Identity
The objects in this section identify who people are and how they were seen. They speak to the craftsperson’s need to tell their own story and showcase their individuality through their work.
In the late 1930s, Lucindy Lawrence Jurdon sat for an interview with the Federal Writers’ Project’s Slave Narratives project. The interviewer asked Ms. Jurdon about her life, and she recalled that her mother, Patsy, had been a fine weaver. Jurdon proudly posed for a photograph with Patsy’s spinning wheel.
Dis is her spinning wheel, an’ it can still be used. I use it sometimes now. Us made our own cloth an’ our stockings too.”
Lucindy Lawrence Jurdon
Lucindy and Patsy represent enslaved, and later free, Black craftswomen whose skills connected to their identity and greater sense of self. Their experiences mirror the work of other Black craftspeople who created objects closely related to their lives and experiences.
The objects in this section identify who people are and how they were seen. Some objects were used to identify enslaved people by skill and reduce them to a number. Others speak to the craftsperson’s need to tell their own story and showcase their individuality through their work.
