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Title: Turning the tables on the overseer
Description: Bitter anti-slavery print depicting a group of slaves about to whip their white overseer, who has been bound to a tree on the plantation grounds. Before the overseer, the male slave holding the whipping lash boldly pulls up his sleeve as the slave next to him takes off his hat in a mock gesture of respect. Smiling men, women, and children of all ages stand, sit, and lean on a fence, surrounding the overseer in anticipation of his whipping., Illustration in New York Illustrated News, November 28, 1863, p. 73., Also published as a loose print by the African American press, Robert and Thomas Hamilton, possibly the first black press to publish separate prints., Fels Afro-Americana Image Project, Resistance.
Date: [1863]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Books & Other Texts | Rare **Per D 8.5 1571.F Nov 28 1863 p 73, https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3A2863

Title: Intérieur de salle à manger à Ste. Marthe
Description: Dining room on the plantation of Ste. Marthe. As a planter dines with his family, a female slave serves them, while a male slave fans the family (?) with a contraption that swings from the ceiling., Plate in Voyage pittoresque dans le deux Ameriques (A Paris : Chez L. Tenr'e, libraire-éditeur, rue de Paon, 1; et chez Henri Dupuy, rue de la Monnaie, 11., M DCCC XXXVI. [1836]), p. 46., Fels Afro-Americana Image Project, Scenes from Slave Life.
Date: [1836]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Books & Other Texts | Rare Am 1836 Orbi 6335.F p 46, https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3A2748

Title: Must have their baskets full
Description: Illustration included in Chapter XXVII, "Compromise of 1850." Set on a plantation, it shows two slaves, a man and a woman, at work in a cotton-field. Woman balances a basket of cotton on her head, while the man carries his on his shoulders. Image relates to the following description of slave life: "From the auction-room they went to the plantation to work in the cotton-fields, beneath the broiling sun, driven by a brutal overseer sitting on a horse, with a whip in his hand, which he delighted to crack over them, or to bring down upon the back of any one that lagged. The weak and feeble must keep up with the strong in wielding the heavy hoe. When the fields were snow-white with the bursting bolls they must perform their allotted tasks in picking; the baskets must be full and running over: the number of pounds specified for a day's work to be tipped by the steel-yards, or in default they would be flogged." (p. 387), Engraving in Charles Coffin's Building the Nation: Events in the History of the United States from the Revolution to the Beginning of the War between the States (New York: Harper & Brothers, Franklin Square, 1883), p. 388., Fels Afro-Americana Image Project, Work Scenes.
Date: [1883]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Books & Other Texts | Rare Am 1883 Cof 23709.O p 388, https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3A2832

Title: Scenes on a cotton plantation
Description: According to the accompanying commentary (p. 69), these scenes show the Buena Vista plantation in Clarke County, Alabama. As the text suggests, "The four sketches in the centre [i.e., sowing, ploughing, hoeing, and picking] show the principal operations of the cotton culture; and around figure other scenes appropriate to a cotton plantation." Moving clockwise from the upper right, the outer scenes are titled: the cotton gin, the planter and his overseer, prayer meeting, Saturday evening dance, plantation graveyard, the call to labor, and the cotton press. The text describes these scenes as follows: "The cotton-gin; the picturesque cotton-press, to whose long lever the mules are harnessed to create the power which compresses the ginned staple into bales; the morning call, performed upon a cow-horn; the owner and his overseer, figure here; as well as the weekly distribution of rations; the dance which closes the week's labor, and the plantation burying-ground. Here the defunct negroes are buried, a rail-fence being raised above the graves to keep off marauding hogs, calves, etc.", Double-page illustration in Harper's Weekly, vol. XI, no. 527 (February 2, 1867), p. 72., Fels Afro-Americana Image Project, Scenes from Slave Life.
Date: [February 1867]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Books & Other Texts | Rare **Per H 1529.F v XI n 527 February 2 1867 p 72, https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3A2879

Title: A Negro funeral
Description: Engraving accompanies T. Addison Richard's narrative, "The Rice Lands of the South," which, among other topics, describes slave life on southern rice plantations. It shows a slave funeral, set in a heavily wooded grove, in which numerous mourners take part. A preacher with raised, out-streched arms leads the service; mourners kneel, pray, and weep. Engraving corresponds with the following passage: "The state of excitement and exaltation to which their [i.e, the plantation slaves'] impressionable natures are so easily wrought, especially in religious matters, is manifest in their singing even more strangely than in their preaching and praying. These performances though, are, with all their grotesqueness and absurdity, often very effective and beautiful. Not seldom has it been our pleasure to listen to impromptu music, wondrously sweet and wild and weird, which, well counterfeited on the lyric stage, would bring fame and fortune. Perhaps the most remarkable of these exhibtions are those which are wont to occur on occasions of funeral solemnities, celebrated, as they generally are, in the deep night-darkness of some dense old wood, made doubly dismal by the ghostly light of the pine torches and the phantom-like figures of the scarcely visible mourners." (p. 735), Illustration in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, vol. 19, no. 114 (November 1859), p. 731., Fels Afro-Americana Image Project, Scenes from Slave Life.
Date: [November 1859]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Books & Other Texts | Rare Per H 9 62992.O v 19 n 114 November 1859 p 731, https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3A2876

Title: Distinguished colored men
Description: Commemorative print containing a montage of portraits of eminent African American men centered around a portrait of Frederick Douglass and bordered by vignettes. Portraiture depicts: "Robert Brown Elliott, Ex-member of Congress" from South Carolina; "Blanche K. Bruce, Ex-Senator, U.S." from Mississippi; "Prof. R.T. Greener, Dean, Howard University"; "Wm. Wells Brown, M.D., author of the Rising Son"; "Henry Highland Garnett [sic], Late Minister of Liberia"; "Rt. Rev. Richard Allen, 1st Bishop of the African M.E. Church" in Philadelphia; first African American governor, "P.B.S. Pinchback, Ex-Governor of Louisiana"; "J.H. Rainey, Ex-Member of Congress"; "E.D. Bassett, Ex-Minister to Hayti"; "John Mercer Langston, Minister to Hayti". Vignettes depict a cornstalk, a twig of cotton, and scenes of romanticized images of African American home life by a waterway showing African Americans playing instruments, dancing, transporting watermelon by barge, and relaxing., Title from item., Inscribed lower right corner: Agents Wanted., Lower left corner inexpertly hand painted., Lib. Company. Annual report, 1975, p. 61., Accessioned 1975., RVCDC, Description revised 2021., Access points revised 2021., Part of digital collections catalog through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services as administered by the Pennsylvania Department of Education through the Office of Commonwealth Libraries, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett, Governor, 2013-2014.
Date: 1883
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department **GC - African American Heroes [8139.F]

Title: From the plantation to the Senate
Description: Commemorative print containing portraits of eminent 19th-century African American men above a central cotton plantation scene. In front of the plantation residence by a river, enslaved African American men and women pick and transport baskets of cotton as a well-dressed African American foreman on horseback confers with a man on the dirt road. Flanking the central portrait of "Hon. Frederick Douglass, Champion of Freedom" on a background of tropical flowers, vines, and fruits are: "Hon. Benj. S. Turner of Alabama"; "Rt. Rev. Richard Allen" of Philadelphia, "1st Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church"; "Hon. H.R. Revels of Mississippi"; "Hon. Joseph H. Rainy [sic] of South Carolina"; "Hon. Josiah T. Walls of Florida"; and "Wm. Wells Brown, M.D., Author of the Rising Sun [sic]". Also contains vignettes of romanticized images of African American home life by a river showing African Americans playing instruments and dancing, transporting watermelon by barge, and relaxing outside their home., Title from item., Date from copyright statement: Copyrighted 1883 by Gaylord Watson., Watson was a New York lithographer who specialized in maps., Lib. Company. Annual report, 1974, p. 61., Purchase 1974., RVCDC, Description revised 2021., Access points revised 2021., Part of digital collections catalog through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services as administered by the Pennsylvania Department of Education through the Office of Commonwealth Libraries, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett, Governor, 2013-2014.
Date: 1883
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department **GC - African American Heroes [8091.F.275]

Title: Turning the tables on the overseer
Description: Abolitionist print depicting a group of enslaved African American people about to whip their white plantation overseer, who has been bound to a tree on the plantation grounds. Before the plantation overseer, the African American man holds the whip and pulls up his sleeve as the enslaved man next to him takes of his hat in a mock gesture of respect. Smiling men, women, and children of all ages stand, sit, and lean on a fence, surrounding the overseer in anticipation of his whipping., Title from item., First published in New York Illustrated news, November 28, 1863 (LCP **Per D 8.5, 1863). Later published as a loose print by the African American press, Robert and Thomas Hamilton, possibly the first Black press to publish separate prints., LCP exhibition catalogue: African American Miscellany p. 38., Originally part of a McAllister scrapbook of Civil War caricatures and photographs. McAllister Collection, gift, 1886., Description revised 2021., Access points revised 2021., Part of digital collections catalog through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services as administered by the Pennsylvania Department of Education through the Office of Commonwealth Libraries, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett, Governor, 2013-2014.
Date: [1863]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department *GC-Slavery [5780.F]

Title: [Proof vignette of Southern planter and scenes from the South]
Description: Proof vignette that was probably to be incorporated into a larger print. Shows a white man plantation owner, seated on a bale of cotton, surrounded by Southern agricultural iconography, including a twig of cotton, a mill building, and Black men laborers, possibly enslaved men, picking in a cotton field near a docked side-wheel paddle steamer. A horse-drawn wagon by a line of people is visible at the dock. Contains registration marks and a color mark., Title supplied by cataloger., Gift of David Doret, 2007., Description revised 2021., Access points revised 2021., Part of digital collections catalog through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services as administered by the Pennsylvania Department of Education through the Office of the Commonwealth Libraries, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett, Governor, 2013-2014.
Date: [ca. 1860 - ca. 1870]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department GC-Allegories [P.2007.39.25]

Title: [Young African American man, possibly Jerry Stevens an enslaved man, at Raceland Plantation, Dinwiddie, Virginia]
Description: Full-length portrait of an African American man, attired in a brimmed hat, a long-sleeved shirt, and pants with large tears and holes, holding a wooden plow over his shoulder. He stands in front of a wooden building and to the left of a wooden door. In the right is a white dog with its back to the viewer., Title supplied by cataloger., Date inferred from photographic medium and content., Purchase 2011., Description revised 2021., Access points revised 2021., Part of digital collections catalog through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services as administered by the Pennsylvania Department of Education through the Office of the Commonwealth Libraries, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett, Governor, 2013-2014.
Date: 1885
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department portrait photographs - miscellaneous - Stevens [P.2011.16]

Title: Here is a picture of some slaves at work Reward of merit. This may certify that [Mr. George Snow] by diligence and attention to study, merits the approbation of [his] friends and teacher
Description: School token illustrated with a scene showing enslaved men and women working in a tobacco field near a shack. In the right, three younger enslaved men hoe and gather a bundle of tobacco. In the left, an enslaved man stands and converses with an enslaved woman, seated on a bale. They each hold the handles of farming implements. A large sack and crate rest to the left of the bale. In the left background, an enslaved woman stands in the doorway of the shack. Wooden buildings and harvested fields are visible in the right background. The young men wear short sleeves and shorts. The women wear dresses and the man wears short sleeves and pants. Rewards of merit were popular with teachers during the 19th century and were given to reward students who had excelled in their school work. The addition of pictures made a reward of merit card a more special acknowledgement of a pupil’s success., Title from illustration caption and text printed on verso., Date inferred from content of image and graphic medium., Verso contains decorative border surrounding the text., Purchased with the Davida T. Deutsch African American History Fund., Illustrated in Patricia Fenn and Alfred Malpa, Rewards of merit (Charlottesville, Va.: Ephemera Society of America, 1994), 118., Description revised 2021., Access points revised 2021., RVCDC
Date: [ca. 1830- ca. 1850]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department Rewards of Merit - Slaves [118555.D]

Title: [Outdoor group]
Description: Set on a plantation, this outdoor scene of casual socializing aims to portray everyday slave life. Six slaves and a young white woman are loosely arranged in seated and standing positions, with the white woman occupying a central place in the image. Although one slave (front left) holds a pitchfork and another (front right) is positioned next to a small shovel and an over-turned bucket, the slaves appear to be at rest., Title page vignette in Charles Peterson's The Cabin and Parlor: or, Slaves and Masters (Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson. Stereotyped by George Charles. Printed by King & Baird, c1852)., Fels Afro-Americana Image Project, Scenes from Slave Life.
Creator: Beeler, Charles H., engraver
Date: [1878]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Books & Other Texts | Rare 2 Wright 1878a 10231.D title page vignette, https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3A2656

Title: The holiday dance
Description: Set on a plantation, this merry scene portrays a harvest dance. A man and a woman dance bare-foot to the music of a fiddler, who is perched high upon a stool. Others look on. A young man kneels in the foreground, his straw hat and hoe lying on the ground. In the background, two stocky, resolute-looking white women observe the festivities. Both wear kerchiefs, the ties of which, in one case, resemble devil's horns., Plate at the front of Charles Peterson's The Cabin and Parlor: or, Slaves and Masters (Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson. Stereotyped by George Charles. Printed by King & Baird, c1852), np., Fels Afro-Americana Image Project, Scenes from Slave Life.
Creator: Beeler, Charles H., engraver
Date: [1878]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Books & Other Texts | Rare 2 Wright 1878a 10231.D np, https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3A2654

Title: A Surinam planter in his morning dress
Description: Engraving was done after one of John Gabriel Stedman's own drawings, which record his impressions of Surinam. It offers a detailed frontal view of a Surniman planter, who stands in the extreme foregroud of the image; the planter's turned head also provides a profile view of his face. Behind him and to the right, a female slave, wearing only a skirt and a headress, pours him a glass of wine. Stedman described the scene as follows: "His worship now saunters out in his morning dress, which consists of a pair of the finest Holland trowsers, white silk stockings, and red or yellow Morocco slippers; the neck of his shirt open, and nothing over it, a loose flowing night-gown of the finest India chintz excepted. On his head is a cotton night-cap, as thin as a cobweb, and over that an enormous beaver hat, that protects his meagre visage from the sun, which is already the color of mahogany, while his whole carcase seldom weighs above eight or ten stone, being generally exhausted by the climate and dissipation. To give a more complete idea of this fine gentleman, I in the annexed plate present him to the reader with a pipe in his mouth, which almost everywhere accompanies him, and receiving a glass of Madeira wine and water, from a female quaderoon slave, to refresh him during his walk." (vol. 2, p. 56), Plate XLIX in John Gabriel Stedman's Narrative, of a five year's expedition, against the revolted Negroes of Surinam, in Guiana, on the wild coast of South America; from the year 1772 to 1777 (London: Printed for J. Johnson, St. Paul's Church Yard, & J. Edwards, Pall Mall, 1796), vol. II, facing p. 56., Fels Afro-Americana Image Project, Scenes from Slave Life.
Creator: Blake, William, 1757-1827, engraver
Date: Dec. 2, 1793
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Books & Other Texts | Rare Am 1796 Sted 755.Q v 2 p 56, https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3A2698

Title: A plantation "corn-shucking" -- social meeting of slaves
Description: Illustration is included in Chapter XIX, "The Slave-Trader's Purchase -- A Slave Gang Bound for the South -- Distressing Scenes at Parting -- 'We'll Shuck dis Cawn Befo' We Go!'" Image shows a large, festive, night-time corn-shucking in which slaves from several neighboring plantations were said to have participated. Sitting and standing around an enormous pile of husks, the slaves strip the ears of corn and throw them into buckets. According to the text, the slaves sang while they worked, and some tried to outdo each other in husking contests., Illustration in Mary Ashton Rice Livermore's The Story of my Life, or, The Sunshine and Shadow of Seventy Years (Hartford: A.D. Worthington & Co., 1897), p. 336., Caption underneath the image reads: "Costumed in every variety of nondescript gaments, with faces of every shade of black, as diverse in aspect as were their garments in fashion, they seated themselves in groups around the mounds of unhusked corn.", Fels Afro-Americana Image Project, Scenes from Slave Life.
Creator: Helmick, Howard, designer
Date: [1897]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Books & Other Texts | Rare Am 1897 Liv 29518.O p 336, https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3A2840

Title: A Spanish planter of Porto Rico
Description: Set in a lush grove, the image depicts a Spanish planter in Puerto Rico, who "luxuriates" in a hammock suspended from a citrus tree. The well-dressed planter wears a large top hat and holds a pipe in his mouth; his legs hang over either side of the hammock and his arms are folded in a contented manner. He is waited on by a partially clothed male slave, whose facial features correspond to racist stereotypes. Smiling at the planter, the slave holds a tray upon which a drink rests., Illustration in John Augustine Waller's Voyage in the West Indies (London: Printed for Sir Richard Phillips, and Co. Bride Court, Bridge Street, 1820), p. 34., Fels Afro-Americana Image Project, Scenes from Slave Life.
Creator: Neele & Son, engraver
Date: [1820]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Books & Other Texts | Rare U Egyp Forb (b.w.) 5258.O.2.9 p 34, https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3A2939

Title: [Thomas Richardson and American Bank Note Company scrapbook]
Description: Scrapbook compiled by Philadelphia banknote printer Thomas Richardson containing proofs of illustrations after the work of F. O. C. Darley from Susan Fenimore Cooper's "Pages and Pictures from the Writings of James Fenimore Cooper" (New York, 1861); portrait illustrations, some from J. B. Longacre's "National Portrait Gallery" (probably 1854 edition); and vignette specimens of the American Bank Note Company and their predecessor companies. Cooper illustrations depict scenes on the frontier and ship decks, with Native Americans, and of battles; deathbeds; and of informal meeting from his works The Oak Openings, The Redskins, The Chainbearer, The Pathfinder, The Red Rover, The Monikins, Deerslayer, Homeward Bound, Lionel Lincoln, The Pilot, Last of the Mohicans, The Wept Wish-ton Wish, The Spy, and Wing and Wing. Several also contain animals. Sitters in portrait illustrations include Lewis Cass, Giuseppe Garibaldi, David Ramsay, James Kent, Thomas C. Pope, John McLean, Stephen Decatur, Samuel Rogers, Rev. William Capers, John Binns, Washington Irving, and Noah Webster., Specimen subjects include portraits of prominent government officials, Civil War figures, businessmen, clergymen, royalty, and "fancy heads" of named and unnamed women and children; allegorical figures and scenes, including Bounty, Liberty, Arts, Agriculture, and Commerce; state and symbolic seals and insignia; naval and maritime imagery, including sailors, sailing vessels, and wharf and dock views; modes and venues of transportation, including steamboats, trains, streetcars, and rail stations; white and Black men artisans, laborers, and tradesmen, including drivers, farmers, sheep shearers, and furriers; industrial views of factory workers, mineworkers, and female loom workers, as well as mills and factories along canals and riverfronts; women at work feeding livestock, milking cows, and at a sewing machine; municipal buildings and storefronts; southern imagery, including enslaved people at work, palmetto trees, plantations, and ports; patriotic, historical, military, and scenic imagery; frontier views and scenes with Native Americans; and animals. Specimens with titles include Star of Empire (Princess Eugenie of Sweden) River Source, The Guardian, Locomotive, Autumn Fruit, Sheep Feeding, The Yarn, Trusty, Picking Grapes, The Sickle, The Death Blow, and Propeller Loading. Some specimens used as the backs of national currency., Title supplied by cataloger., Date based on publication date of specimens., Manuscript notes on front free end paper: Aunt Tillie Richardson (cousin Florence's aunt) in pencil; Scrapbook No. 3 in ink., Lincoln Monument Association of Philadelphia certificate pasted on inside front cover and issued to Thos. Richardson on July 4, 1865, signed C. J. Stille, Secy; Alex. Henry, Prest.; and James L. Claghorn, Cashr. Certificate number 6004 and illustrated with bust-length portrait of Lincoln. Charles J. Stillé, was a Philadelphia lawyer who served on the United States Sanitary Commission, and was later Provost of the University of Pennsylvania. Alexander Henry was the mayor of Philadelphia. James L. Claghorn was president of the Commercial National Bank in Philadelphia and an art collector., Stationer's label pasted on back cover: John Alexander, Stationer and Printer, 52 South Fourth St., Various artists, engravers, and printers including F.O.C. Darley, G. H. Cushman, J. Hamilton, Asher B. Durand, C. Schussele, John Sartain, Samuel Sartain, Jas. D. Smillie, E. Prudhomme, H. B. Hall, T. Phillibrown, R. Whitechurch, J. M. Butler, James Bannister, Charles Kennedy Burt, Louis Delnoce, W. W. Rice, American Bank Note Company, Toppan, Carpenter & Co, Baldwin, Bald & Cousland, and Bald, Cousland & Co., Several of the specimens contain a specimen number and/or title., Few of the specimens contain a copyright statement., Specimen #312 (p. 81) and specimen #280 (p. 71) after the work of Emanuel Leutze., Inventory of portrait sitters housed at repository., Identity of several of the artists and engravers supplied by Gene Hessler, The engraver's line: an encyclopedia of paper money & postage stamp art (Port Clinton, OH: BNR Press, 1993)., RVCDC, Accessioned 2012., Description revised 2021., Access points revised 2021., Cataloging funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (PW-506-19-10), 2010-2012., Part of digital collections catalog through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services as administered by the Pennsylvania Department of Education through the Office of the Commonwealth Libraries, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett, Governor, 2013-2014., Thomas Richardson (b. ca. 1802) was a Philadelphia plate printer who served as the foreman of printing at the Philadelphia branch of the American Bank Note Company formed in 1858. He retired from the trade by 1880.
Creator: Richardson, Thomas, 1802-approximately 1881
Date: [ca. 1854-ca. 1861]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department *albums (flat) [P.2012.6]

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