June 15-16, 2010
photos by Fritz Myer
… Reid — a mulatto slave from South Carolina — was the only person who was able to figure out how to separate the sections [of the plaster model] so they could be moved to the foundry for casting.
Reid later is believed to be the person put in charge of bronzing the Statue of Freedom, and was officially thanked for his work in an address to Congress in 1928 by one of the statue’s admirers.”
Or, in the words of one Florida grower quoted in the famous Edward R. Murrow documentary, “Harvest of Shame,” words that make up part of the CIW museum’s exhibit on debt peonage in the early 20th century:
“We used to own our slaves, now we just rent them.”