This rare photo found in a North Carolina attic depicts two slave children. In April, the photo was found at a
moving sale in Charlotte, accompanied by a document detailing the sale of "John" for $1,150 in 1854.
"I buy stuff all the time, but this shocked me," Keya Morgan, who bought the photo, told The Associated Press. Morgan, a New York art collector, said he paid $30,000 for the album containing the photograph and another $20,000 for the document.
Art historians believe the image is the work of Matthew Brady, a famous 19th century photographer, or one of his apprentices. Brady shot well-known portraits of President Abraham Lincoln and Confederate Gen. Robt. E. Lee…
It really is haunting – this photo from 150 years ago. Here we are in 2010 with our first black president, and the Republican Party, the Party of Lincoln, has done everything possible to undermine anything he tries to do. The Republicans, the Tea Party, South Carolina politicians, the Oathkeepers, the Militias, have all come out of the woodwork with their thinly disguised klanism and racism – working against the country in every way possible at a time when we need to come together. Looking at this picture and where we came from should make us feel ashamed of our past, but also our present. I was disappointed in the 1960’s with ‘white flight’ and ‘home schooling.’ I’m embarassed by the petty racist politics of the 2000’s. It looks to me as if we’re doing everything possible to turn our success into failure and make a mockery of the American Experiment that cost Abraham Lincoln his life.
Forgive me in advance for indulging a wisdom attack. The behavior driving the various groups and individuals you dismay is likely to have origins in conferring competitive reproductive advantage to those phenotypes adapting such behavior into their repertoire. It has become vestigial in perhaps many tens of millions of H. sapiens including yourself and your bride. In my own case, I have to admit to a residue because I harbor a strong desire, based on darkling sentiments, to round up all the people associated with the outmoded behaviors and to relieve them of their freedom to disturb the peace by packing them all off to Monte Cristo. I also fantasize about marching into whatever chamber Rep. Knotts (SC) is inhabiting and caning him to within an inch of his life just for being a ignorant, bigoted sot. I guess the point is that a day might arrive when your average person will be no more aware of these behavioral modes than they are of their tailbones – but it seems to be a ways out. I’ll bet on a cure for the common cold before then.