Committed to Memory: The Art of the Slave Ship Icon

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00260

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-21695

One of the most iconic images of slavery is a schematic wood engraving depicting the human cargo hold of a slave ship. First published by British abolitionists in 1788, it exposed this widespread commercial practice for what it really was--shocking, immoral, barbaric, unimaginable. Printed as handbills and broadsides, the image Cheryl Finley has termed the "slave ship icon" was easily reproduced, and by the end of the eighteenth century it was circulating by the tens of thousands around the Atlantic rim. Committed to Memory provides the first in-depth look at how this artifact of the fight against slavery became an enduring symbol of black resistance, identity, and remembrance.

Finley traces how the slave ship icon became a powerful tool in the hands of British and American abolitionists, and how its radical potential was rediscovered in the twentieth century by black artists, activists, writers, filmmakers, and curators. Finley offers provocative new insights into the works of Amiri Baraka, Romare Bearden, Betye Saar, and many others. She demonstrates how the icon was transformed into poetry, literature, visual art, sculpture, performance, and film—and became a medium through which diasporic Africans have reasserted their common identity and memorialized their ancestors.

Committed to Memory features works from around the world, taking readers from the United States and England to West Africa and the Caribbean. It shows how contemporary black artists and their allies have used this iconic eighteenth-century engraving to reflect on the trauma of slavery and come to terms with its legacy.

Author

PublisherPrinceton University Press

Print publication date July 2018 (in print)

Print ISBN 9780691136844

EISBN 9780300265712

Illustrations 151

Print Status in print

Publisher (in print)

WorldCat

Google Books

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List of illustrations

Dedication Ceremony
On Both Sides, Reason for Remorse
La Bouche du Roi
Postage stamps issued by the Royal Mail commemorating the bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act
Bernie Staggers posing with the African Holocaust T-shirt showing the slave ship icon and other popular images from the history of slavery
Thousands of residents wait in the rain on Interstate 10 outside of New Orleans to be moved to shelters in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina
Mediterranean Sea: Italian navy rescues asylum seekers traveling by boat off the coast of Africa
Felicity’s World, American Girl doll book, two-page spread
Slave Ship Bracelet
Swann Galleries’ African Americana auction, two-page spread
Plan of an African Ship’s Lower Deck with Negroes in the Proportion of Only One to a Ton
Samuel Wood’s American edition of the Life and Adventures of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, The African, frontispiece and title page
Plan of an African Ship’s Lower Deck with Negroes in the Proportion of Only One to a Ton, detail showing Men's Room
Shield and crest of Sir John Hawkins
Slave Trade (Execrable Human Traffick, or The Affectionate Slaves)
Plan of an African Ship’s Lower Deck with Negroes in the Proportion of Only One to a Ton, detail
Vue du Cap-Français et du Navire La Marie-Séraphique
Plan of an African Ship’s Lower Deck with Negroes in the Proportion of Only One to a Ton
Remarks on the Slave Trade
REMARKS on the SLAVE TRADE
Plan of an African Ship’s Lower Deck with Negroes in the Proportion of Only One to a Ton
Plan of an African Ship’s Lower Deck with Negroes in the Proportion of Only One to a Ton, detail showing shackles
Plan of an African Ship’s Lower Deck with Negroes in the Proportion of Only One to a Ton, detail showing the kneeling slave
Antislavery Medallion
Description of a Slave Ship
Plan and Sections of a Slave Ship
Description of a slave ship, detail
Description of a slave ship, detail
Model of a Slave Ship
Brookes Ship
Map of the Western Coast of Africa
Description of a Slave Ship
Plan and Sections of a Slave Ship
Coins commemorating the Abolition of the Slave Trade
Description of a slave ship
Mechanical drawings of four devices of torture and restraint
Case of the Vigilante
Spanish schooner Josefa Maracayera
Sections of a Slave Ship (the Veloz Passageiro)
Newspaper clipping depicting the Death of Capt. Ferrer, Captain of the Amistad, July, 1839
View of the Deck of the Slave Ship Albanoz
The Anti-Slavery Society Convention, 1840
Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On)
The Slave Trade (Slaves on the West Coast of Africa)
The Mirror of Misery, title page and illustration
Plan of A Slave Ship’s Lower Deck with Negroes Stowed in the Proportion of Only One to a Ton
Section of Embarkation Canoe
Section of the Dhow Alluded to at Page 168, Showing the Manner of Stowing Slaves on Board
Advertisement for Marcus Garvey’s Black Star Line
A Black Cargo Ready for an Ocean Voyage, frontispiece and title page
Mandingo Chief and His Sword Bearer, frontispiece
Branding a Negress
Adventures of an African Slaver, cover illustration
Adventures of an African Slaver, endpapers
Inspection and Sale of Slaves
The Smuggling of Slaves
Foulah Chief
Into Bondage
Hale Woodruff, at work on the Amistad Murals: The Mutiny Aboard the Amistad, 1839
Protesting Harlem on My Mind exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York
The New Jemima
The Liberation of Aunt Jemima
Poster for LeRoi Jones’s Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School
LeRoi Jones and members of the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School
Slave ship
Set design for the Chelsea Theater Center’s production of Slave Ship
Production still from Slave Ship
Portrait of Malcolm Bailey at Cinque Gallery, New York
Inaugural year reception at Cinque Gallery
Hold, Separate but Equal
Untitled, 1969
Stokely Carmichael Addresses the Black Power Conference
Untitled, from Oceans Apart
Film still from The Attendant
Past Imperfect, Future Tense
Photocopied image of slave ship mounted on card attached to page inscribed in pencil, travel broadens the mind
Sketch titled conceptual patterning black cells under a microscope
Visceral Canker, detail
Go West Young Man, detail
A Ship Called Jesus
ECU: European Currency Unfolds 03 (Italian Lira)
Memory and Skin
Objects of Beauty
The Harder They Come
From Slave to Champ (Roll Call)
Browning Madonna I
Wheel of Fortune
Schema, from Meditations on Pattern
Gingerbread, from Cut and Paste
Too Soon for Sorry (Maximum Security Democracy series)
Film still, Slam
Cash Crop
Absolut Power
Branded Head
Afro-American Express
The Chase Mastercard
Ode to the CMB: Am I Not a Man and Brother?
Priceless #1
Absolut 187: A Memorial for the 183 Victims of Homicide in San Francisco and Oakland in 2003
Question Bridge: Black Males
Domestic I.D. IV
Household Guardians
Stowage
Man Spirit Mask
Slaver, No Time to Die, and Aunt Hagar’s Child
Silver Muzzles
Slaver, detail
Aunt Hagar's Child, detail
Hagar
I’ll Bend but I Will Not Break
Maiden Voyage
Migration: Africa to America II
Migration: Africa to America II
Yesteryear
The Seven Powers Come by the Sea
The Two Queens—Yemaya and Elizabeth I
Barco Negrero
Photo-documentation of performance, the Seven Powers Come by the Sea
Throne for the Ancestors, part of Throne series
Tra…
Amazing Grace
Maafa Remembrance Rose Window
The Middle Passage: White Ships/Black Cargo
The Great Migration Rose Window
Lotus
Lotus, detail
Joe Overstreet exhibition showing (left to right): Hoodoo Mandala, We Came from There to Get Here, and For Happiness
Mandala of the B-Bodhisattva II
Quilt from the Cartographer’s Conundrum
Codex
Pictorial quilt
Roots (cover of TV Guide)
Prince Cinque (Slave Ship)
Captivity and Resistance
View of Fort St. Jago (top) and Elmina Castle
Asafo Flag
Fort Good Hope Fantasy Coffin
Local artist sells his depiction of history in front of Elmina castle
Windward Coast
Middle Passage
Grabbing, Snatching, Blink and You Be Gone
Film still, Sankofa
Door of No Return and Door of Return
Replica of La Amistad Coastal Schooner
Slave ship hold, Crossroads of a People, Crossroads of Trade
Slave ship hold
Of the People: The African American Experience
Magazine advertisement for the exhibition A Slave Ship Speaks: The Wreck of the Henrietta Marie
L'Aurore
The Wanderer
Islands No. 4

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Contents

Committed to Memory: The Art of the Slave Ship Icon

Contents

Author

PublisherPrinceton University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-21696

Free

Acknowledgments

Committed to Memory: The Art of the Slave Ship Icon

~THE IDEA FOR THIS BOOK began in a graduate seminar at the Yale Center for British Art twenty years ago, when I came across an original engraving of the abolitionist print that is the subject of this study. Obsessed by the detail, history, and message of that eighteenth-century impression, it later became the focus of my dissertation, Committed to Memory: The...

Author

PublisherPrinceton University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-21697

Introduction: The Practice of Mnemonic Aesthetics

Committed to Memory: The Art of the Slave Ship Icon

The multimedia installation La Bouche du Roi, or the Mouth of the King, was created by Romuald Hazoumé of the Republic of Benin between 1997 and 2005 (see fig. I.3)....

Author

PublisherPrinceton University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.1-17

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00260.001

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-21698

Chapter subject tags:Slave shipsHazoumè, Romuald, 1962-African diasporaTransatlantic slave trade in artVisual metaphorMiddle passageMnemonics

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Part I. Sources/Roots: 1788–1900

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Committed to Memory: The Art of the Slave Ship Icon

Part One

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PublisherPrinceton University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-21699

Chapter 1. Idea: Image and Text

Committed to Memory: The Art of the Slave Ship Icon

~CREATING THE SLAVE SHIP ICON IN GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES, 1788

Author

PublisherPrinceton University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.19-55

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00260.002

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-21700

Chapter subject tags:Slave shipsAntislavery movements--Great BritainEquiano, Olaudah, 1745-1797Transatlantic slave trade in artMiddle passageBroadsides--18th centuryPropaganda, Abolitionist

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Chapter 2. Form: Essential Elements

Committed to Memory: The Art of the Slave Ship Icon

THE PLYMOUTH COMMITTEE AND WILLIAM ELFORD created the archetype for future renderings of the crowded lower deck of a slave ship, which would hold the public’s memory of the Middle Passage...

Author

Chapter subject tags:Slave shipsMirabeau, Honoré-Gabriel de Riqueti, comte de, 1749-1791Wadström, Carl Bernhard, 1746-1799Transatlantic slave trade in artMiddle passageBroadsides--18th centuryPropaganda, Abolitionist

PublisherPrinceton University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.57-86

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00260.003

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-21701

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Chapter 3. Circulation: Politics and Publicity

Committed to Memory: The Art of the Slave Ship Icon

~THE SLAVE SHIP ICON circulated in many different versions between 1790 and 1860, a seventy-year period bounded on one side by the French Revolution and on the other by the American Civil War. Although the icon’s popularity fluctuated during these decades, marked by a sustained and unprecedented international social movement calling for the end of the...

Author

PublisherPrinceton University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.87-107

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00260.004

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-21702

Chapter subject tags:Slave shipsClarkson, Thomas, 1760-1846Propaganda, AbolitionistTransatlantic slave trade in artBroadsides--19th centuryChildren's literature--Abolitionist

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Part II. Meanings/Routes: 1900–present

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Committed to Memory: The Art of the Slave Ship Icon

Part Two

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PublisherPrinceton University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-21703

Chapter 4. Negroes: Old and New

Committed to Memory: The Art of the Slave Ship Icon

BY THE EARLY PART OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, the slave ship icon had become an artifact, still capable of recreating the horror of the Middle Passage for those who encountered the schematic image...

Author

Chapter subject tags:Slave shipsCovarrubias, Miguel, 1904-1957Woodruff, Hale, 1900-1980Harlem RenaissanceDouglas, AaronTransatlantic slave tradeAfrican diasporaCanot, Theodore, 1804-1860. Captain Canot, or, Twenty years of an African slaver

PublisherPrinceton University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.109-126

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00260.005

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-21704

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Chapter 5. 1969: Activism, Art, and Performance in the United States

Committed to Memory: The Art of the Slave Ship Icon

FOR THE BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES (1965–76), 1969 was a pivotal year. Beginning on January 9, the Black Emergency Cultural...

Author

PublisherPrinceton University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.127-155

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00260.006

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-21705

Chapter subject tags:Slave shipsBlack Arts movementBlack Arts Repertory Theatre/SchoolBaraka, Amiri, 1934-2014Bailey, Malcolm, 1947-2011Women artists, BlackHughes, Langston, 1902-1967

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Chapter 6. Art and Activism in Britain: 1960s–1990s

Committed to Memory: The Art of the Slave Ship Icon

~IN 1968, the civil rights activist and organizer Stokely Carmichael (1941–1998) traveled to London from the United States to spread news of the increasingly international Black Power movement. Just the year before, he had stepped down as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and penned the...

Author

PublisherPrinceton University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.157-175

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00260.007

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-21706

Chapter subject tags:Slave shipsBlack Arts movementPiper, Keith, 1960-African diasporaTransatlantic slave trade in artCarmichael, Stokely, 1941-1998Evans, Mary, 1963-Women artists, Black

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Chapter 7. Bodies: Commoditization and Branding

Committed to Memory: The Art of the Slave Ship Icon

IN THIS CHAPTER, we turn to the (re)commodification of the black body in the late twentieth century and today by examining artists who have recast the slave ship icon to interrogate this centuries-old problem of exploitation and dehumanization. The grassroots artist activist collective Resistant Strains, the filmmaker Marc Levin, and the installation artist Stephen Hayes deploy the slave...

Author

Chapter subject tags:Slave shipsCriminal justice systemRacial profiling in law enforcementTransatlantic slave trade in artMiddle passageVisual metaphorAfrican American artistsArtists, BlackArt, American--20th centuryThomas, Hank Willis, 1976-

PublisherPrinceton University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.177-193

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00260.008

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-21707

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Part III. Rites/Reinventions: 1990s–present

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Committed to Memory: The Art of the Slave Ship Icon

Part Three

Author

PublisherPrinceton University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-21708

Chapter 8. Pattern: Behind the Face of an Iron

Committed to Memory: The Art of the Slave Ship Icon

HAVE YOU EVER STOPPED to contemplate the face of a common, household steam iron — that flat, shiny, metal surface in the shape of a bowed triangle, embedded with small holes arranged in a graphic pattern? By now, its formal connections to the slave ship icon might be easy to see. The curved triangular shape of the iron hints at the outline of the plan of the slave ship. The steam holes...

Author

Chapter subject tags:Slave shipsCole, Willie, 1955-Porter, MarianettaSaar, BetyeVisual metaphorTransatlantic slave trade in artArt, American--21st centuryAfrican American artistsArtists, BlackWomen artists, BlackScarification (Body marking)Middle passage

PublisherPrinceton University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.195-210

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00260.009

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-21709

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Chapter 9. Spirits: from Changó to Iconoclasm

Committed to Memory: The Art of the Slave Ship Icon

~NEARLY SINCE ITS CONCEPTION in 1788, the slave ship icon has embodied religious meaning. The committee of abolitionists who conceived it consisted of Quakers and radical Christians who found its visual impact an able weapon in their arsenal of images arrayed to win popular support for ending the slave trade. To be sure, in their hands the image was circulated and...

Author

Chapter subject tags:Slave shipsWomen artists, BlackArt, Modern--Buddhist influencesVisual metaphorReligion in artMultimedia installations (Art)Transatlantic slave trade in artCampos-Pons, Maria Magdalena, 1959-Ward, Nari, 1963-Middle passageStained glass windows

PublisherPrinceton University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.211-231

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00260.010

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-21710

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Chapter 10. Roots Tourism and the Slave Ship Icon

Committed to Memory: The Art of the Slave Ship Icon

IN 1977, Romare Bearden was commissioned by TV Guide to illustrate its cover story announcing the premiere of Roots: An American Family Saga, based on Alex Haley’s best-selling novel of the previous year...

Author

Chapter subject tags:Slave shipsBearden, Romare, 1911-1988African diasporaCastles--GhanaHaley, Alex. RootsVisual metaphorTransatlantic slave trade in artAfrican Americans--GenealogyMarley, BobTourism--West Africa

PublisherPrinceton University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.233-249

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00260.011

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-21711

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Chapter 11. Museums, Monuments, and Memorials

Committed to Memory: The Art of the Slave Ship Icon

~IN 2000, Amistad America Inc. launched a novel memorial, the Freedom Schooner Amistad, a floating replica of La Amistad (The...

Author

PublisherPrinceton University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.251-256

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00260.012

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-21712

Chapter subject tags:Slave shipsAmistad (Schooner : 2000)Transatlantic slave tradeMiddle passageSlave ship models

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Afterword: The Shape of Things . . . Doesn’t Always Appear as it Seems

Committed to Memory: The Art of the Slave Ship Icon

~IN FALL 2001, the exhibition and book Words for Images: A Gallery of Poems were presented at the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut, to mark the yearlong celebration of the university’s three-hundredth anniversary.John Hollander and Joanna Weber, eds.,...

Author

PublisherPrinceton University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.257-262

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00260.013

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-21713

Chapter subject tags:Slave shipsAfrican American women poetsAlexander, Elizabeth, 1962 August 6-Visual metaphorTransatlantic slave trade

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