Ten years ago, a TV series ran that changed the way Black life during bondage could be displayed on screen. The first five minutes of the first episode blew my hair back—even if the music headlined is by one who has since fallen from grace. The rest of the series taught me that Black violence is fantastic (the Fourth of July lynching lives rent free in my head), that whimsy and joy can be found in the darkest of places (the dragonflies scene with Jurnee Smollett) and that Amirah Vann deserves all the things for her portrayal of tender, fierce, and enraged Black womanhood in Ms. Earnestine. T
The series was canceled, but the mark on the culture was real.
When I heard the internets summoned Misha Green’s TV series Underground from the archives, I went into the hard drive archive for material. And it just so happened that, this week, in Black Freedom Struggles, we discussed Black visual archives of slavery, along with watching Underground (season one, episode one) and Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave. We walked the arc of Black visual narrative from hieroglyphics (Egypt) and Nok sculptures (Nigeria) to lithographs, prints, and sketches of the early eighteenth-century travelogue era to the paintings, portraits, and political cartoons of the nineteenth century. We ended with the rise of monuments (Confederate and emancipation) and photography in the nineteenth and into the early twentieth century.
This tenth offering is a mosaic laid at the altar of slavery’s visual archive. It is dedicated to Misha Green’s chaotic and perfect vision of whole Black people (especially Black women and girls), to Toni Morrison’s Black Book, to the genius and challenge of seeing Black life, and to the way we who are Black, with all of our cool and all of our bite and all of our body, even in the time of slavery, were ten times more interesting than [redacted] and we remain so.
Seeing is never just believing, but our eyes are information.
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This is offering #10 of Stitch Open My Eyes a 12-week community offering on history and memory in slavery’s archive. Because the Black freedom struggle during slavery should be a topic of conversation at every kitchen table. Follow along by subscribing above.
…and now, a bit of a tangent, in honor of Underground:
The Black and Indigenous freedom seeking practices and solidarities….
Rosalee and William Still below. Truly, the second season was elite.
Misha Green, if you ever read this, please know the North remembers and we will continue to hold a candle for this show that was killed before its time. Ashé.