Invisible Histories

Michigan native Geraldine Huff Doyle, who died on December 26^th in Lansing, was only a teenager when the UPI photograph was taken of her working in a factory and for most of her adult lifetime had no idea she was the original inspiration for ‘Rosie the Riveter.’ As typically happens, the myth took on a life of its own quite different from the reality. Among other details of her story as a busy wife and mother, the article mentions that Geraldine was a cellist who had quit the factory job not long after the initial photo was taken because she was worried about irreparably damaging her hands. And about that iconic, robust physique? “She didn’t have those big muscles,” said her daughter Stephanie Gregg of Eaton Rapids, Mich. “She was busy playing cello.”

The original UPI photo, here on the cover of Time-Life's The Patriotic Tide: 1940-1950 (This Fabulous Century)

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This is a recent news story I’m very much hoping gets further researched and expanded on:  Nicole Norfleet of the Huffington Post’s “Slave Children Photo Found in North Carolina Attic.”

I’ve long haunted antique and second-hand stores and one thing I’ve always found heartbreaking is the orphaned family photos — there because no family was available to take the photos after their owner’s death and/or because the existing family didn’t recognize anybody in that particular batch of photos and so they got consigned to the junk pile.

In this case, the photo of the boy John and friend (either as slaves or recently emancipated slaves) sitting on a barrel and taken at some point in the 1860s was part of a photo album discovered in April 2010 during an estate sale in North Carolina. The photo was also associated with an 1854 “purchase” document for John. The photo itself is labeled by the studio of renowned Civil War era photographer Mathew Brady, although this photo was probably taken by his assistant Timothy O’Sullivan.

As the buyer and collector Keya Morgan noted, this is a rare and poignant, painful look into the lives of slave children in the later 1800s, and the details of those lives have been lost:  John “doesn’t even exist in history.” Here’s to hoping we learn more by bringing orphaned photos and stories into the light and collective awareness.

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