As the United States approaches its semi-quincentennial in 2026, Torren L. Gatson, Tiffany N. Momon, and William A. Strollo have edited an illuminating collection that challenges readers to think about how Black labor, enslaved and free, shaped ideas of freedom in the United States. Fighting for Freedom: Black Craftspeople and the Pursuit of Independence illustrates how Black men and women articulated their ideas and dreams of freedom through their labor. The essays and images of artifacts presented here note the importance of trades and labor as significant parts of Black life that shaped their American experience. Ten short essays on Black craftspeople from a diverse cast of contributors offer a lens for better understanding Black liberation and the Black community in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (xi-xiii).
One hallmark of this collection is its recovery of the unique experience of Black artisans. Lauren Applebaum, for example, discusses the internationally renowned sculptor Edmonia Lewis and her contributions to interpreting Black Americans as agents in their emancipation efforts. All the same, Lydia Blackmore and Alexandra Alevizatos Kirtley examine the lives of Black furniture makers from major port cities on opposite sides of the country. In New Orleans, Blackmore highlights Jean Rosseau and Pierre Charles Dutreuil Barjon, two refugees from Saint-Domingue who came to the United States in the wake of the Haitian Revolution. For these two furniture makers and other craftsmen like them, New Orleans held out an opportunity for economic success, upward social mobility, and freedom. These popular migrant craftsmen influenced American furniture design in the Early Republic as the United States forged its own national identity.
Professional Black painters are also examined here. R. Ruthie Dibble explains in her essay on Robert K. Griffin’s painting of the Liberian Senate that the men and women gathered in the image were craftspeople who migrated from America to build a state dedicated to self-government. Their work in Liberia created a new form of government, while their enslaved labor physically built the United States. These painters illustrate how they and other craftsmen physically laid and painted the brick and mortar for the structures that white Americans occupied.
In examining physical crafts, Susan J. Rawles contextualizes the work of Dave the Potter, while Phillip L.B. Halbert writes on the silversmith Francois Mentor. As a literate man at a time when many southern states forbade Black literacy, Potter’s poetry and art symbolized resistance to an oppressive system where Black men and women learned to read and write in secret. Mentor’s physical record on contracts and his signature on the silver he forged reveal his upward mobility from slavery to working for successful silversmith operations. While the documentation and contracts that followed him specifically noted his race, “the language of freedom cast in silver” imprinted his free status on material objects forever (81).
In the only essay covering the post-Civil War period, Aleia Brown argues that the women launderers’ laundry strike in Georgia challenged the practices of an antiquated labor system with roots in slavery while engaging in economic and political arguments over fair wages and the right to work. Black launderers were still bound in a state of unfreedom as they worked in white households; the power structure still resembled that of enslavement. The three thousand women, both white and Black, who went on strike sought to change these practices. Black women advocated for their families’ welfare as significant earners of their household’s wealth.
Another hallmark of this work is the extensive collection of artifacts and material culture that the curation team gathered for the online and in-person exhibit upon which this volume is based. Some objects featured—such as joiner tools used by John Hemmings at Monticello, bricks from antebellum plantations with the fingerprints of the enslaved craftsman still on them, and various pieces of artwork—provide an excellent glimpse into the vast scope of Black American contributions to the material, economic, and political culture of the United States.
While the essays adequately contextualize the artifacts and artists, their brevity may leave the reader wanting more context or analysis. It is difficult to attribute direct thoughts and feelings to individuals who left no written record, save signatures inscribed on art or names written into contracts or wills. Even so, Fighting for Freedom provides an excellent window into the lives of Black craftspeople in the long nineteenth century, men and women who sewed crucial threads into the fabric of American culture and society.
Frank Kalisik earned his Ph.D. in History at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. His scholarship explores the Black experience in the Civil War era.
Related topics: African Americans, emancipation
