Hidden Heritage. The roots of Black American painting - ACE210.6

Front page of periodical Liberation, from June 1864, illustrated by Patrick Reason. Poster warning black people to beware of official "kidnappers and slave catchers". Engraving by Reason showing black man being taken by whites. Announcement of "anti-slave catchers’ mass convention". Engraving, titled An American Woman, of black woman in chains; engraving of black man being beaten. Photograph of group of slaves. Early fiction film showing black man being whipped. Fiction film suggesting American Civil War. Douglas’s mural. Driskell at derelict railway station. VO quotes poetic description of slave auction, "The sale began, young girls were there, defenceless in their wretchedness, whose stifled sobs of deep despair revealed their anguish and distress…etc etc". Extracts from The Birth of a Nation (1916) Driskell, sound over (from feature film) is of man being whipped; Driskell feels the pain. Train. Civil War footage, etc. Photographs of black soldiers, of women slaves; VO quotes description of fugitive slaves coming to Union troops for help. Douglas’s mural. Driskell on train. VO talks about end of Civil War, Lincoln’s assassination, black emancipation. Douglas’s mural. Driskell alights from train. Photograph of Henry Ossawa Tanner. The Banjo Lesson (1893) and The Thankful Poor (1894), the only two of Tanner’s paintings which could be regarded as ‘black’ subjects, despite his outspoken views on racism. Driskell in pool hall says that Tanner moved to Paris in the 1890s and lived there until his death in 1937. Born 1859, Pennsylvania; photograph of Tanner holding pool cue. Some of his paintings on religious and other rural subjects including Daniel in the Lion’s Den (1895), Abraham’s Oak (1905), and Angels Appearing before the Shepherds (c.1910).