ASHLEY'S SACK TO GO TO THE AFRICAN AMERICAN SMITHSONIAN

The image below is a flour sack, several inches of it rolled up as it is a few feet long. It seems it was used as a sort of make-shift suitcase by a little girl named Ashley when she was sold away from her mother, Rose, to another slave master at 9 years of age.

Apparently, Rose had enough time to give her daughter a few things before she was taken away. A granddaughter embroidered the story of the sack some years later in 1921)


For some reason, I always imagined little black children being taken away suddenly, in the middle of the night or snatched away while the mother was deep in some field. I thought of black children as being stolen in a more literal sense. I guess I didn't allow myself to have a stronger sense of what a white person owning you feels like. Being owned is hard to imagine in a truly three dimensional way.

"We are selling your daughter. Say your goodbyes." 

How do you go on living after that? 

There's a little more information here at the link below. But I must warn you that the first sentence is annoyingly ignorant. It says, "We don’t know why the master decided to sell the 9-year-old girl."

But sure we do. We do know the reason the white man (or white woman) decided to sell the 9 year old girl. He was punishing the slave or he needed the money.

http://www.journalscene.com/article/20151230/SJ01/151239984/  

The Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture is due to open in the Fall of 2016.  You'll be able to see the sack in person at that location.