Feb 26, 2009 - Sale 2171

Sale 2171 - Lot 82

Price Realized: $ 2,640
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,200 - $ 1,800
(SLAVERY AND ABOLITION--RECONSTRUCTION.) Radical members of the So. Ca. Legislature. Albumen photograph with printed explanation of the image on the reverse, 6- 7/8x5- 5/8 inches; faint scratches to surface; some discoloration to reverse. (Columbia, South Carolina?, James Gibbes, circa 1868)

Additional Details

rare albumen composite photograph of the members of South Carolina''s Reconstruction legislature. Fifty members of the Legislature were African-Americans. By the end of the 1870s virtually all black representatives had been replaced due to the poll taxes, and gerrymandering of the newly energized Democratic party of the South; the era of segregation and disenfranchisement had begun. The photographer has been identified as James G. Gibbes by a single entry in OCLC attributing this, and several other versions of the same photograph.