Afro-American Historical Family Record

Recording one's family history became popular after the American Civil War. Claiming national identity this way proved easier for white Americans than for African Americans. The first slave ship arrived in Jamestown, Virginia in 1619 and many descendants went undocumented for over 200 years. This poster was a very visible means for African Americans of the late-nineteenth century to begin to claim U.S. nationality. It's narrative vignettes were common in similar genealogical documents of the time. Although these scenes feature a positive outlook on the crowning achievements of African Americans in United States history, they do not present the barbarous history and harsh realities of life before and after the Civil War.

Work Cited

Armandroff, Olivia. “A Familiar Landscape: A Surrogate for Ancestry and Genealogical Legacy?” Material Matters, 11 July 2020, https://sites.udel.edu/materialmatters/2020/06/29/a-familiar-landscape-a-surrogate-for-ancestry-and-genealogical-legacy/. Accessed 28 Aug. 2022.

This broadside is both a personal genealogical chart and a pictorial history of African American advancement. Symbols of national government, vignettes of an antebellum slave auction, cotton picking, and under-resourced schools on the left are contrasted with postwar scenes of free communities, industrial jobs, and prosperous schools on the right.

The portraits of Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, educator Lucy C. Laney, and lawyer Judson Lyons, grouped with Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, highlight the national symbols of human rights and civil rights for African Americans.

The two scenes at the bottom show the African American Ninth and Tenth Cavalries and the Twenty-Fourth and Twenty-Fifth Colored Infantries as they crucially assist the Rough Riders in the key Cuban battles of the ...