Not every story was as easy to reconstruct, Hecimovich said. He is the labor and the strength that produced Columbia.” He’s not a victim stripped for a photograph that is going to prove the incapacity of Black people. ![]() “Someone like Jem helped build Columbia, and I find that powerfully moving. Only one slave in the records was listed as being in late middle age - most likely Jem, given his appearance in the image.įurther research revealed that the 60-year-old had been part of a work gang that did major construction in downtown Columbia, including building racetracks and canal projects. Green, was named on the daguerreotype, he was able to look into archives in Columbia, S.C. Only six counties recorded slaves’ names in the federal Census, he said, but they were identified by name among holdings in estate records and wills.Īsked by Gates to outline the mechanics of his research, Hecimovich explained how he learned more about Jem. And Gates pointed out the unfortunate paradox - in order to recover the histories of the enslaved, one first has to research the white Americans who enslaved them. As Hecimovich explained, anything else about their identities had to be uncovered by careful research. The daguerreotypes preserve only the names given to the subjects: Jem, Alfred, Delia, Renty, Fassena, Drana, and Jack. On April 7 he met via Zoom with Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, and discussed the research that informed his chapter in the recent book “To Make Their Own Way in the World: The Enduring Legacy of the Zealy Daguerreotypes,” co-published by the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and the Aperture Foundation. Gregg Hecimovich, a Furman University English professor, is among the scholars who has been working to recover those stories. ![]() In these images, commissioned by Harvard Professor Louis Agassiz and currently housed at the Peabody Museum, the slaves are robbed of their life stories as well as their basic humanity. ![]() The disturbing nature of the Zealy daguerreotypes, depicting enslaved Africans in 19th-century America, stems in part from the treatment of their subjects.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |