The Black Family United And Resilient
The Black Family United and Resilient, the February and March exhibition at the Orangeburg County Fine Arts Center, covers the history of the Black family from emancipation to the present day. What this 20-panel exhibition intends to highlight is the evolutionary structure of the Black family. Even though Black families existed biologically, they often were not acknowledged as a unit, weren’t able to live together and often did not know where their family members were prior to emancipation.
Image details:
An Unknown Union Soldier, with his wife and daughters. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.
This Union soldier and his family remain unknowable. Others, whose images were not photographed, captured the sentiments during the time of the Civil War. They wrote home to their loved ones. Union soldier Samuel Cabble’s letter to his enslaved wife sheds light.
“Dear Wife i have enlisted in the army i am now in the state of Massachusetts but before this letter reaches you i will be in North Carlinia and though great is the present national dificulties yet i look forward to a brighter day When i shall have the opertunity of seeing you in the full enjoyment of fredom i would like to no if you are still in slavery if you are it will not be long before we shall have crushed the system that now opreses you for in the course of three months you shall have your liberty.”
Partially sourced from:
Documenting the American South
Wikipedia entry for William Wells Brown
Zinn Education Project: Black Abolitionists