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.
Rosina Downs is not quite seven years old. She is a fair child, with blonde complexion and silky hair. Her father is in the rebel army. She has one sister as white as herself, and three brothers who are darker. Her mother, a bright mulatto, lives in New Orleans in a poor hut, and has hard work to support her family.