Happy New Year! (Part 2)

Note from Day: Yes, I realize that Part 2 is from an earlier Harpers edition than Part 1, but I wanted to close with something positive and powerful for this New Year to remind us that we must remain positive and that we have the power to demand change.

This illustration shows Thomas Nast’s Vision of the future, and the profound implications of the Emancipation Proclamation signed on this day in 1863. Nast is portraying blacks as normal people. . . not as slaves, property, or field hands. This would have been a shocking image in the day Nast created it, and is probably one of the earliest published images suggesting the possibility that a black family could be not unlike a white family.

This hopeful picture of the future is surrounded by images of the reality of the past. In the upper left image, Nast shows runaway slaves being hunted down by men and dogs. The left image shows a heartbreaking scene of a slave auction. The image shows a young man on the auction block being sold the the highest bidder. The the audience a black women, holding her children, is seen on her knees pleading with one of the buyers. Undoubtedly she has just been sold to her new owner, and she is begging the man to buy her husband as well so that the family will not be broken up. The look of indifference on the man’s face is an indicator that there is little hope of the family staying together, and the husband will soon be sold to someone else.

The lower left image shows scenes of slave torture . . . including a black woman being whipped and beaten, and a man being branded with a hot iron. On the right, we see more images of hope. We see black children attending school and we see black people receiving wages for their work.

Image and description courtesy of Son of the South – http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/civil-war/1863/january/emancipated-slaves.htm