4 10 43 https://mirrorofrace.bc.edu/files/original/c5c95df01d4c9968a492439e30b08177.jpg ddc85b1762ab9a7d523a7422538d4d32 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Mirror of Race Subject The topic of the resource Mirror of Race Main Collection Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data ambrotype Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image Quarter Plate (3.25 x 4.25 inches) Factual Commentary Factual Commentary This ambrotype portrays a Union soldier armed with a musket and pistol. Black soldiers were able to enter the Federal army starting in 1863. Research into this image, comparing the studio setting to other known photographs, has shown that this is probably a soldier who enlisted in the 54th or 55th Massachusetts Infantry and posed for his portrait at Camp Meigs, the training base for these regiments in Readville, Massachusetts. The 54th became famous as the first Black regiment organized in the North, and it proved that soldiers of African descent could fight courageously when it made a valiant assault on Fort Wagner, South Carolina, on July 18, 1863. This led the way to nearly 200,000 Black soldiers being able to join the Union army. Interpretive Commentary Interpretive Commentary The story of Black soldiers making the Civil War a fight for their freedom is a decisive one in American history. Rarely does a people have the opportunity to make such a concerted decision to determine its fate. African Americans seized this one to prove their dedication to the cause of ending slavery, whatever other Americans thought the war was about, enlisting in military in their hundreds of thousands, despite unequal pay, discrimination, and mistreatment. The Mirror of Race has published one essay, by Erina Duganne, on "Black Civil War Portraiture in Context." We hope to publish more essays on this topic in the future. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Figure016 Title A name given to the resource Union infantryman Subject The topic of the resource unknown Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource circa 1863 Type The nature or genre of the resource studio portrait, military occupational Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. Greg French Collection Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Unknown Photographer Photographer https://mirrorofrace.bc.edu/files/original/3fbf1af081c09e6f74a28ea310aa7ecb.tif 6ef93cdac9ea72d3ceef693784c75c36 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Mirror of Race Subject The topic of the resource Mirror of Race Main Collection Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data ambrotype Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image Quarter Plate (3.25 x 4.25 inches) Factual Commentary Factual Commentary There is no identifying information on this Quarter Plate (3.25 x 4.25 inches) ambrotype, which dates to the late 1850s, but it depicts what is almost certainly a well-to-do white woman and both her African American attendant and her dog. We cannot know if the young woman is an enslaved person or a free servant employed by the elderly woman; the young woman holds a wicker basket in one hand and an unidentified object in the other. Interpretive Commentary Interpretive Commentary Although we cannot know if the young Black woman in this photograph is free or enslaved, one thing that is remarkable about this image is how she stares so directly at us, while the elderly woman is paying attention only to the dog ― who, by the way, is also looking into the camera. Photographs such as this were expensive: it is a large format and the elderly woman wears proper but clearly costly and fashionable clothes. So, the woman at the center probably commissioned it because both the young servant woman and the dog were important to her, part of her private, household life, and part of what she saw as her own identity as a mistress and a caretaker. And yet, she is not the one making contact so boldly with us through the camera’s lens. So, who truly commands the presence of this portrait? What does a photograph such as this tell about the relationship of employer ― or master, or mistress ― to servant? What were, and what still are, the social meanings of race that would explain the dynamics between the women here and how they feel comfortable presenting themselves to the camera? Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Figure015 Title A name given to the resource servant, woman, dog Subject The topic of the resource unknown Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource circa 1860 Type The nature or genre of the resource studio portrait Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. Greg French Collection Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Unknown Photographer Photographer https://mirrorofrace.bc.edu/files/original/716adf174b9f9b4b52564564c10b5166.tif aad51263ebf04fde9c6bdd7eecc45991 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Mirror of Race Subject The topic of the resource Mirror of Race Main Collection Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Daguerreotype Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image Quarter plate (3 1/8" x 4 1/8") Exhibition Name Name of the exhibition in which the item appears Main Exhibition Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Figure014 Title A name given to the resource Delia Subject The topic of the resource Delia Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Joseph T. Zealy Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1850 Type The nature or genre of the resource Studio Portrait Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. Harvard Peabody Museum (T1869; 35-5-10/53039) https://mirrorofrace.bc.edu/files/original/64c59179e808335a8543769e12402e33.jpg 1ce6a2223a1162647d72dc3458e359f9 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Mirror of Race Subject The topic of the resource Mirror of Race Main Collection Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data daguerreotype Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image Half Plate (4.25 x 5.5 inches) Factual Commentary Factual Commentary This street scene is by James Presley Ball (1825-1904), a successful African American photographer. Ball learned the daguerreian process in 1845, and then spent most of the next 25 years in Cincinnati, where his business was successful enough to allow him to travel to Europe in 1856. He was an abolitionist, and his large and elegant studios hosted both white and black clients. This scene depicts a street in Ball’s home city, Cincinnati, featuring the building of a candy manufacturer, Myers and Co., Confectioners, along with some of the employers, and perhaps the owner himself (we do not know if Mr. Myers is one of the men standing outside). If you click on the image to the left, you can zoom in to see the extraordinary detail of this daguerreotype, including the writing on the hand-painted signs and a youthful, well-dressed black man, leaning on a post. Barely visible behind him is another black youth in a white shirt, pushing a wheelbarrow with crates of goods on it. On the street is a wagon, where the crates are being loaded for delivery. They are marked “CANDY, Myers & Co., 50 lbs.” Interpretive Commentary Interpretive Commentary J. P. Ball was a remarkably skilled photographer, as this extraordinary daguerreotype demonstrates. In the bright light of full day, Ball produced an image with beautiful tones and contrasts that even captures a sense of movement without the tell-tale blurring of a long exposure time. The resolution and detail in the photograph is exceptional, and such effects required a practitioner who had both the talent to compose a shot and the technical mastery to bring it off, both in preparing the plate and in understanding all the conditions of light and subject matter. Ball’s mastery of the process explains why he was such a successful portrait photographer, too. We cannot know for certain, but it is likely that Myers and Company commissioned J. P. Ball to make this portrait of their business, probably from a sense of pride at is success ― hence the delivery under preparation and the sense of activity. While not exactly a documentary photograph, because it was probably made on commission and not to record historical facts, early images such as this of city life are rare, and J. P. Ball executed this one with great skill. The best scholarly work on James Presley Ball is by Deborah Willis: J. P. Ball: Daguerrean and Studio Photographer (Routledge, 1993). Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Figure013 Title A name given to the resource Cincinnati street scene Subject The topic of the resource Cincinnati street scene Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource James Presley Ball (American, dates uncertain) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource circa 1850 Type The nature or genre of the resource city scene, commercial Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. Greg French Collection https://mirrorofrace.bc.edu/files/original/1e1f1927b0f25eccb8cee107698bab28.tif a2132deb7a8a07cd2b31a751200201d2 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Mirror of Race Subject The topic of the resource Mirror of Race Main Collection Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data daguerreotype Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image Sixth Plate (2.75 x 3.25 inches) Factual Commentary Factual Commentary This is the earliest known portrait of Frederick Douglass (1818(?)-1895), the great American abolitionist, orator, and writer. We do not know the photographer, or where the portrait was taken, but judging from the style of the case the photograph comes in, it was probably taken around 1845, about the time of the publication of the autobiography that made him famous: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Douglass was a strong proponent of photography as a medium that could present people as they truly were, deserving equal respect as human beings, so he often sat for his portrait, using these images as publicity. He wrote and delivered several public lectures on the importance of photography. The autobiographical Narrative is the best place to go for the life of Douglass, and you can read a version of it online here, but the broad details are these: Douglass was born into slavery around 1818 in Maryland. He did not know his exact birth date or even birth year with certainty. His father may have been his own master. In his childhood, Douglass was lent out to a relation of his master, whose wife taught him the rudiments of reading, even though it was against the law to teach a slave to read. Douglass continued to teach himself by any means he could find, and learning to read fired his desire for freedom. When Douglass was 16, his master grew unhappy with him and hired him out in 1833 to a notorious slave-breaker, Thomas Covey, who beat Douglass regularly. Douglass finally fought back against Covey in an hours-long brawl, and Covey never tried to whip him again. After that, Douglass made several attempts to escape slavery, finally succeeding in 1838. He made his way to New York City, where he married Anna Murray, a free Black woman he had met in Maryland whose status as a free woman had inspired his own aspirations. He and Anna moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where Douglass became progressively more and more involved in the abolitionist movement. He started speaking publicly in 1841 and published his autobiography in 1845. The book rapidly became a bestseller, both in the United States and abroad, and Douglass traveled to Ireland and England, where gave speeches to crowded venues, earning financial support for his further ventures. Upon returning to the United States, Douglass started his career as a journalist and abolitionist newspaper publisher, founding The North Star, Frederick Douglass Weekly, and other papers. His thinking expanded to include civil equality for all, not just slaves and free BLacks, but woman and all peoples, including Native Americans. He continued his speaking tours to advance the abolitionist cause. During the Civil War, Douglass lobbied tirelessly with President Lincoln for the right of Blacks to serve in the army. After the war, Douglass continued in his work for civil rights through journalism, writing, politics, and speeches. He held several ambassadorial positions, including consul-general to the Republic of Haiti (1889-1891). When he died in 1895, thousands came to pay their respects. Interpretive Commentary Interpretive Commentary It is remarkable that we have a portrait record of Frederick Douglass in 1845, at the moment he entered into history as the author of his international bestseller, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. From the very beginning of his public career, Douglass saw photography as an important tool in the fight for freedom. The essay "True Pictures: Frederick Douglass on the Promise of Photography," available on the Mirror of Race website here, explores his faith in the power of photography to contribute to the fight for equality. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Figure012 Title A name given to the resource Frederick Douglass Subject The topic of the resource Frederick Douglass Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource circa 1845 Type The nature or genre of the resource studio portrait Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. Greg French Collection Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Unknown Photographer https://mirrorofrace.bc.edu/files/original/79cd8141934c4bba809884a4d5f26b42.tif d1063990c5d0c41bae308f28f939d88e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Mirror of Race Subject The topic of the resource Mirror of Race Main Collection Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data daguerreotype Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image Sixth Plate (2.75 x 3.25 inches) Factual Commentary Factual Commentary We know little about this image; however, the man on the left is holding a bodhram, a traditional Irish drum. It is quite possible that these two are Irish immigrants. The style of the image case and the photograph, a daguerreotype, suggest a date of around 1850, and so they may also be refugees from the great Potato Famine that raged in Ireland from 1845 to 1852. Interpretive Commentary Interpretive Commentary The Mirror of Race is interested in exploring the question of what constitutes "Whiteness." Who counts as white, and how does this get articulated in law, in society, and visually in photographs? In the case of the Irish, there was considerable debate in the 19th century in the United States as to whether they could count as properly "white," and the Irish faced tremendous discrimination when here. We are hoping to publish essays on the issue of Whiteness and on the Irish experience and its broader meaning for race in general. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Figure010 Title A name given to the resource Drummer and Fiddler Subject The topic of the resource Unknown Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource circa 1850 Type The nature or genre of the resource studio portrait Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. Greg French Collection Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Unknown Photographer https://mirrorofrace.bc.edu/files/original/54a293636b9225433d69e5b47cb993d5.jpg 2026f1f6eadf4c9fab7133334f13e24f Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Mirror of Race Subject The topic of the resource Mirror of Race Main Collection Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data ambrotype Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image Sixth Plate (2.75 x 3.25 inches) Factual Commentary Factual Commentary A period slip of paper inserted into the image case (see below) identifies the sitters as “Manuel Ybana Dudagertia, Pedro Ybana D. (bald)”; the English notation “bald” indicates a United States maker and context for the photograph, as do the style of case and the mat, although these materials were imported for the use of photographers in Mexico and other Central and Latin American countries. Interpretive Commentary Interpretive Commentary Latinos, or Hispanics, have been part of the Americas for longer than the northern European colonizers, who began arriving in significant numbers and lasting settlement in North America only in the 1600s. When looking at a photograph such as this one, it is worth remembering that Latinos were living in the lands that became the United States for generations, even centuries, before those lands became states of the Union. We do not know, but it may well be the case that the brothers Manuel and Pedro were just such Latino citizens of the United States. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Figure008 Title A name given to the resource Manuel and Pedro Ybana Dudagertia Subject The topic of the resource Manuel and Pedro Ybana Dudagertia Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource circa 1860 Type The nature or genre of the resource studio portrait Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. Gregory Fried Collection Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Unknown Photographer https://mirrorofrace.bc.edu/files/original/98b5cd64ea470a37ae547131c7b21d31.jpg 4b820e3f782d5acfecfdaf9233ecd6be Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Mirror of Race Subject The topic of the resource Mirror of Race Main Collection Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data daguerreotype Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image Ninth Plate (2 x 2.5 inches) Factual Commentary Factual Commentary Captain Walker became famous as an abolitionist and slave-liberator after he was seized in 1844 at sea while attempting to bring seven escaped slaves to the Bahamas, a colony of the British Empire, where slavery had been abolished. A Florida court sentenced him to be fined and branded on the hand with the letters “S. S.” for “slave stealer.” Abolitionists raised funds to pay Walker’s substantial fine and to secure his release from prison. After his release, Walker traveled for several years as a popular speaker at abolitionist events, and in 1845 he published a book based on his experiences, his Trial and Imprisonment of Captain Jonathan Walker. The photograph below portrays Walker later in life; printed on the back of the card mount for the photograph is an outline of Walker’s life. walkermedwalkerrevmed J. D. Westervelt, Jonathan Walker, cabinet card (circa 1870), collection of Greg French Interpretive Commentary Interpretive Commentary White Suffering and The Branded Hand Martin A. Berger Sometime in 1845, Jonathan Walker (1799-1878) entered the fashionable Boston daguerreotype studio of Southworth & Hawes to sit for an unusual portrait. In contrast to the many middle-class patrons who made their way to portrait studios to have bust- or full-length likenesses of themselves made for family and friends, Walker had agreed to the request of a prominent Boston physician, Henry Ingorsoll Bowditch (1808-1892), to have a commemorative daguerreotype taken of his hand. Just a few years prior, Walker was a little-known New England tradesman and shipwright who had relocated to the sleepy territorial town of Pensacola, Florida. He gained international fame in November of 1844 when convicted by a Florida jury of “aiding and inducing two slaves to run away, and stealing two others.”(1) A white man who had long been opposed to slavery, Walker was known in Pensacola for his unusual determination to treat the slaves and free blacks around him with respect. In June, Walker embarked on a more radical path, consenting to the request of seven enslaved men to sail them several hundred miles to freedom in the Bahamas. Once Parliament’s passage of the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act initiated gradual emancipation in British possessions, Canada, to the north, and various Caribbean islands, to the south, became alluring destinations for American slaves. Unfortunately for Walker and his passengers, his small boat was discovered after fourteen days at sea by a passing American sloop; suspicious of seven blacks sailing with one white man in a cramped boat, the captain ordered Walker’s vessel towed back to a Florida port so that the men could explain themselves to authorities. Ardent abolitionists such as Bowditch considered Walker a hero for putting his life and liberty at risk for the sake of American slaves. But even for northerners less committed to the abolitionist struggle, Walker’s story was deemed remarkable for the cruelty of the punishment he stoically endured. After a speedy trial, a Florida judge sentenced Walker “to be placed in the pillory for one hour; then brought into court, and branded in the right hand with the letters SS.; then remanded to prison for fifteen days, and remain there until the fine (one hundred and fifty dollars) and the costs of the prosecution should be paid.”(2) The clearly visible branding scars in the daguerreotype, which stood for “slave stealer,” were intended as a punishment for Walker and as a warning to like-minded whites not to act on their political convictions. The daguerreotype Bowditch commissioned―now in the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society―shows Walker’s open right hand resting on a table with its palm facing toward the camera and thumb extended upward. The dark cuff of Walker’s jacket is evident at the left-hand side of the image and a hint of his white, stiffened shirtsleeve visible above and below his wrist. Just under the base of the thumb two raised white scars trace themselves across the lines and wrinkles of Walker’s palm, each of which forms a reversed “S” Daguerreotypes are produced without the aid of negatives. They are made of copper sheets coated with a thin plating of silver that is chemically sensitized to light. Upon exposure to light, a daguerreotype plate produces a mirror image of the object before it, which is why the scars are laterally reversed and the hand appears to be Walker’s left. Because a daguerreotype’s image forms directly on the plate―without mediating negatives―each plate is a unique object from which duplicates are not easily created. The image of Walker’s hand was first and foremost a one-of-a-kind keepsake for a prominent Boston abolitionist who wished to possess a visual reminder of the shipwright’s exploits. The image was seen by small circles of sympathetic men and women who surely passed the image around at intimate gatherings in Bowditch’s home. And yet, despite the limited circulation of the daguerreotype itself, the image of Walker’s branded hand became one of the best-known symbols of the American abolitionist movement. An engraving of the daguerreotype was printed in newspaper accounts of Walker’s ordeal, abolitionist pamphlets, Walker’s bestselling autobiography, and even carved into the imposing funerary obelisk erected to mark his grave upon his death in 1878.(3) Click here to see the Walker Pamplet Walker was feted in the north as soon as he made his way to New York after the last of his court costs were paid by supporters and his release secured. The same abolitionists who raised funds to support Walker’s family during his imprisonment, paid a prominent lawyer to look into his case, and discharged his court fines and costs, now encouraged him to pen an account of his exploits and lecture on his experiences. For several years after his release Walker was a sought-after speaker on the abolitionist lecture circuit who frequently shared the stage with former slaves. Walker and the freemen would recount their harrowing experiences before audiences for the sake of raising concern and funds in the north for the abolitionist cause. His stature was such that newspaper headlines announcing abolitionist lectures routinely listed his name first―or alone―even when he was to appear with such well-known figures as John S. Jacobs, the younger brother of Harriet Jacobs, or the century’s great orator, activist and, later, statesman, Frederick Douglass. The Liberator reported on a joint appearance by Walker and Douglass in August of 1845 under the headline: “Walker Meeting in New Bedford.”(4) It may seem surprising that white newspapers gave greater attention to Walker than Douglass. After all, the white abolitionist spent just eleven months in a Florida jail before his northern supporters paid his court fine and costs, while the former slave endured decades of bondage before escaping on his own to the north. In addition, Douglass was widely acknowledged as an unrivaled speaker who excelled in communicating to audiences the appalling conditions under which slaves lived. But no matter how poignant their experiences and eloquent their testimony, freemen did not enjoy the authority of white abolitionists among European-Americans in the north. White speakers on the abolitionist circuit were valued for their perspectives on slavery, but also for their ability to authenticate the stories told by blacks. The authority of whites is demonstrated by a nineteenth-century publishing convention for slave narratives, whereby publishers routinely included a foreword by a prominent white citizen attesting to the truthfulness of the slave whose story was told in the chapters that followed. The forewords offered tacit assurance to readers that the author of the narrative was a former slave (and not a white impostor hoping to turn a quick buck), as it explicitly vouched for the veracity of the story told. As America’s most famous white abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison wrote reassuringly in the preface to Douglass’s bestselling Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave (1845): “I am confident that it is essentially true in all its statements; that nothing has been set down in malice, nothing exaggerated, nothing drawn from the imagination; that it comes short of the reality, rather than overstates a single fact in regard to SLAVERY AS IT IS.”(5) Since Garrison had witnessed none of the events recounted in Douglass’s autobiography, his willingness to lend his name to Douglass’s story was ultimately as important as his choice of words. Much as Garrison vouched for Douglass’s printed account by attaching his name to the autobiography, so Walker bestowed legitimacy on the freeman’s oral testimony through his willingness to share the stage. But Walker’s presence worked on white audiences in other ways as well, allowing them to imagine the centrality of suffering, white martyrs in the anti-slavery movement. The comparatively few white abolitionists who’d been imprisoned, mistreated or martyred for acting on their beliefs became the face of slavery for millions of whites in the north, notwithstanding that it was millions of black Americans who lived under and engaged in daily struggles against the slave system. The white abolitionist organizer and editor, Maria Weston Chapman, lamented how the plight of the occasional white abolitionist distracted white audiences from their attention to the much greater distress of millions of blacks. As she observed, when a white man is arrested for attempting to free slaves: “The whole North, aye, Europe, is unusually moved. Money is poured out, like water, for the prisoner’s family, and to test points of law for the prisoner’s benefit.” Speaking specifically of Walker’s treatment, Frederick Douglass observed that it “was one of the few atrocities of slavery that roused the justice and humanity of the north.”(6) The historian Marcus Wood reminds us that the suffering of the black slave was long associated by whites in Great Britain and the United States with the suffering of Christ. As Wood explains, “the abused and tortured body of the slave was closer to Christ’s experience than were the bodies of free abolitionists. Ultimate suffering at the hands of the wicked implicitly raises the slave victim above the white audience either inflicting or contemplating suffering.”(7) And as Wood points out, the image of the black slave as a Christ-like figure posed a peculiar challenge for even the most radical white abolitionists, since few whites could then conceptualize of blacks as their moral, intellectual, or spiritual equals. Because a belief in the evils of slavery did not equate with a belief in black equality, the specter of suffering blacks being closer to Christ than God-fearing white abolitionists was unsettling to many whites. This is what made the narratives of white abolitionist martyrs so appealing to European-American audiences. While no one could argue that Walker suffered more than the slaves he tried to aid, his suffering appeared nobler, given that it was freely chosen. Like Christ, and unlike slaves who were forced or born into servitude, Walker chose his fate. Walker’s autobiography is filled with references to his chosen suffering and to the religious nature of his cause. He repeatedly wrote of “the act for which I was called to suffer;” “the misery and suffering of imprisonment;” the “severe” pain he endured during and after his branding, which he deemed part of “the most degrading punishments that human invention has produced.”(8) In his detailed recounting of the court-ordered branding, Walker described the scene in the following manner: “When about to be branded, I was placed in the prisoner’s box [in the courtroom]. The Marshall, Ebenezer Dora, formerly of Maine, proceeded to tie my hand to a part of the railing front. I remarked that there was no need of tying it, for I would hold still.”(9) It is a minor but telling detail that Walker recounts his willingness to compliantly present his hand for branding. As wrong as he believes the punishment ordered by the court to be, Walker accepts his sentence as something he is called on to stoically endure. A subsequent press account of his court case took pains to note that Walker, “on Christian grounds objects to any legal [appeal] proceedings in his own behalf, choosing to suffer wrong.”(10) White accounts of Walker’s ordeal consistently presented him as a Christ-like figure who chose to suffer for the cause of abolition. Many of his supporters re-branded the “SS” scars to stand for “soul savior,” “slave savior,” or “salvation to the slave,” making Walker’s links to Christ even more clear by highlighting how black salvation hinged on his sacrifice. The poet John Greenleaf Whittier brought these links before a large reading public in “The Branded Hand” (1846), his famous tribute to Walker. In it he wrote that Walker’s “branded palm shall prophesy, ‘Salvation to the Slave!’” A heated essay appearing in the Boston Chronicle took the imagery a step farther in its conflation of Walker and Christ. The editors wrote of the branding: “This thing which ye have done unto the least of his little ones, ye have done unto Him who died for the slave. Into His hands, still bearing the nail-marks of the cross, have ye burned the literal signet of your malignity to man and human freedom.”(11) Given the like placement of Walker’s brand and the stigmata on Christ’s hands, few would have missed the visual analogy as Walker moved among abolitionist crowds at the conclusion of his talks, holding out his marked right palm for eager audiences in the 1840s.(12) So fixated was Walker on his own suffering, that the first edition of his 119-page published account of his exploits contains not a word on the fate of the seven men who set off with him from Florida. Several of them are not even named in the text. The enslaved men who enlisted Walker’s help, initiating the chain of events described in the autobiography, are inexplicably dropped from the narrative at the moment of Walker’s arrest. We know from surviving accounts of Walker’s abolitionist talks that he would hold up his hand to audiences so that they might view his famous scars. At the conclusion of his lectures, one can imagine Walker passing among eager audiences, allowing men and women to take his middle-aged hand in their own to inspect the scars up close. Younger, less restrained, observers may even have touched the raised letters. The daguerreotype allowed this intimate ritual to be repeated by Bowditch and his associates at their leisure. Produced on a “Ninth Plate (2 x 2.5 inches),” The Branded Hand was created on one of the smallest daguerreotype plates in circulation, measuring just 2 x 2.5 inches. Even with the inclusion of its protective casing, the framed image was diminutive. To see it clearly one needed to take it in hand; while women and children may have used both hands to cradle the daguerreotype, a man could easily have grasped it in one. To hold and study the daguerreotype is to see the stigma burned into the copper plate as a visual reminder of Walker’s ordeal, and to place an overlay of the “SS” brand across one’s own palm. For the elite, white viewers who cradled the daguerreotype, the mere desire to hold the image attested to their own abolitionist credentials, as it aligned Walker’s more famous hand with their own. With the superimposition of his “SS” scars on their palms, the daguerreotype may also have flattered viewers into imagining his or her own “suffering” (either emotional or financial) for the noble abolitionist cause. As it raised interest in and awareness of the fight against slavery, the Branded Hand daguerreotype helped to ensure that abolition would remain linked in the minds of white northerners to the dedication and suffering of European-Americans. In the odd logic of its day, the plight of blacks was publicized through attention to the experiences of whites whose more modest―and often imagined―suffering bore little relation to that experienced by millions of American slaves. Martin A. Berger is Director of the Visual Studies Graduate Program and Professor in the History of Art and Visual Culture department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His most recent book is Seeing through Race: A Reinterpretation of Civil Rights Photography (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 2011). NOTES (1) Jonathan Walker, The Branded Hand: The Trial and Imprisonment of Jonathan Walker, at Pensacola, Florida, for Aiding Slaves to Escape from Bondage (Boston: Anti-Slavery Society, 1848), 32. (2) Walker, Branded Hand, 40. (3) For engraved reproductions of the daguerreotype image, see “The Branded Hand,” Prisoner’s Friend: A Monthly Magazine Devoted to Criminal Reform, Philosophy, August 13, 1845, 79; “The Man with the Branded Hand,” Zion’s Herald, July 12, 1899, 877; and the title page in each of Walker’s many editions of his autobiography The Branded Hand. For the popularity of newspaper engravings of the branded hand image, see Hazel Wolf, On Freedom’s Altar: The Martyr Complex in the Abolition Movement (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1952), 67. (4) “Communications: Jonathan Walker and John S. Jacobs on Sunday,” The North Star, March 31, 1848; “Walker Meeting in New Bedford,” The Liberator, August 22, 1845, 135. (5) Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, Written by Himself (New York: FQ Classics, 2007), 10; when John S. Jacobs published an account of his life in The Leisure Hour: A Family Journal of Instruction and Recreation, the journal’s white editors prefaced his essay with their comment that “The writer of these autobiographical sketches has, since his escape from slavery, held positions of trust in free countries, and every statement may be relied on.” In “A True Tale of Slavery,” The Leisure Hour: A Family Journal of Instruction and Recreation (February 7, 1861), 85. (6) Maria Weston Chapman, The Liberty Bell (Boston: Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Fair, 1845), 205-06; Douglass quoted in “The Branded Hand,” Chicago Daily Tribune, August 2, 1878, 1. (7) Marcus Wood, Blind Memory: Visual Representations of Slavery in England and America, 1780-1865 (Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 2000), 243. (8) Walker, Branded Hand, 101, 20, 40, 86. (9) Walker, Branded Hand, 40-43. (10) Walker, Branded Hand, 44; C.M. Bruleigh, “Tour on the Cape,” Liberator, February 28, 1845, 35. (11) For whites’ reinterpretation of the “SS” branding, see Walker, Branded Hand, 108; “Walker Meeting in New Bedford,” The Liberator, August 22, 1845, 135; “Jonathan Walker,” Christian Reflector, August 21, 1845, 136; “The Branded Hand,” Liberator, September 5, 1845, 1; also, see Frank Edward Kittredge, “The Man with the Branded Hand,” The New England Magazine, November 1898, 369. “The Branded Hand,” Boston Chronicle, reprinted in Elihu Burritt, Sparks from the Anvil (London: Charles Gilpin, 1847), 97-98. (12) [Anti-Slavery Society], The Branded Hand, pamphlet #9 (Philadelphia: Anti-Slavery Society, c.1846), 34. For abolitionist’s empathetic imaginings of themselves and their family members as suffering slaves, see Aileen S. Kraditor, Means and Ends in American Abolition: Garrison and His Critics on Strategy and Tactics, 1834-1850 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1967), 237-39, 242. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Figure007 Title A name given to the resource The Branded Hand of Captain Jonathan W. Walker Subject The topic of the resource The Branded Hand of Captain Jonathan W. Walker Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Albert Sands Southworth (American, 1811-1894) and Josiah Johnson Hawes (American, 1808-1908) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource circa 1845 Type The nature or genre of the resource studio portrait Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. Massachusetts Historical Society Collection (Photo 1.373) https://mirrorofrace.bc.edu/files/original/33a1049fc0d8b5cfe501e9574bd7699e.tif 7519191e31bc21d48cd3499a74e3c508 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Mirror of Race Subject The topic of the resource Mirror of Race Main Collection Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Ambrotype Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image Quarter Plate (3.25 x 4.25 inches) Factual Commentary Factual Commentary In this highly unusual image, human hair, placed between the glass cover and photographic plate, frames the image. It was not uncommon for family members to place locks of their loved ones hair together with their portraits, pinning the hair into the mat, but this portrait incorporates the hair into the composition of the photograph itself. We do not know who the woman or the baby were, but the type of photograph (an ambrotype) and its style of case and mat suggest a date of the late 1850s to the early 1860s. Exposure times in early photography could be quite long, and so a baby or toddler would often have to be held to prevent a blurred portrait. The African America woman holding this white baby still is almost certainly its nanny. Was she enslaved, or a free servant living in a free state? We do not know. Interpretive Commentary Interpretive Commentary What is so arresting in this image is the juxtaposition between the photographic plate and the human hair adorning the composition. Why is it there? Whose hair is it? Does it belong to the woman or to the baby? While locks of hair were often treasured as keepsakes of distant or even dead friends, spouses, and relatives, the inclusion of the hair in the photograph is unusual and even jarring because it does not fit in with our regular expectation of what a photographic plate should include. The child is almost certainly the focus of this portrait. As noted in the factual commentary, early photography usually involved a relatively long exposure time, so in portraits of very young children, we often see an adult present to keep the child from moving and blurring the image. The baby sits in the center of the composition, clearly the focus. Also, the baby’s clothing is tinted blue; such tinting cost extra, and it also indicates that this image, as a portrait, is at least intended as a portrait of the child. If the photograph was intended as a portrait of the white child, then the young African American woman was probably the child’s caretaker or nanny. But is she a free servant, employed by the family, or a slave? Her clothes are ordinary but good quality, and she wears a brooch and a ring that are tinted gold, all of which would be quite unusual for a slave. Even if she was free, what does her inclusion in this portrait mean? Was she simply used as tool to hold the child still? Keeping a servant was expensive; was the intent to display the family’s wealth? Also, keeping a servant of color was a status symbol for whites, a sign of social ascendancy and racial dominance available only to the elite. Or was she intended to be part of the portrait, as a valued member of the household? The fact that some of her possessions are tinted in the photograph indicates at least some attention for her as more than a mere prop. Or was it some combination of these motives? Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Figure005 Title A name given to the resource Nanny, Baby, Human Hair Subject The topic of the resource Unknown Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource circa 1860 Type The nature or genre of the resource Studio Portrait Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. Greg French Collection Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Unknown Photographer https://mirrorofrace.bc.edu/files/original/6402395bbb522a2b1c9da62f84cd6d81.jpg 51f54d64d437f8ff9cf27c4c02f5bb6c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Mirror of Race Subject The topic of the resource Mirror of Race Main Collection Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Daguerreotype Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image Half Plate (4.25 x 5.5 inches) Factual Commentary Factual Commentary John Jabez Edwin Mayall operated a studio in Philadelphia in the 1840s, until he moved permanently to London in 1846. This portrait is probably from his last years in Philadelphia, around 1845 or 1846. It can be identified as a Mayall by the distinctive inlaid, octagonal table, which he employed as a studio prop in Philadelphia. Mayall used this table in a portrait of Albert Sands Southworth, the partner of Josiah Johnsohn Hawes, who together operated the famed Southworth and Hawes photography studio in Boston, MA. That image may be seen in Sotheby’s April 27, 1999 auction catalogue, The David Feigenbaum Collection of Southworth & Hawes and Other 19th-Century Photographs, sale 7295 (New York: Sotheby’s, 1999), p. 46. Mayall was a highly skilled photographer, with a good eye for light and composition; he exhibited at the London Fair in 1851. In London, he quickly became a popular photographer among the aristocracy and upper classes. An example is this portrait below of Lord Brougham (1778-1868), a British nobleman and politician who was an early and vigorous advocate for eradication of the slave trade and the abolition of slavery in the British empire. Notice the announcement at the bottom of the back of the card: “All Mr. Mayall’s productions are published by Marion & Co., 22 & 23 Soho Square, London W”; Mayall sold prints of such famous people to the public. Mayall’s success as a portraitist to the upper echelons of British society won him an invitation to take portraits of Queen Victoria and the royal family. He subsequently made a considerable fortune mass-marketing these portraits, such as this one of Queen Victoria’s daughter, Princess Beatrice (1857-1944). J. J. E. Mayall, Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux, carte-de-visite, front and reverse (circa 1868), Gregory Fried collection. J. J. E. Mayall, H.R.H. The Princess Beatrice,” carte-de-visite, front and reverse (circa 1862), Gregory Fried collection. Interpretive Commentary Interpretive Commentary What constitutes “whiteness”? John Jabez Edwin Mayall was one of the most technically and artistically accomplished of the early photographers. His portraits would have commanded high prices, and the two young women posed here, who look alike enough to be sisters, come from the upper class of Philadelphia society. We can see this in the expensive clothes they wear, their elaborately curled hair, and in their jewelry ― the young woman on the left holds a pencil on a long gold chain. But wealth alone is not enough to mark whiteness. Is whiteness marked by skin tone or facial features or style of hair? Or does it also involve more subtle social cues? Whiteness in mid-19th century America was a virtually indispensible qualification for access to the higher reaches of society. Where do we see this in what is an otherwise normal portrait? Does the whiteness of these young woman lie also in their self-possession, the ease of their unusually relaxed and intimate portrait, in which they casually lock arms, one of them smiling gently at us? It is a portrait like this that reminds us that most early photography was made for the clients closest friends and family. What characteristics did this one seek to convey, and to what extent can we read the privileges and power of whiteness even in such an image? Consider that Mayall was successful enough to become an official photographer of Queen Victoria in England. Mayall produced carte-de-visite portraits of the queen and her family for sale to the public, such as the one below of the queen and the children morning her husband and their father, Prince Albert (1819-1861). royalfamilymed J.J.E. Mayall, The Royal Family Mourning Prince Albert, carte de visite (circa 1862), collection of Gregory Fried The royal family was one of the touchstones for what it meant to be white in that time. What qualities would Mayall have had to be able to convey in his portraiture to have this degree of success, and how do these features differ from the photographs of people excluded from the category of white? Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Figure004 Title A name given to the resource Two Young Women Subject The topic of the resource Unknown Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource John Jabez Edwin Mayall (American, 1810-1901) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource circa 1846 Type The nature or genre of the resource Portrait Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. Gregory Fried Collection