The Act to Prohibit the Importation of Slaves went into effect on January 1, 1808, effectively ending the transatlantic slave trade from Africa. It did not, however, end the demand for slaves in the United States.
New Orleans was particularly rich in documentation: customs manifests, warrants to seize property subject to forfeiture, newspaper ads, and bills of sale, which, unique to Louisiana, were kept as public records. Greenwald also had access to testimonies of former slaves collected by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s.
And families who had been separated during slavery remained divided. As late as 1912, former slaves placed ads in the Southwestern Christian Advocate, a newspaper circulated in five states throughout the deep south and often read aloud by pastors to their congregations on Sundays. There is a searchable database of 2,400 of these “Lost Friends” ads in “Purchased Lives.” For the IHMEC version of the exhibition, Weininger prepared an installation of enlarged copies of 22 ads that have some connection to Illinois. Some of the ads were placed by people who had moved to Illinois during the Great Migration or were searching for people who had last been seen heading to Illinois many years ago.
Through 8/25: Fri-Wed 10 AM-5 PM, Thu 10 AM-8 PM, Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, 9603 Woods Dr., Skokie, 847-967-4800, ilholocaustmuseum.org, $15, $10 seniors, $8 students, $6 children five-11, free children under five.
