I knew the image by heart.
An enslaved African man, one knee bent, hands folded and arms in chains, his eyes looking to heaven to rescue him from the hell he was living on Earth, surrounded by the plea: “Am I Not a Man and a Brother?”
The image was created by an English potter named Josiah Wedgwood as a way to raise money to end the barbarous practice of slavery in the British Empire. I had seen the image many times before. At auction a few years ago, I had purchased a set of metal tokens with the images of both an enslaved man and woman. I bought them because of the history they held and the power they cast.
The medallion at this auction was a reproduction piece in black stone made by the Wedgwood company for the Wedgwood Collectors Society, a membership organization founded in 1969 by Philadelphian Milton Aion. The society was formed to offer limited-edition pieces of Wedgwood china and other wares to its members.
On the back of the medallion was inscribed: “The Wedgwood Collectors Society. Wedgwood. Made in England. 69.” This was likely one of its earliest pieces.
The original slave medallion dates back to around 1787, when Wedgwood and other Englishmen fought in their own ways against slavery and persuaded their fellow Brits to also denounce the practice. One of those was William Wilberforce, the subject of a 2007 movie titled “Amazing Grace” that told of his relentless campaign to force his country to end the slave trade in its own empire.
Wedgwood’s cameo-like design in unglazed stoneware was first adopted by the Society for the Abolition of Slavery in England, and was picked up by abolitionists in the United States.
The image was used on many objects – inlaid in men’s snuff boxes, and women’s hatpins and necklaces, and on such household products as milk jugs, sugar bowls and tobacco boxes. The medallion itself was among a number of anti-slavery items made in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Wedgwood also sent medallions to Benjamin Franklin, who had owned two slaves before freeing them and becoming head of the Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society. “It gives me great pleasure to be embarked on this occasion in the same great and good cause with you, and I ardently hope for the final completion of our wishes,” Wedgwood wrote to him. Franklin answered: “I am persuaded (the medallion) may have an Effect equal to that of the best written Pamphlet in procuring favour to those oppressed people.”
British and American women were as much involved in the abolitionist movement as the men, and they reshaped the image of Wedgwood’s male symbol. Their medallion showed a female slave, replacing the words “man” with “woman” and “brother” with “sister.” They sold the medallions at annual fund-raising fairs that brought in hefty sums for the movement. The female image also found its way onto products.
I wasn’t around when the black stone medallion sold at auction, but I left a bid. I expected that it would go pretty high, and it apparently did. I did not win the bid. Sigh.
