we know is that photographer. One of the things we know is that photography boomed during civil war and after the civil war the number of africanamerican photo graffers proliferate photographers proliferated as well. Many africanamericans learned the skill and art and trade of photography by training on the ground, quite literally, with civil war photo graffers photographers during the war. We have a number of portraits that are familiar to you. Theres an image of price and birch, that slave trading firm. One of the things that we were interested in as s how these photographs were received by northerners. How this idea of black freedom was represented visually and then presented to a northern viewing audience. For the most part, what we found is that freedom, the idea of emancipation, was represented as a nonevent. That black people would remain at work on plantations, i will come back to this one in a second. Well go with this one then. That black men, this is an interesting