Another American Skin(s) Game

On the run from Hilton Head to Harlem—the high stakes of black history

Sobukwe Odinga

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The American print industry sprang to life in the first half of the 19th century. Some of the earliest mass produced advertisements emerged during this period. Frozen among them, rear foot in the air, stick and bundle over his shoulder, is the runaway slave. In the 1840’s, printing houses and newspapers looking to generate revenue with slave ads could lay out $1.50 for a woodcut engraving or 20¢ for the smaller metal printing ornament. Type foundries in the northeast, like L. Johnson & Co. of Philadelphia would then manufacture and ship the plates. Within days, ads could flow fresh off the press and hot on the trail of another escaped slave. The Baltimore Sun, The Memphis Daily Appeal, New Orleans’ Daily Picayune, The Richmond Times-Dispatch, and many other dailies profited handsomely from slave ads.
So began pop media’s fascination with the “nigger in flight.”

The media career of the runaway slave looms large when considering pop culture’s problems with accurately depicting the history and diversity of black communities. Today, a quick visit to EBay’s Black Americana page reveals that even though slave ads no longer support an industry, they have yet to lose their market. Prices for collectible slave ads range from twenty or thirty dollars well into the thousands. Quite often, these ads reference a history too painful for many African-Americans to bear, so they readily change hands between collectors more concerned with profit than preservation.
Black historical artifacts have become precious and often contested commodities, but when considering the uses to which black history is often put, they represent just the tip of the iceberg. More pervasive, yet less often acknowledged, are the ways that black history (images, icons, narratives, subjects, agents, etc.) serves as a double edged sword in conflicts around the fate of historically black communities. On one hand, black history is mobilized by activists and long-time residents to legitimate claims to a neighborhood; on the other, it is packaged and marketed by real estate interests, non-profits, and media outlets to attract new residents and fresh capital.