This is the second piece I share by Eyre Crowe. It pictures an actual auction seen by Crowe on his visit to America as the personal secretary of British novelist, William Makepeace Thackery.  It is said that he sketched and wrote frantically, desperately trying in his six-month stay to capture the commonplace horror of the domestic slave trade. His work documented what we find hard to truly comprehend. This is what happened. This is slavery.

Crowe’s drawing shows an established institution with platform, auctioneer, crowd of well-appointed bidding gentry, and a woman standing in the grip of a hand, dehumanizing stares, heartless routines, absolute control. I pray she knew the teachings of Jesus on the rich and the poor, and pondered these in her heart in the moments pictured here.

May we remember those words also, carefully consider this scene, and work against the echoes of this racist harm each day. Amen. 

In gratitude, faith and hope,

Sandy Prouty
Minister of Children and Families
Montview Church