The New World 2
Separation
From home, family, country, friends, culture, history and identity
Separation III
Fields Hands II
16 x 24 x 11 inches, Portfo # 128
Field hands were the hardest workers on a plantation. Required to be in the fields at first light, before the sun had risen, they worked until dusk, after the sun had set.
"Massa hollered if we was slow eating, 'Swallow that grub now and chaw it tonight. Better be in the field by daybreak.' We worked from see to can't." said Willis Winn, a former Republic of Texas slave, in Slave Narratives, a WPA Writers Project.
Most field hands had other chores to do after coming in from the fields such as feeding and watering of the livestock, chopping wood and preparing their food. Some plantation owners fed all the workers together at a communal table. There were some who had food poured into a trough from which the workers had to eat. Some were generous and allowed the slaves to eat all they wanted from the crops their labor had produced. Other owners gave a far too stringent food allowance consisting of measured amounts of corn meal, salt pork and molasses.
American Blacksmith
16 x 24 x 11 inches, Portfo # 71
Inspiration for this work came from a Bruce Marshall watercolor painting N'Kele found in the archives of the Institute of Texan Cultures in San Antonio, Texas. The blacksmith is a free black tradesman engaged in business in San Antonio, circa 1790, when that city was under Spanish rule.
Africans were skilled in the working of iron and other metals long before their arrival in the New World.
Harriett Tubman
Frederick Douglass
Man with Iron Hook Collar
John Brown, Harper's Ferry