The Revolution Continues

The most photographed American in the nineteenth century—more than Lincoln, more than Whitman—was Frederick Douglas, the orator and abolitionist. His life will be written about until the end of time. He lived as an enslaved person for much of his early adulthood and then engineered his own emancipation. Not content to be a tool in the drama of others, he exercised his agency in thrilling ways. One of those strategies was promotional images that illustrated his dignity, his intelligence, and his good looks. When people thought about American Black people, he wanted them to imagine…Frederick Douglas.

The other notable photograph from this period is typically referred to as “Peter/Gordon Scourged.” It’s the famous photo of a middle-aged Black man with a webwork of scars in the middle of his back. It was apparently taken in the middle of the Civil War and shows us one aspect of American slavery. Peter was apparently an uncooperative enslaved person and suffered the consequence of his master’s rage. The whip of injustice raised welts on his body that presumably lasted for the rest of his life. The image was used by White abolitionists to illustrate the cause to which they had pledged themselves.

There has been no noise in the political sphere about the images of Frederick Douglas, but that is not true about Peter/Gordon. An original photo hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, with copies at museums and cultural institutions across the country. That includes galleries associated with the National Park system.

Which means, of course, that they are in the crosshairs of Sauron, and the minions who are working to re-make American history. For this cohort of warriors, the Peter/Gordon image is negative, depressing—a national insult. It defames a great country that has done so much for the world. It is also deeply and piercingly true, a genuine artifact of Southern states savagery and a powerful argument against chattel slavery. In a single image, it manages to capture the root cause of the war and its lasting damage.

Regrettably, Sauron will have his way. Most of the copies of Peter/Gordon will come down from the walls of cultural institutions, as if they are the moral equivalent of Confederate generals. Peter/Gordon, erased in life, will one again experience erasure, but on a deeper and more lasting level. Pity the country that cannot tell its story without acknowledging its sorrowful complexities. This administration has damned us to emptiness and ignorance.