Visualizing Equality: African American Rights and Visual Culture in the Nineteenth Century
A presentation and discussion with Aston Gonzalez
Presented on: Wednesday, November 10, 2021
Sponsored by the Center for Historic American Visual Culture (CHAViC)
The fight for racial equality in the nineteenth century played out not only in marches and political conventions but also in the print and visual culture created and circulated throughout the United States by African Americans. Advances in image technologies—daguerreotypes, lithographs, cartes-de-visite, and steam printing presses—enabled people to see and participate in social reform movements in new ways. African American activists seized these opportunities and produced images that advanced campaigns for Black rights. Aston Gonzalez will speak about understudied Black artists who produced images to persuade viewers of the necessity for racial equality, Black political leadership, and freedom from slavery. Their networks of transatlantic patronage and travels to Europe, the Caribbean, and Africa reveal their extensive involvement in the most pressing concerns for Black people in the Atlantic world.
