“On January 24, 1863, just twenty-three days after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation went into effect, Harper’s Weekly published Thomas Nast’s radical illustration depicting both this horrors of slavery and his idea of the future of freed slaves. In this original publication, the inscription below reads, “The Emancipation of the Negroes, January, 1863 – the past and the future (Fig. 3).” The composition is organized into three parts: on the left, brutal scenes of enslaved families; in the center, a domestic scene of a black, middle class family under the banner of “Emancipation;” and finally, scenes of education and employment that will define this family’s life in the future.”
Click here to read the complete article.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a print of the drawing in its collection. Click here or on the image above for details.
1st U.S. Colored Cavalry 
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