American Studies lesson based on Maurice Bergers' "Images of Emancipation" in the New York TImes' Lens blog. See: http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/20/images-of-emancipation/?smid=pl-share

1. Images of
Emancipation

2. “Negroes can never have impartial portraits, at the
hands of white artists. It seems to us next to
impossible for white men to take likenesses of black
men, without most grossly exaggerating their
distinctive features. And the reason is obvious.
Artists, like all other white persons, have adopted a
theory respecting the distinctive features of Negro
physiognomy. We have heard many white persons…

3. say, that ‘Negroes look all alike,’ and that they could
not distinguish between the old and the young. They
associate with the Negro face, high cheek bones,
distended nostril, depressed nose, thick lips, and
retreating foreheads. This theory impressed strongly
upon the mind of an artist exercises a powerful
influence over his pencil, and very naturally leads
him to distort and exaggerate those peculiarities,
even when they scarcely exist in the original.”

10. Images of
Emancipation

12. Black
background
and knock out
white?

14. An African-American soldier in uniform
with his wife and two daughters. 1860s.

16. Emancipation Day in Richmond, Va.
April 3, 1888.

18. Emancipation Day, Richmond, Va.
1905.

20. The band of the 107th United States
Colored Infantry at Fort Corcoran in
Arlington, Va. 1865.

22. Sojourner Truth on a carte-de-visite.
1860s.

25. Booker T. Washington. Circa 1915.

27. Harriet Tubman. 1864.

29. A family at the Hermitage,
Savannah, Ga. 1907.

31. “Of Pottsville, Pa., the first man
wounded in the Great American
Rebellion, ‘Baltimore, April 18, 1861.’”
Carte-de-visite of Nicholas Biddle.

33. A “nursemaid with her charge,”
Arkansas. Circa 1855.

36. Emancipated slaves,
“white and colored”. 1863.

38. Wilson Chinn
Charles Taylor
Mary Johnson Robert Whitehead
Isaac White
Augusta Boujey
Rosina Downs
Rebecca Huger

39. Prisoners assigned to harvest timber.
1920s.

41. “Colored army teamsters,
Cobb Hill, Va.” 1864.

43. Fugitive African-Americans fording the
Rappahannock River in Virginia. 1862.

45. A former slave holding a horn with
which slaves were called, near
Marshall, Tex. 1939.

47. African-American soldier at Benton
Barracks, St. Louis. 1860s.