Malvina Russell Tombstone, Peterboro, New York, 2008

Artist William Earle Williams (American, born 1950)

DimensionsSheet: 10 x 8 in (25.4 x 20.3 cm)

Materials/TechniqueGelatin silver print

Credit LineGift of the artist in memory of Malvina Russell and all of those souls buried at Peterboro cemetery who were "born a slave and died free"

Object number2022.4

DescriptionIn the United States the African slave trade was banned in 1808, but illegal trafficking continued and slavery became a self-perpetuating institution. Seventeenth-century law in the US made a child’s status that of their mother; for nearly two hundred years, generations of children were born into slavery here until the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified in 1865. Malvina Russell was the youngest child of Samuel and Harriet (Sims) Russell and was manumitted with her family in 1841 by Gerrit Smith. At the time of her death in 1925, she had amassed an estate valued at $10,000, which she bequeathed to more than thirty people.

Collections

Picker Art Gallery Collections

Exhibitions

A Wicked Commerce: The US and the Atlantic Slave Trade Through the Lens of William Earle Willams

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