Interesting vintage photos of slave children

I went to middle school in Atlanta. My school was about 90% or more AA. I am cc. I was the only CC in the drama club. We had an amazing AA teacher. I learned so much from her. One clear memory I have is her telling us we were going to do a play for Black History month that we would take to schools all over the area. The problem was color mattered in choosing the parts and there was more than one white part. All the kids assumed I would be a slave owner. I was not. I was a slave. She sat us all down and educated us on the facts of slavery. Not all slaves came from Africa. There were slaves from all over the world at first. After a while they found they could get a cheap source of slaves by using African's and there was less distaste for it than when they used white slaves, so the market changed. However many of the very first slaves in the US were white. So I was dressed in rags to play a slave and talk about the fact that there had been white slaves. Some of my AA friends put on clown white make up and raggedy Ann wigs and played slave owners. I thought it was the funniest thing ever. We were a very close knit group and had a lot of long talks about race. It was an awesome year for me, in spite of the fact that it was also a year of some guy killing children in our neighborhood including a classmate of mine.

Incredibly sad but amazing that they still exist today. This quote I think is the same as what you have been trying to say - people will view the child as Black regardless if they are part CC or not - different words / different time - same reality? "Kathleen Collins, author of Portraits of Slave Children, said it was hoped that 'these enigmatic portraits of Caucasian-featured children' would arouse 'Northern benefactors to contribute to the future of a race to which these children found themselves arbitrarily confined'."

Kind regards,Dickons

lol that sounds like hands on learning big time. Too bad the full history is not put out there, in a constructive and comprehensive manner. There were other ethnic groups who were utilized as slaves. In The Americas, the Irish comes to mind. These pictures are supposed to be Black/African and CC mixed slave children. The dark haired, ringlet styled Rebecca worked in her fathers house as a slave.

Yep, interesting how she used the term confinement. I wondered how were the white featured children treated further away from their home town where they were known to have a Black parent/grandparent? How did the difference in treatment impact them? These children were the status of their mother, if she was a slave, so were they. I would guess some passed, and did not look back to their Black roots (some did, but with Jim crow, it was dangerous to all involved) for better opportunities. Others chose to stay within the Black community. Others, from Louisiana, tried to stay within a creole community (New Orleans style) Yet the thought of; people are moved first by phenotype, for this promotional tour; the closer they look like the Whites, they can relate to them more so. Back then, enough effort was spent to separate the races as superior and inferior etc; they thought the White looking kids would help stir the potential contributors. I did not dig enough to see if this fund raising effort was very successful. Its interesting, I would say, yes we are still moved by outward looks which = familiarity. This has the descriptors:[url=http://www.mirrorofrace.org/carol.php]Mirror of Race[/url]

Interesting, indeed! It makes me shudder, literally, especially the part about Wilson having his former owner's initials burned into his head. I love photographs from long ago, and these are both beautiful and tell an incredible story. I Think the fact that they included Isaac, and openly stated that he was as intelligent as any white child, sheds a little more light on the motives of those who organized the tours and had the photographs taken. I think they were using the pictures of the white-looking kids to attract those they were seeking support from, while still taking the opportunity to educate people, at a time when most would have assumed that black children were not as intelligent as white children. I think they were just trying to take advantage of everything they could, for the sake of making it so that all of the former slave children, regardless of their physical features, could have the opportunity to go to school. I wish there was more information about these children and the kind of lives they had. Sometimes, the children with the most caucasian features were not accepted by either whites or blacks. I remember, a long time ago, reading something about the late Eartha Kitt, who was biracial, where they asked her whether she had been accepted more by her mother's family or her father's family. She said that she had been accepted by neither. Charley looks like he has the same features as my granddaughter, who is a quarter black and the rest white. That he had been sold twice, first by his own father, is shocking, although I don't think it was an uncommon situation. It's just so hard to imagine that such a thing as slavery was ever even considered, let alone practiced.

That was the overall intent.. marketing tools.As for the whiter features and being embraced by the Black community, while I am sure there was ugliness towards at times, the dynamics was not that cut and dry. There are Blacks who have a white looking greatgrand or two in their family tree. In all reality it depends on who one married. Many Black families had and embraced their mixed race members. Especially if the person was a product of rape..which happened often back then. Of course back then if one looked white, it was dangerous to be seen together with a darker hued person. Some Jim Crow codes indicated that it was a punishable offence to "act" White. Folks were lynch happy back when. Such as a Black man seen with a near white looking woman. I recently read of a couple where the wife was very light and the husband got into trouble..so they had to sneak around. Who knows with Eartha Kitt. Her mother was supposedly raped by a White local farmer. The aunt whose raised her for a bit, husband may not have wanted any trouble. Complex times, of course she was hurt..but those were complex times. overall unless a person passed successfully, they were a part of the Black community. Now, you see the evidence of past miscegenation everyday in the Black community..in my family, my DH's family.. other Black peers families etc;

Pictures of various AAs in the past[url=http://vintageblackglamour.tumblr.com/page/2]Vintage Black Glamour[/url].An expo exhibit:[url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/photography/8013147/The-Paris-Albums-1900-W.E.B.-Du-Bois.html?image=4]The Paris Albums 1900: W.E.B. Du Bois - Telegraph[/url][url=http://129.171.53.1/ep/Paris/home.htm]Paris 1900 The Exhibit of American Negroes[/url]

Haven't visited in a while and just saw this. Fascinating history and photographs. Amazing and sad what people can do to each other for whatever stupid reason they can drum up.Just saw a show on PBS the other night that included the story of Gordon Parks and how he got his start as a photographer. Noted he was the one who took the Eartha Kitt photo.

I didn't know that Eartha Kit was the product of rape. I could sure see how that might have made things different, back then. There has been SO much pain from people's hangups about where someone has come from,like the circumstances of their birth (or the color of their skin) determine their worth. I guess those of us here are about as far from that as anyone there is. I often think about the number of minority children who went without permanent families, as recently as 20 years ago, while there were families who would have given just about anything to adopt them. But, the people who had control refused to let those people who needed each other be together. Of course, I am getting on to a different topic now.

True, times were different back when, I think Eartha was very sensitive about those situations, and her family dynamics was bad to begin with. However, many others did not react as she did. Freddie Washington, Lena Horne comes to mind. Plus folks love the tragic mulatto story. Yea lol mepa law and it rise,...a topic I have reservations about, it also helps to have all sides of the story and updates. The Black social workers had a point, still do with the tweaking, and they had no real control. If it was not for them the focus on cultural competency would not get the small amount of focus it has now. So it was not a "color hang-up" on their part, they had genuine concern that raising a Black child was hard enough without proper understanding of society. Color blind was the way to go for quite a few back when. Yet, there are still many older children of color in foster care, wonder why those numbers are still up. I think it was all about getting those babies, not the older kids. Private adoption was another story. People forget, back when, it was mostly white families who did not want the Black kids their family member gave birth to. Remember it was a huge scandal to have a Black child pop up in a White family, this was a norm. Now, Black families usually took care of their own (regardless of the parentage mix) until external circumstances really started affecting the supportive family units.

I love his photography.

NickChris, actually, the social workers I was referring to, who let black children grow up in foster care, rather than let white parents adopt then, were mostly white. There was one in Las Vegas when we lived there who had been put in charge of the special needs kids, most of whom were non-white children. We came along, with our biracial toddler we had adopted in Germany, thinking they would be more than happy to place another black or biracial child with us. That was in 1990, and things had started changing by then, so I was very surprised to learn that their policy was to refuse to let white parents have non-white children, under any circumstances. If they'd had same-race families to place the children with, that would have been fine, but they didn't. They just sentenced most of those kids to growing up without a permanent family. We ended up adopting there, because they got custody of a little white baby who was very high needs because of a rare birth defect (my oldest daughter, Julia). One time, I was in this woman's office, with Thomas, who was almost two. He was in my arms and hugging me and kissing my cheek over and over, like he did. I looked at her and saw her watching him, with an unmistakable look of disgust. That just solidified the feeling I all ready had about her, that she didn't want minority children with white parents because she thought they were inferior. I think I can understand the reservations of some black social workers, at least to some extent. I think it is absolutely appropriate for available black families to be given preference over white families. I just have a big, big problem with children being left in foster care because there are not enough black families, when they could be placed with a permanent family where the parents are white, but are willing to accept the special needs of black children. I look at my two black sons, both of whom became fathers at a very young age, and how much love and support they have needed and will need, and I know that there are young men such as they are, who have no parents to love and support them because, when they were children, some bigoted social worker decided that having no permanent family would be better than a family with white parents. Sorry, I got on my soapbox (again). I'm not arguing with you, just commenting on the situation. I'm thankful that things have changed, for the most part.

Thanks for the clarification, and a view into another angle. Now-a-days the mepa-iep law gives civil rights coverage, so anyone should be able to adopt if they want.