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"The Virginian Slave."

Drawn by John Tenniel, the illustrator of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, this cartoon called “The Virginian Slave,” was published in the British satirical magazine Punch in June 1851. The cartoon explicitly linked The Greek Slave, the popular statue by the American sculptor Hiram Powers of a contemporary white woman in a Turkish slave market, to African American slavery in America.

Source: “The Virginian Slave: Intended as a Comparison to Power’s [sic] ‘Greek Slave,’” Punch, or the London Charivari 20 (June 7, 1851)—Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

Who Built America? An Open Educational Resource has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and funding from The Ford Foundation, Digital Scholar, and the City University of New York Central Office of Library Services. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this Open Educational Resource, do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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