Isaac & Rosa, slave children from New Orleans
Photographer: M.H. Kimball. Date Created: c1863.
Photograph shows a full-length portrait of Isaac White and Rosina Downs, standing arm-in-arm, facing front.
Citation: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA
Enslaved Children of New Orleans, 1863
To earn money for the education of freed slaves in New Orleans, photographs of emancipated kids were sold. The kids in this picture brought to light the idea that slavery was not just an issue of race. A child was also an enslaved person if his or her mother was one.
On January 30, 1864, the following article was published in Harper's Weekly. The article's brief biographies give us a unique (and maybe unusual) glimpse into the lives of youngsters who were held as slaves.
THE HARPER'S WEEKLY ARTICLE, JANUARY 30, 1864, TRANSCRIPT
The group of freed slaves whose pictures I'm sending you were transported from New Orleans, where General Butler had freed them, by Colonel Hanks and Mr. Phillip Bacon. Mr. Bacon traveled to New Orleans with our army and worked under Colonel Hanks' supervision for eighteen months as Assistant-Superintendent of Freedmen. These kids were among his students at the first school he founded in Louisiana for liberated slaves. He'll be going back to Louisiana soon to continue working.
Isaac White is a black boy of eight years; but none the less intelligent than his whiter companions. He has been in school about seven months, and I venture to say that not one boy in fifty would have made as much improvement in that space of time.