Eyre Crowe (1864-1910) was a British artist. He travelled to American for six months in 1852-1853 as the personal secretary for the lecture tour of British author, William Makepeace Thackeray. The tour included cities from Boston to Savannah. Crowe chronicled these visits in words and art including scenes of American society. His images of the domestic slave trade that flourished during his visit, shout the horror of this institution that went on publicly as accepted economic practice. He showed us the truth of trading in humans. He showed us people being auctioned thoughtlessly in the town square by privileged white brokers of money and power.

I will share three of the paintings he created on his return to England in these next weeks. First is Slaves Waiting for Sale. I have shared this work often. It is filled with a poignancy that words seem helpless to describe. Our challenge is to imagine being forced to dress up and wait patiently to be walked through the doorway at the left to the auction block. If you are sobbing, you are not alone. And yet what we see in these poor and meek faces is both the weight and freedom of the gospel. From the mount and the plain Jesus spoke of them. Maybe we can see his words on these faces if we don’t turn away.

It took a stranger to see with this clarity. It is said that Eyre Crowe wrote and sketched furiously trying to capture these obvious and seemingly invisible crimes against humanity. As the thousands of words, the worth of this image, whirl in our minds, may we hear above them the loud call to anti-racism. This is the scar. This is why confession, compassion and action are not abstract, ethereal, or optional now. May we be as the stranger in our own land and may current injustice not make us deaf and blind. In God we pray, Amen.

In gratitude, faith and hope,

Sandy Prouty
Minister of Children and Families
Montview Church