These portraits of emancipated slave children from New Orleans were created as part of a campaign to raise money for their education and, more broadly, to generate sympathy for the plight of slaves at a time when many in the **rth were growing fatigued of the bloodshed of the Civil War.
Published in Harper’s Weekly and distributed as individual cartes de visite, the images were startling because they presented slaves dressed in fine clean clothes, similar to what the children of a white middle class family might wear. But even more significant than the dress and staging of the children was the children themselves — several of them had pale skin and smooth hair, looking **thing like the typical image of a black slave. Read more...