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BCDA: Dublin
Black Craftspeople Digital Archive
Dublin
1767, Charleston, South Carolina
On Monday, August 17, 1767, Dublin, an enslaved brickmaker, self-emancipated from enslaver William Hopton’s Starvegut Hall Plantation in present-day Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. Hopton placed an advertisement seeking Dublin’s return, in which he included the names of Dublin’s enslavers from his birth through 1767. This advertisement sheds light on the cruelty of enslavement, as Dublin’s first enslaver sold him from his birth home of Philadelphia to North Carolina. By the time he self-emancipated, six different enslavers had claimed ownership of his body and labor. For more on Dublin, click here.
Contextualization
The Black Craftspeople Digital Archive departs from traditional art history object-study methods by centering on the lives and experiences of Black craftspeople. Among the questions we ask of objects are: How is craft knowledge produced by Black life? How does the object currently speak to the craftsperson’s legacy? What were the craftsperson’s experiences? This postcard was conceived by the BCDA in response to an invitation by the MA in Critical Craft Studies’ cohort of ’21. For more on the BCDA’s object-study methods, please visit the website.