About the Project
With My Name in Your Hand:
For the Free Women of Color Who Lived
Free People of Color – people of African descent living outside the bonds of slavery during the Antebellum (pre-Civil War) period in the United States – were a diverse, dynamic segment of society whose importance has not been fully explored in historical research.
Whether born free or manumitted, Free People of Color lived in a liminal space between enslavement and full citizenship. Experiences varied greatly, with many free people living and working in lower-class or poverty conditions, while a smaller number became middle-class tradespeople or even affluent landowners.
Interestingly, Free Women of Color often played crucial matriarchal roles in their families. They were much more likely than white women of the time to, for example, be the head of their household, to have their name on the deed to their home, or to arrange and sponsor apprenticeships for their younger family members.
This project, With My Name in Your Hand, by independent researcher and poet Angela Williams Bickham and visual artist Sawyer Rose, memorializes the lives of these free Black women through large-scale sculpture and historical fiction as poetry. Visitors to the With My Name in Your Hand exhibition and programming will learn about this fascinating and understudied Antebellum demographic, while also coming to a poignant understanding that these free women lived during an extraordinary time in United States history and their experiences deserve to be remembered.
Process
The year 1830 marked the population high point for Free Women of Color in the United States. Using data from Carter G. Woodson’s Free Negro Heads of Families in the United States in 1830 together with a Brief Treatment of The Free Negro and the Federal Census of the United States of America in 1830, researcher Angela Williams Bickham has compiled (and continues to explore) a list of the names of the Free Women of Color living in the slaveholding South. The list is incomplete, as many of these women’s names have been lost to history, but based on overall census numbers, it is possible to estimate the number of free Black women living in each southern state at the time, even if no records of their names still exist.
Sculptor and data visualization artist Sawyer Rose is bringing Williams Bickham’s research to life through a series of installation-size tapestries. She commemorates the lives of these Free Women of Color using “naming plaques” – small nameplates displaying the women’s names as recorded in the 1830 documents, with blank plaques for women whose names have been lost. In this fiber sculpture series, Rose references historically-relevant 19th century fibers, dyes, and patterns, as well as material culture from archaeological sources. Where historical facts about particular women are available, that information is incorporated into the tapestry as well.
When the series of tapestries is complete, there will be an artwork for each state below the Mason-Dixon line (a map marker delineating the border of the slaveholding South on the East Coast). The first three works in the series highlight North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee where Williams Bickham and Rose have family ties.
Williams Bickham, in her role as a poet, also contributes a series of literary works that use historical fiction as poetry in order to creatively interpret and give context to the historical presence of Free Women of Color who lived in the slaveholding South.
