Yes it's been a long time since I've posted a painting and this painting has been a long time coming. But it is a renewing feeling to have finally completed it. The Quaker Station is yet another scene from a piece of historical fiction I wrote when tracing my ancestral roots. When contemplating the number of possible motives that propelled my great (x4) grandmother, Elizabeth King, ( a free woman of Native American and Caucasian blood) to take her small children and leave Washington, DC for New Bedford, MA in 1850, I hypothesized that she may have been involved, in some way, in what became known as the Underground Railroad. The passing of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 would have put her in greater jeopardy than she was under the 1793 version of the law. Prior to the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act and following Prigg vs. Pennsylvania (1842), states were not required by Federal Law to hunt or recapture runaway slaves. There were also a number of personal liberty laws passed by northern states that further weakened the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act, allowing havens for blacks to spring up all across the north.
However, the 1850 Act seriously fined any federal marshall or state official that knowingly did not capture a suspected runaway slave regardless of their feelings on the subject; and law enforcement would have to pursue capture if any owner or interested party only presented sworn testimony that their slave(s) had run away. Also any person aiding a slave's fleeing by providing food or shelter could likely be jailed for six months and fined $1,000. I suspect the culmination of these new laws made Washington and other slave-holding jurisdictions an unbearable home for many, especially those involved in the Underground Railroad.
In this painting Elizabeth King, as a fictionalized protagonist, does not leave Washington with only her children, but with fugitive slaves. The group has found refuge with Quakers who (true to some accounts in history) used a subterranean tunnel that lead to a nearby creek found in coastal Maryland as a hiding place and impromptu religious school for the men and women. Elizabeth King is reading from Deuteronomy 23: 15-16--a very appropriate Bible passage for their situation. Also, note two other details: a darkouba is being held in an older gentleman's hand in the foreground. The darkouba is a West African small percussion that I theorized an older slave may have learned to make as a child prior to the official end of the U.S.'s involvement in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Also notice the quilt being used as a shawl draped over an older woman's shoulders on the right side of the composition. If you enlarge the image, you'll better see the quilt patches that contain coded messages. The woven motifs are images of the north star and a sailing vessel. Quilt codes are thought to have been one of several means of secretive communication slaves used when plotting their escapes to freedom. The north star would have reminded a runaway to follow the reliable star to ensure they're headed above the Mason-Dixon Line and towards free states and territories. The sailing vessel would have told an escapee to flee on boat as opposed to foot or horseback.
I hope that, if nothing else, viewers are further educated on a very complicated and still relevant moment in history. It is my goal to do so as I continue to search for and find meaning and identity through my ancestry.
No comments:
Post a Comment