During the late 19th century, in the midst of the United States Civil War, two free Black men set out to plan an art exhibition. At a time when the future of chattel slavery and Black life hung in the balance of a national quarrel, these men, William H. Dorsey and Edward M. Thomas, negotiated their precarious freedoms through the collection and promotion of Black art.
Thomas, who worked for the government as a messenger of the House of Representatives, had established himself outside of work as a fervent collector of art and literature. His collection—which boasted 600 volumes, artworks, coinage, autographs, and archival documents—was stored in his home at the corner of Washington, D.C.’s K and 17th streets. Starting in 1862, Thomas would begin planning his dream exhibition, putting out a call for submissions in the Black press titled “Colored Inventors, Artists, Mechanics, &c.” Intent on creating an exhibition that celebrated Black innovation and artistry, Thomas found support and collaboration for the project working alongside other Black art collectors, like Dorsey.
Based further north, in Philadelphia, Dorsey had made a name for himself, first as an artist and, later, as an avid art collector whose holdings included a number of so-called “rare curiosities,” oil and watercolor paintings “by artists of established reputation,” a work by African American landscape painter Robert S. Duncanson, and several portraits of prominent African Americans. He was also a devoted and tireless scrapbooker. Unlike D.C., where slavery was not abolished until 1862, the Philadelphia of Dorsey’s time had banished slavery—although records of Pennsylvania slaves held in bondage long after the institution’s abolition in 1780 suggest freedom in the North was insecure at best. Still, the city had witnessed the rise of notable Black elites, among whom Dorsey was considered a valuable community member.
The son of a runaway slave who settled in the city of Philadelphia in the early 1830s, Dorsey’s very status as a free man was made possible by fugitivity—if his father had not escaped, Dorsey’s life as an artist and collector wouldn’t have been possible. In the face of terror, opposition, and gratuitous violence, Black people during and after the period of chattel slavery found themselves toiling for beauty and possibility against great odds. As the “free” son of a “fugitive slave,” Dorsey’s quest for art and innovation cannot be separated from his father’s insistence on freedom. It is only through Black fugitivity that all other pursuits become possible.