Boy and Book
Charles Ethan Porter American
This quiet scene of a Black youth reading what appears to be a primer underlines the importance of education for newly emancipated Americans during the Reconstruction years. Posed in a rudimentary setting—suggestive of an enslaved person’s cabin—the figure concentrates intently on a page that depicts a chick and a mosquito with the term “Hesitation (?).” An erased inscription at the bottom of the paper appears to read: “Porter’s ‘Hesitation’ in “Africa (Va.),” followed by: “Don’t see the point.” The curious text may relate to the earlier U.S. campaign for Black colonization to Africa, linking politics, citizenship, and literacy in personal terms.
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