A young Black enslaved girl in a bright purple dress shines a silver platter beside a window that shows off a bright green yard filled with trees.
That is the image depicted in“A Likely Girl,” a painting by artist John W. Jones, and it is one of the pieces that will be a part of the traveling exhibit, To Be Sold: Enslaved Labor and Slave Trading, on display at the African American Research Library and Cultural Center in Fort Lauderdale starting Saturday.
For Tameka Hobbs, the library manager for the AARLCC, the painting is more than just a young enslaved girl doing household chores. The artist’s title provides a subtle comment on what a commodity the child is: “The fact that part of this girl’s value is in her potential to give birth to other slaves,” said Hobbs. “It’s a very painful reminder of this girl’s life and what it may have been like.”
Curated in collaboration with Partners in Racial Justice and the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, the traveling exhibit offers a rarely seen window into South Carolina’s role in the domestic slave trade. The exhibit comes at a moment when many feel like Black history is facing revisionism. In Florida, state laws already limit how Black history can be taught in schools, prohibiting instruction that would potentially make one racial group feel responsible for historical acts. Public school libraries have had books removed that might have included content that doesn’t align with the statutes…