You read him in The Washington Post and see him on MSNBC, but did you know journalist Eugene Robinson and his wife, artists Avis Collins Robinson, have an amazing collection of African-American artifacts.
Read about it here.
Although it’s hard to have “favorites” among artifacts that represent a tragic history, Robinson said one that always sticks out in his mind is a document for the sale of a young girl. “Repellant objects are important. They’re a reminder of where we were, of our recent past, where we must never go again,” he said. “These are people’s lives. That brings it home to me. We talk about slavery as a historical fact, but we have to think about the individual.” But the larger picture is equally important. “The class of objects points out the extent to which slavery provided a foundation for the US. It wasn’t just a Southern phenomenon. The textile mills in Massachusetts, for example, where did that cotton come from? The South.”
Read the entire piece at Hyperallergic
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