VINCENT BROWN: He says: “I wonder where is all my relation. Friendship to all and every nation.”

NARRATOR: On this jar, Dave has written this couplet that speaks to the profound dislocation of families under slavery.

Vincent Brown, Charles Warren Professor of American History and Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University.

VINCENT BROWN: I think a little background on that is important to know. The transatlantic slave trade ended in North America in 1808. But down to the Civil War, nearly a million people were sold from the older slave states; places like Virginia and South Carolina, to the new expanding slave states of Alabama and Mississippi. Families torn apart, children sold away, people dying along the trail, right? In just several decades. So you’re talking about massive, massive domestic slave trade that’s inordinately tragic.

Dave is living during that moment. His family, his partner and children, have been sold away. So the fact that he was a noted potter, a person who was highly valued for his skills, couldn’t save his family, that his family was torn apart by slavery, and it’s recognized in the work itself.