Picture Freedom: Remaking Black Visuality in the Early Nineteenth Century (America and the Long 19th Century, 20)

In the decades leading up to the end of U.S. slavery, many free Blacks sat for daguerreotypes decorated in fine garments to document their self-possession. People pictured in these early photographs used portraiture to seize control over representation of the free Black body and reimagine Black visuality divorced from the cultural logics of slavery. In Picture Freedom, Jasmine Nichole Cobb analyzes the ways in which the circulation of various images prepared free Blacks and free Whites for the emancipation of formerly unfree people of African descent. She traces the emergence of Black freedom as both an idea and as an image during the early nineteenth century. Through an analysis of popular culture of the period--including amateur portraiture, racial caricatures, joke books, antislavery newspapers, abolitionist materials, runaway advertisements, ladies' magazines, and scrapbooks, as well as scenic wallpaper--Cobb explores the earliest illustrations of free Blacks and reveals the complicated route through visual culture toward a vision of African American citizenship. Picture Freedom reveals how these depictions contributed to public understandings of nationhood, among both domestic eyes and the larger Atlantic world Cover 1 Contents 8 Acknowledgments 10 Introduction: Parlor Fantasies, Parlor Nightmares 12 1 “A Peculiarly ‘Ocular’ Institution” 39 2 Optics of Respectability: Women, Vision, and the Black Private Sphere 77 3 “Look! A Negress”: Public Women, Private Horrors, and the White Ontology of the Gaze 138 4 Racial Iconography: Freedom and Black Citizenship in the Antebellum North 175 5 Racing the Transatlantic Parlor: Blackness at Home and Abroad 220 Epilogue: The Specter of Black Freedom 248 Notes 252 Index 284 A 284 B 284 C 285 D 285 E 286 F 286 G 286 H 287 I 287 J 287 K 287 L 287 M 288 N 288 O 288 P 288 Q 289 R 289 S 289 T 290 U 290 V 290 W 290 Z 291 About the Author 292 Color images 122 Introduction: Parlor Fantasies, Parlor Nightmares -- A Peculiarly Ocular Institution -- Optics Of Respectability : Spectatorship In The Black Private Sphere -- Look! A Negress : Public Women, Private Horrors And The White Ontology Of The Gaze -- Racial Iconography : Freedom And Black Citizenship In Antebellum Public Cultures -- Racing The Transatlantic Parlor : Blackness At Home And Abroad -- Epilogue: The Specter Of Black Freedom. Jasmine Nichole Cobb. Also Available As An Ebook--title Page Verso. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. "Picture Freedom provides a unique and nuanced interpretation of nineteenth-century African American life and culture. Focusing on visuality, print culture, and an examination of the parlor, Cobb has fashioned a book like none other, convincingly demonstrating how whites and blacks reimagined racial identity and belonging in the early republic."--Erica Armstrong Dunbar, author of A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City Introduction: Parlor fantasies, parlor nightmares A peculiarly "ocular" institution Optics of respectability : women, private horrors and the black private sphere Look! a Negress : public women, private horrors and the white ontology of the gaze Racial iconography : freedom and Black citizenship in antebellum public cultures Racing the transatlantic parlor : blackness at home and abroad Epilogue: The specter of Black freedom.