So glad Luciano brought up D.W. Griffith–which I will address briefly in my next statement. And Chris’s reminder that we always need to ask ourselves who is looking at these images is helpful, too. Astonishing (or, sadly, not astonishing enough) how easily stereotypes replicate themselves in images after the Civil War. A question meant as much for myself as for everybody here: is there any difference between images and text in their power to replicate stereotypes? Are images doing something different? How do we relate images and text in our discussions of Civil War and post-Civil War imagery?

First, they were not easily reproduced, and in this sense were more like singular portraits than photographs. But they were also (in contrast to Gordon) more likely to have been commissioned by the sitters themselves. Photography could be used for surveillance (as with the Gordon image) but it could also be used for self-fashioning. (Nell Painter made this point in her discussions of Sojourner Truth’s self-commissioned carte-de-visite portraits.)

So, the direct gaze, the pistol displayed across the chest—these images may offer a window into how black soldiers viewed themselves and their military service, as well as how they wanted to be remembered by wives, mothers, and children. That the medium of photography was becoming more affordable during the Civil War years is an important point in terms of understanding the lasting effects of images of black Civil War soldiers. Popular culture may have left “upright” images of black soldiers behind after Reconstruction, but the Civil War did mark the first time that African Americans could, literally, shape their own image.

Harper’s Weekly and Frank Leslie’s Illustrated, for example, visually introduced, and, arguably prepared a northern readership for the realities of African American life. After the war these periodicals take on the role of describing, amidst a continued barrage of bias, in particular black religion and music performance as cultural aspects. Such issues as John McClymer notes regarding learning, work, and civilization become even more relevant as northerners develop questions about this nascent class and their potential.

For me the idea of visibility too becomes important as northerners increasingly are seeing African Americans in varying contexts, beginning with their role as soldiers. I have posted four images from Leslie’s, two from the war era and two from later, 1872 and 1883, by way of example of what this picturing becomes. In the third image a young well-dressed white woman gazes at, and is in close proximity with, a group of black performers. The fourth image is a full-page cover.

http://gallery.me.com/home_page#100138&bgcolor=black&view=mosaic&sel=0

Regarding visuality and the war era, my students tend to see the acting-out in such images only as a racist portrayal. The artifacts of culture, and performance practices, are quickly used in print both for and against the African American cause.

This goes back to Alice’s point. How effective were these images in changing attitudes about blacks? If the image in Figure 9 were an example, not very. Even if you look at the recruitment posters, no other poster–at least to my knowledge, if someone can correct me–defines a group of men like the black posters (”Colored Men” in bold print). This sense of difference–and the insistence on maintaining difference–is one you can’t ignore.

For an even more vulgar juxtaposition, try reconciling the images from the war to postwar depictions of black soldiers, particularly D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (1915). I’ve linked the film below so our commentators can see. In my eyes, the lessons of the heroic black warrior fighting for freedom were lost in the mire of the Jim Crow South, here glorified on film.

http://www.archive.org/details/dw_griffith_birth_of_a_nation

I’m also grateful that John has provided us with a link to the extraordinary “Emancipation Day in South Carolina” image, from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper of January 24, 1863. Very useful. That illustration (I talk about it in my book The Imagined Civil War) is one of the most startling of the war for its rare depiction of a black color sergeant publicly addressing his troops. But in line with John’s extremely useful reminder of the many contradictions in representations of African American soldiers during the war, it is interesting that this illustration was accompanied by text in Frank Leslie’s that said that “one of the chief rejoicers on the occasion was our old acquaintance, Sambo, who generally speaking, is always accompanied by the inevitable banjo.” Oscillations in imagery indeed!

I’ve found that it is often the case that the text in Harper’s Weekly and Leslie’s accompanying Civil War images (whether engraved from drawings or photographs) presents a more conservative vision than the images themselves. Perhaps this is because artists and photographers at the battlefront were truly seeing something new; writers who provided the commentary at the magazines relied more heavily on established stereotypes.

As for Shirley Wajda’s interesting question: it was difficult to claim manhood without being able to claim a direct gaze. It was this gaze that periodicals tended to deny African American soldiers–although this changed somewhat during the war. Women, of course, were often represented in periodicals, including fictions, with an “averted” gaze before the war. But the daguerreotype, and photography in general, certainly shifted some of these conventions; by the end of the century, there are many more depictions of women with direct gazes in magazines.

o Could they learn?
o Would they work?
o Could they be civilized?
http://mac110.assumption.edu/aas/intros/questions.html#questions
Her discussion is profusely illustrated with cartoons, illustrations from newsweeklies, and other sources. In working with my students I stress the range, complexities, and contradictions they will encounter. Here are two examples. The first is an illustration, from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, “Emancipation Day in South Carolina.” http://mac110.assumption.edu/aas/graphics/flemancsocarx.jpg The second is from a Civil War envelope. http://mac110.assumption.edu/aas/graphics/sbcontrabandsm.jpg