{"id":28290,"date":"2023-10-11T10:42:37","date_gmt":"2023-10-11T14:42:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=28290"},"modified":"2023-10-11T10:43:10","modified_gmt":"2023-10-11T14:43:10","slug":"hecimovich-offers-thoughts-on-early-images-of-enslaved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/hecimovich-offers-thoughts-on-early-images-of-enslaved\/","title":{"rendered":"Hecimovich offers thoughts on early images of enslaved"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In an article appearing in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.propublica.org\/article\/harvard-photos-enslaved-people-tamara-lanier\">ProPublica<\/a>, Gregg Hecimovich, a Furman University professor of English, comments on the &#8220;vapory trail&#8221; left by formerly enslaved people and the difficulty their descendants face when tracing family lineage. Hecimovich offers his views as part of a lengthy piece by Jennifer Berry Hawes who sheds light on who should have stewardship of some of the earliest known photographs of enslaved Americans. The 15 photos, or daguerreotypes, of seven South Carolina slaves are currently housed at Harvard University&#8217;s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.<\/p>\n<p>Hecimovich has spent more than a decade researching the people in the photos and contributed to a 2020 book of scholars\u2019 essays about them. \u201cThe people behind the images embody, to my mind, mini-histories of the American experience, only this time a history that white Americans willfully tried to erase, and still try to bury,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Hecimovich is working on a book about the images as part of a fellowship with Harvard&#8217;s W.E.B. Du Bois Research Institute, \u201cThe Columbia Seven: The Life and Times of the Zealy Daguerreotypes\u201d. His first fellowship with the institute in 2014 led to biography project <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Life-Times-Hannah-Crafts\/dp\/0062334735\">\u201cThe Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of The Bondwoman\u2019s Narrative\u201d<\/a> due out Oct. 17.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fifteen images of enslaved Americans are at the center of an ongoing legal battle between Harvard and a likely descendant of those pictured. Gregg Hecimovich describes what the images mean for better understanding American history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":257,"featured_media":26302,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,6,1650],"tags":[802,2330,1110,2127],"class_list":["post-28290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english","category-in-the-news","category-propublica","tag-harvard-university","tag-ownership-of-artifacts","tag-slavery","tag-zealy-daguerreotypes"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/257"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28290\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}