Hidden Witness

"Although photography was introduced to this country in 1840, precious few images of African-Americans from that era survive today. Even after the Civil War there were not many African-American photographers, and very few black people had the time, money, or freedom for a portrait sitting. Jackie Napolean Wilson, whose own grandfather was born a slave in South Carolina between 1853 and 1855, has assembled the most comprehensive and significant collection of such images ever brought together in one place. The concrete reality reflected in daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, and tintypes presents these men and women in situations and attire that bring the truth of their daily lives much closer to us. Such scenes of material affection, matrimony, friendship, war, and the grim reality of the master/slave relationship help focus our perception of the African-American experience in America in ways not otherwise available to the modern reader. Among these images is the only picture of Abraham Lincoln in the company of an African-American and the earliest-known daguerreotype of Frederick Douglass (circa 1843)."--BOOK JACKET.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.