Nineteenth-century estate records preserve an enslaved child’s own defiant voice.

Evidence

This document also described my Papa Renty as a child who demanded a checkered shirt, and Rose, his mother, as insisting he come home for lunch between running errands. It may seem insignificant to most, but for me it was describing a defiant, confident child, even in times of enslavement-which correlated with my oral history. This statement is in Renty’s voice. — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 812

Categorization

• XREF: The defiance-in-enslavement detail connects to Lanier’s broader argument that archives suppress enslaved personhood — and to her counter-reading of the Agassiz images.