I love the Internet Archive! Somewhere buried in its electronic “stacks” you can find almost anything. Today I found the Shortridge High School Annual, (Indianapolis, Ind.), 1917. At the back of the book each senior is pictured and a sentence or two was written about them - I love things like this! So fellow tumblrs, today I’d like to introduce you to William S. Averitt and Myra Allison, class of 1917. I don’t think I’ll be able to resist posting more of their classmates so stay tuned if that interests you. (click to enlarge)
My master used to read prayers in public to the ship’s crew every Sabbath day, and when I first saw him read, I was never so surprised in my life as when I saw the book talk to my master, for I thought it did, as I observed him to look upon it and move his lips. I wished it would do so with me.
As soon as my master had done reading, I followed him to the place where he put the book, being mightily delighted with it, and when nobody saw me, I opened it and put my ear down close upon it, in great hopes that it would say something to me; but I was very sorry and greatly disappointed when I found that it would not speak. This thought immediately presented itself to me, that everybody and everything despised me because I was black.
"
The Branded Hand of Captain Jonathan Walker by Southworth and Hawes, 1845
Jonathan Walker gained international fame in November 1844 when convicted by a Florida jury of “aiding and inducing two slaves to run away, and stealing two others.” Walker was known in Pensacola for his unusual determination to treat the slaves and free blacks around him with respect. In June, he embarked on a more radical path, consenting to the request of seven enslaved men to sail them to freedom in the Bahamas. Unfortunately his small boat was discovered after fourteen days at sea by a passing American sloop suspicious of seven blacks sailing with one white man in a cramped boat. Walker was immediately arrested…
Abolitionists hailed Walker as a hero…but even for northerners less committed to the abolitionist struggle, Walker’s story was deemed remarkable for the cruelty of the punishment he endured. A Florida judge sentenced Walker “to be placed in the pillory for one hour; then brought into court, and branded in the right hand with the letters SS…which stood for “slave stealer,” intended as a punishment…and as a warning to like-minded whites not to act on their political convictions.
For several years after his release Walker was a sought-after speaker on the abolitionist lecture circuit who frequently shared the stage with former slaves…Sometime in 1845, he agreed to the request of a prominent Boston physician, Henry Ingersoll Bowditch, to have a commemorative daguerreotype taken of his hand in the fashionable Boston studio of Southworth & Hawes…It became one of the best-known symbols of the American abolitionist movement. An engraving was printed in newspaper accounts of Walker’s ordeal, abolitionist pamphlets, Walker’s bestselling autobiography, and even carved into the imposing funerary obelisk erected to mark his grave upon his death in 1878.
“I am very cold”
“The parchment is very hairy.”
“Oh, my hand.”
—Notes from medieval monks and scribes in the margins of their work
Our latest issue “Means of Communication” is now online. Take a break from the scriptorium to check it out!
“Most any British urban explorer knows of the High Royds Insane Asylum. First opened in 1888, the site operated as psychiatric hospital for over a century until its final closure in 2003.” More photos at Urban Ghosts
Unchanged since the 1950s, this amazing house, once the home of Liverpool’s most celebrated photographer, gives a fascinating glimpse into a bygone era.
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