Rose’s Gift: Slavery, Kinship, and the Fabric of Memory

Authors

  • Mark Auslander Central Washington University, US

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5334/pp.78

Abstract

One of the most evocative objects in the new Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture is an embroidered cloth bag that has come to be known as “Ashley’s Sack”. Stitch-work on the bag, signed “Ruth Middleton”, recounts the bag’s painful history, as a gift presented by an enslaved woman, Rose, to her daughter Ashley, when Ashley was sold at age nine in South Carolina. This paper explores ‘Ashley’s sack’ as an object of history, memory, ritual action, and aesthetic creativity. 

Author Biography

  • Mark Auslander, Central Washington University, US
    Mark Auslander is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Museum Studies at Central Washington University, where he directs the Museum of Culture and Environment. A sociocultural anthropologist, he has done ethnographic and historical fieldwork in Zambia, South Africa, and the U.S. South. He is the author of "The Accidental Slaveowner: Revisiting a Myth of Race and Finding an American Family" (University of Georgia Press, 2011.).

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Published

2017-03-03

Issue

Vol. 8 No. 1 (2017)

Section

Research Papers

License

Copyright (c) 2017 The Author(s)

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