Arts
In the Library of Congress’s Manuscript Collections are two photographs of an African-American woman named Adeline Henson. In the first photograph she is a young woman, probably still enslaved, and in the second, taken in 1913, she is now elderly. According to a letter that accompanies the photographs, Henson had been purchased by George and Mary Price of Baltimore to keep her from being sold to Georgia, and she remained with the Prices as a devoted servant to her death. The 1861 bill of sale is included in the collection. This podcast goes in search of Adeline Henson and the elusive subject of 19th-century African American women’s history. Johns Hopkins University historian Martha Jones and Library of Congress Senior Curator of Photography Beverly Brannan are the guests on this episode.