Masters, slavery, emancipation, and citizenship in the native. Quite a title. Published by the university of North Carolina press. This book details the untold story of enslavement by choctaw and chickasaw indians in the 18th and 19th century. Arbara has also coauthored book on slavery, emancipation and freedom published by Temple University press, and it is also for sale in our bookstore. Tonight, she will be speaking about her recent work and the talk is entitled envisioning black americans and the end of slavery. Please welcome barbara. [laughter] professor krauthamer hello, good evening. Thank you for staying this late into the night. Thank you, peter, for the invitation and the introduction, who has managed to make everything happen seamlessly from massachusetts to gettysburg. Book i coauthored with deborah willis. If you do not know her, she is the leading scholar of africanamerican photography and slavery, a dear, dear friend of mine. Over the years we have had many conversations about photographs of enslaved people we came across in the course of doing other research projects, and i would say to her, you are the photography scholar. Explain to me why i have never read anything about the history of the photography of slavery and a miss a patient. And she would say to me, i dont know. You are the historian of slavery and emancipation. You tell me. Or to relate we would go out to dinner,o to show each other photographs, and one day, we said there might be a book project here. The book turned out to be envisioning emancipation. Our question in this project and one we are 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, the debates over slavery, the civil war, and reconstruction, but we wanted to really take this question to a visual perspective and ask how was freedom emancipation represented and how did africanamericans represent themselves . Really, the heart of our project was the history of africanamericans through their own eyes, right . How they saw themselves. At a more scholarly level, we were curious about using photographs and seeing them, reading the visual text as artifacts versus a relic of the past, but also historical sources on emancipation and his legacies, and obviously the most important and Lasting Legacy for our purposes this weekend is the history of reconstruction. We were curious to see what we could do with this photographs history, how that it was narrated and preserved by africanamericans and also how africanamericans were represented in a visual telling all that history of emancipation and its history. So, what i am going to do what i will do tonight is take you through some of the images that we discuss and write about in the book, and there are some i will just show you quickly. We looked through thousands and from our of images archives in the United States and abroad and early on, our editors said you can include 75 images. And we thought, that is never ever going to work. We came to the editor with 250. 275. Hey said, we will do we went back to the editor and said 75 is not going to work. They said, ok, 100. We went backandforth. Finally we got to the point where we did not tell them how many we submitted and we were hoping they did not count, and clearly no one counted to carefully the cosby book is out. Some of the images i will show you tonight are in the book and some are not. Thinking about what freedom would look like, we thought it was important to say , much of the scholarship especially in the u. S. Context, argues that when photography arrived from france in the 1840s, 1850s, it added up profoundit had a democratizing influence on culture. 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 did not fit at all with what we were seeing of enslavedhs people. We began the book thinking about slavery and photography and really arguing quite strenuously that the history of photography for africanamericans was not one about the democratic expansion of American Culture in the antebellum period. We begin with some of the more famous images you have probably n, the guerrier types daugerrotypes that you mightve seen, made by a poly genesis, who wanted to say that there were separate species. Daguerreotypes made. They are labeled. Of picturesnumber like that to show both african enslaved people and their americanborn progeny. Again, the attempt of using photography to prevent visual image of human difference and human hierarchy. So, there are others that have women with their breasts exposed. Many scholars have argued, right, this is part of the scientific project and was not intended as a pornographic endeavor, and i would suggest lyat the two were very close intertwined, forcing black women to strip and reveal their breasts for the camera was part scientific endeavor, but that was in the context of the view of black womens hypersexuality, lack of morality, lack of respectability. This is an image that is a wanted notice for a runaway slave, a woman named dolly. One of the first things that caught our attention, of course is there is a photograph attached to the top of this handwritten notice, which automatically raise the number of questions why does this woman from master have her picture . What prompted him to have a photograph of this enslaved woman made . We still dont know the answer, that we have some theories. In the text of the notice, he announces dolly has run away from the yard behind his house in a gusto. It is important to note the date of dollys is gay. She escaped april 7, 1863. It is important to note the date of dollys is skate. Emancipation proclamation. Characterizes her body and the presentation of the photograph really promotes the ability to own and control and look at. He says that she is shy, that she has very nice teeth. He says she must have been in ties to a way by a white man, changedshe has never owners and is a stranger to the city. And of course, he tells he says that she must have been enticed away by a white man because she has never changed owners and is a stranger to the city. So of course he tells this narrative, right, where never changed owners as if that would have been her choice, right . We know of course it would not have been her choice. But so her master, this very prominent south carolinian Louis Manigault creates this narrative of domestic harmony and bliss. When you delve into the papers, the overseer reports upon investigation of dollys disappearance and i should note of the hundreds of slaves that Louis Manigault 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 manigaults overseeing interrogated the other people in the house they 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 look like, right, of autonomy and selfcontrol and self determination, but interestingly also of a certain kind of post reconstruction nostalgia on the part of former slave holders. The reason the document and the photograph survive is that Louis Manigault built a tremendous scrapbook, right, 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, right, and 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 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 manigault, that he wanted a photograph of a woman he desired, we suspect it was a photograph more like this one, where dolly was holding a manigault baby on her lap. There would have been an older infant in the household at this time. So its entirely possible and that would explain, then excuse me while i go back. Oops. Come on. Why the photograph is cropped and why you cant see the bottom twothirds 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 black hand clasping. Of course, we had to spend a fair amount of time with Frederick Douglass who wrote extensively about photography and about the power of selfrepresentation. Wrote about the power for africanamericans to be able to present themselves as they saw themselves, right, as they experienced themselves and each other. And so for douglass then it was important for him to control his own image. He was dismayed as some of you probably know he was dismayed at the artists rendering of him that were included in those early editions because he felt that the artist had represented him as a beast and not as a dignified intellectual man. So for douglass posing for these portraits in classical style was a way of not only representing himself but 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 embraced the power of the photograph to not only represent herself, to present herself as a refined and dig need older woman, not as a battered former slave, right, 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 that we came across were letters to Sojourner Truth written by free 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 course, sold her photograph to 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 copy 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 what 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 photographer augustus washington, an africanamerican man from new jersey. This is john brown. We wanted 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 states. So freedom eroded in many instances for free africanamericans and for some, like urias mcgill freedom looked like 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, right, that moved to liberia believing he could never achieve full freedom and full humanity in the country of his birth. 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 augustous washington of sarah mcgill russworm, her husband was John Russworm the africanamerican man who started the first africanamerican newspaper in the United States. The mast head said if we do not speak for ourselves who will speak for us. Right. 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. So 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. This is a photograph of an event organized by douglass and Jarrett Smith who is the tall man in the Center Standing behind douglass, 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 earliest 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 Edmondson had attempted to escape in 1848 from washington, d. C. They were captured, their father Paul Edmondson made his way from washington to brooklyn to meet with the reverend Henry Ward Beecher to plead with him and say if these were your daughters and the slave trading firm price and birch was bragging with taking mary and Emily Edmondson to North Carolina to sell them as concubines, as fancy girls and Paul Edmondson makes his way to brooklyn and said how would you feel if they were your daughters that someone was bragging about selling as sex slaves. The edmondson sisters are redeemed, theyre purchased and given their freedom, which is really a concept that i think we all should stop and think about what that meant, right, 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 edmondson sisters spoke to the crowd and how it was their speeches and their songs that really moved the crowd to tears in their instances. We thought it was important to include them to really highlight the role of every day people and particularly every day black women in that fight against slavery. The bulk of our study looked at the civil war and that moment of emancipation and then the legacies of emancipation. So i will 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 a civil war photographer. One of the things that we know is that photography boomed as an industry during the civil war and then after the civil war the number of africanamerican photographers proliferated as well and one of the things that we suspect happened is that many africanamericans learned the trade, learned the skill and the art of photography by training on the ground quite literally with civil war photographers during the war. So we have a number of portraits that are familiar to you. Here is an image of price and birch, of that slave trading firm. One of the things we were interested in is how these photographs were received by northerners, how this idea of black freedom was represented visually and then presented to a northern viewing audience. And 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 sec. We will go with this one, then. That black men this is an interesting one, right . This is a picture made by a New Hampshire photographer of couldnt bands, those run away slaves, people who liberated themselves on the u. S. Vermont in port royal in the sea islands. When you look at this photograph thinking about it from the perspective of the formerly enslaved men and boys on this its hard not to think about the middle passage, about these men clustered together on the deck of a ship, right . One of the things that we know from reading the letters of africanamericans who made transatlantic voyages during the antebellum period and after was that they really had this sense that these ocean voyages were steeped with history that they couldnt escape, right . The history was really embedded in them. Theres a companion image to this but i dont have that shows the officers of the u. S. Vermont and, you know, in that image they are all wearing their uniforms and theyre standing, right, theyre very dignified, theres distance between each man so it creates a very different image of who are the officers and who are the crew and laborers and it creates a very different image, then, of what free black men represent, right, in the context of thinking about the future of the nation. This is a picture contraband yard that depicts women and children and one of the things as we look at these photographs of contraband, which are often reproduced in history texts is we thought it was important to ask who is not pictured. Who didnt make it to the camps . Who was sold away . In the previous talk we saw those advertisements in the newspapers that people placed looking for lost relatives that had been sold away. And so in this moment of jubilee, in these early moments of emancipation of reconfiguring what the nation looks like at the individual level, at the family level, at the Community Level for africanamericans that jubilee of freedom was also tinged with a sense of loss, right, of family members who were gone. I should also point out that in the foregrou