McPherson & Oliver
The Scourged Back

CultureAmerican
Titles
  • The Scourged Back
  • Gordon Under Medical Inspection
DateApril 2, 1863
PlaceBaton Rouge, Louisiana, United States
MediumAlbumen silver print from glass negative
DimensionsImage: 3 1/2 × 2 in. (8.9 × 5.1 cm)
Sheet: 3 5/8 × 2 3/16 in. (9.2 × 5.6 cm)
Mount: 4 × 2 3/8 in. (10.1 × 6.1 cm)
Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by the Buddy Taub Foundation, Dennis A. Roach and Jill Roach, Directors
Object number2021.66
Current Location
The Nancy and Rich Kinder Building
Gallery 208
On view

Explore Further

Department
Photography
Object Type
Description

After repeatedly being beaten and whipped at a Louisiana plantation, this man escaped from slavery and fled to a Union camp at Baton Rouge in March 1863, where a camp photographer took a series of photographs that graphically demonstrated the brutality he had endured. The image was copied by other photographers and reproduced in Harper’s Weekly, prompting one contemporary commentator at the time to write, “This card-photograph should be multiplied by the hundred thousand, and scattered over the states.” Even today, it remains powerful proof of the inhumanity of America’s antebellum slavery system.


Provenance[Swann Auction Galleries, New York, Printed & Manuscript African Americana, March 25, 2021, Lot 7]; purchased by MFAH, 2021.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
The photographic image includes the printed caption of the original carte de visite at the bottom: Copy of a photograph taken from life at Baton // Rouge, La. April 2 1863.

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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