History university of massachusetts at amherst, or should he sits scorches at ability history, slavery, emancipation, and native american history. First book, which i have four in front of me, her book entitled black slaves, indian masters, slavery, emancipation, and citizenship in the american south. Its quite a title. Published by the university of North Carolina press. This book details the untold story of the enslavement barbara has also coauthored a photographic history of slavery, emancipation and freedom published in 2013, 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 top is entitled envisioning emancipation, black americans and the end of slavery. Please welcome barbara. applause well, hello, good evening. Thank you for saying this late into the night. Thank you for saying awake. Thank you, peter, for the invitation and the introduction, and allison, 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 debra willis. Debra ellis, if you dont know who she is, she is the leading scholar in the history of African American photography. A mcarthur award winner. I mean, just a brilliant woman and a dear friend of mine. And she and i were colleagues for many years, and over the years had many conversations about photographs of enslaved people that we came across in the course of doing other research projects, and i would say to her, you know, you are the videographer scholar, explain why i have never read anything about the history of the degree of slavery and emancipation, and she would say to me, i dont know, you are the historian of slavery and emancipation, you tell me. And so, for truly a decade, she and i would sort of go to lunch, go to dinner, have a drink, and show each of these photographs and one day we said, you know, there may actually be a book project here. And the book, indeed, turned out to be envisioning emancipation. Our question in this project, and one that 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 illegal history and the political history of the debates over slavery, of the civil war, and every construction, but we wanted to really take this question to a visual perspective, and ask, sort of, how is freedom emancipation represented, and how did African Americans represent themselves . Really, the heart of our project was the history of African Americans 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 artifacts, as both the relic of the pass and also as historical sources on emancipation and its legacies. Obviously, the most Lasting Legacy for the purpose of this week weekend is the history of reconstruction. We are curious to see what we can do with these photographs to understand that history, how is narrated and how was preserved by African Americans and also how African Americans were represented in a visual telling of that history of emancipation and its legacies. One so what im going to do tonight, there is no illuminated copy of the emancipation proclamation, what i will do is take you through some of the images that we discuss and right about in the book. There are some that i will show you quickly and will linger on. I should say as we putting this book together we look through thousands and thousands of images from archives both in the u. S. And abroad. Early on are editor said, you can include 75 images. And we thought, that is never, never going to work. We came to the editor with about 250 and they said, we can do 75. So we went back to a pile of 2 50 and we got it down to maybe 200, and we went back to the other and he said maybe you can do 100. And we said 200, and back and forth. Finally we didnt tell them how many we submitted and were sort of hoping they wouldnt counts and clearly no one counted to carefully because the book came out. Some of the images are in the book and some are not. When we started and were thinking about what does freedom look like, we thought it was important to think about what does slavery look like in the history of photography. Much of a scholarship especially in the u. S. Context argues that photography when it arrived in the u. S. From france in the late 18 forties, early fifties, had a profound democratizing effect on American Culture. That the technology became relatively affordable relatively quickly. 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 are seeing that photograph southern slave to people. So we begin the book thinking about slavery and photography and really arguing quite strenuously that the history of photography for African Americans was not one about this democratic expansion of American Culture in antebellum period. We began with some of the more famous images that youve probably seen, the dicaprio tapes made in 1850 which is an interesting year that we will get back to of enslaved africans and their american born children debra they were made in South Carolina under the direction of a harvards scientist he wanted to try to document his theories of poly genesis, separate orders of human beings, separate creations of separate species. So we had a series of these made and you can see i dont have a laser pointer, but you can see on the lefthand side of the screen there that this is handwritten labels. This is jack taylor. Plantation of mr. Taylor from South Carolina. There are a number of pictures like that that show those african enslaved people and their americanborn progeny, again with the attempt of using photography of presenting visual image of difference in hierarchy. There are others that have women with their. Breasts exposed. Many scholars have argued, right, that this is really part of the scientific project and wasnt intended as sort of a pornographic endeavor. And i would suggest that, in fact, the two are very closely intertwined, right, that forcing black women to strip and reveal their breasts for the camera was both part of this, quote unquote, scientific endeavor, but that in and of itself was very much based in ideas about black womens hyper sexuality, lack of morality, lack of dignity and lack of respectability. This image is actually the one that really got us thinking we need to pull all of these pictures together and do a book. This is an image thats a wanted notice for a run away 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 handwritten notice which automatically raised a number of questions for us of why did this womans master have her picture . Right . 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 7th, 1863. So after the emancipation proclamation but clearly she is liberating herself, right . Her master surmises and i do love this, right, he describes her body and in this way in 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. So he says shes shy and she 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 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 manigault 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 enslaved people in the household 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. You look at the timing of her skate and the timing of the children and there wouldve 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. Come on. Why the photograph is cropped and why you can see the bottom two thirds 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. Read about the power for African Americans to be able to present themselves as they saw themselves, right, as they experienced themselves, and each other. And so, for douglas, it was really important to be able to control his own image. Douglas was terribly dismayed as many of you probably know. In the early editions of his narratives are published his terribly dismayed at the artist renderings of him that were included in those early additions because he thought the artist had represented him as a beast, and not as a dignified intellectual man. So, for douglas, posing for these portraits a very classical style, was away not only representing himself, but about making a larger political argument about African American humanity. For African Americans, being able to create their own images and for free African Americans, being able to purchase and acquire the images of prominent African Americans in the antebellum era was terrifically important both politically and personally. So join her truth of course another wellknown abolitionists in womens rights activists who like douglas and placed the power of the photograph to not only represent herself to present herself as a refined and dignified older women, not as a battered former slave so she curls her hand and you cant see her had thats been injured. But she also of course told her photograph to support herself, and2 a e as you are doing the research for the book, one of the things that we came across for leathers to sojourner written by free black women to 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 anti slavery cars on the wages of a domestic servant by purchasing this photograph. And in what letter, oh meant rights to truth and says i wish i had enough money to buy a copy picture for everyone in my family but i dont some going to buy one and im going to share it with everyone in my family. So that you know and that we know that we are bound together in this fight. We thought it was important to be photographed by African Americans, so included a series of photographs by the photographer Augustus Washington, an African American man from new jersey. This, of course, was john brown. We wanted to spend some time back to this freedom question of thinking about what freedom looks like for free African Americans. You heard in the previous top hat northern states eventually stripped free African Americans of the state right to vote in their states so freedom eroded in many instances for free African Americans and for some like mcgill pictured here, freedom looked like exile. He 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, believe he could never chief will freedom and full humanity in the country of his birth. So, after the passage of the fugitive slave, after 1850, freedom looked like exile, right, like another wave of dislocation. So, this is another photograph by Augustus Washington of sara mcgill russworm. Her husband, of course, was john russworm, the African American who had started the first attack in american newspaper and United States. The mascot said if we do not speak for ourselves, who will speak for us. So, again, that sense of autonomy and self determination. One of our favorite pictures of the key what freedom looks like is that we know that, for many people, for many African Americans, freedom looked like that itself liberation moment. So, this is an image from a conference protesting the fugitive slate 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 douglas and jerry smith whos the top man in the center stand behind douglas. They anticipated 50 people would show up, over 20 people shut up. So, they moved outside to the orchards. So, the photograph is also historically important because its one of the earliest examples about outdoor photography, right, we see the crowd in the foreground, and the Panel 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 edmonton who had attempted to escape in 1948 from washington d. C. They were captured, the father Paul Edmondson made his way from washington to brooklyn to meet with the reverend henry wart beach or to plead with him and say if these were your daughters, and the slave trading from price and breach was bragging them 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 deemed, there are 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 giving 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 sister spoke to the crowd, and how is their speeches and songs that really move the crowd to tears in many cystitis. We thought it was important to include them to really highlight the role of everyday people and particularly everyday black women and that fight against slavery. The bulk of our study looked at the civil war at that moment of emancipation, and then the legacies of emancipation. So, i will go quickly through some images which im sure are familiar to you. We wanted to include this one because it shows an African American man driving the wagon of a civil war photographer. One of the things that we know is that photographers boomed as an industry during the civil war, and then after the civil war, the number of African Amer