Black-and-white photographs of blacks born into slavery line the walls of the International Society of Sons and Daughters of Slave Ancestry in Beverly. Pat Bearden is giving a tour when she stops at a picture of Priestly Reed with his wife, Alle Camaron, and their daughter Inez. An index card says that Reed was born in Pontotoc, Mississippi, in 1865 and died in Shawnee, Oklahoma, in 1939. Reed and his wife are looking natty in stylish long coats. Using a magnifying glass retrieved by her friend Jo Ann Page, Bearden points out the woman’s hat. “He’s a man of substance, meaning that he was not struggling after slavery,” she says. “That’s Persian lamb.”
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Bearden and Page, both retired Chicago public school teachers, started collecting the photographs last February, getting most of the images and the stories behind them from friends, relatives, and members of the Afro-American Genealogical and Historical Society of Chicago. In four months they collected 120 pictures; many were displayed at the DuSable Museum last year. Since then they’ve received 80 more.
Some of the people in the photos settled in the Chicago area. Born in Paris, Tennessee, in 1865, Henry Upchurch eventually moved to the city, got a job with the Department of Streets and Sanitation, and bought a three-story home on the 2000 block of West Maypole. A short man who walked fast and dressed well, he put up relatives who migrated from the south. He died in 1951. Bearden’s great-great-grandmother Julia Snowden Walker Martin was born in Columbus, Georgia, in 1851. She sold pies before moving to south-suburban Robbins to live with a daughter. Although Martin drank a half pint of whiskey a day, she lived until 1951. “She was a hell-raiser,” Bearden says.
Page says the group has a vital educational role as well. “Children still feel ashamed when the word ‘slavery’ comes up, as if we were the only ones who were ever slaves,” she says. “Everyone wants to associate it with African-Americans. So we’re trying to change the perspectives and also show children that just because we were slaves at one point, once we got the chance to get an education, to do our own work for ourselves, make our own money, we were able to prosper just like everybody else. We shouldn’t be ashamed of something that happened in the past.”
