“Any Person May Kill and Destroy Said Slaves,” reads an arrest proclamation from 1798. Issued for “Jem” and “Mat” by Warren County, N.C., it may as well have been a death sentence. Even if Jem and Mat, two escaped slaves, were able to get to the North to a state that had abolished slavery, they would still be in danger. A clause in the U.S. Constitution guaranteed the right of a slave owner to recover his or her “property,” and the Fugitive Slave Act signed into law by George Washington in 1793 that made it a federal crime to help an escaped slave.
The document is part of The Kinsey Collection: Where Art and History Intersect, which is showing at the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture until October. The more than four centuries’ worth of art, historical documents, photographs and artifacts that Bernard and Shirley Kinsey have gathered in more than 40 years of marriage shine a light on what can’t be denied or extinguished: African-American sacrifice and achievement is part of American history, not just African-American history.
