Wilson Chinn: a branded slave
This piece, considered one of the great slavery photographs, was made “to raise money to educate former slaves in Louisiana, a state still partially held by the Confederacy.” The images of Wilson Chinn are especially famous. On his forehead are branded the initials of his former owner, Volsey B. Marmillion. The photographer, M. H. Kimball, retouched the initials on the original negative to make them even more visible to viewers. Harper’s Weekly published this photograph as a wood engraving on January 30, 1864. The text below is from the accompanying article.
“Wilson Chinn is about 60 years old, he was “raised” by Isaac Howard of Woodford County, Kentucky. When 21 years old he was taken down the river and sold to Volsey B. Marmillion, a sugar planter about 45 miles above New Orleans. This man was accustomed to brand his negroes, and Wilson has on his forehead the letters “V. B. M.” Of the 210 slaves on this plantation 105 left at one time and came into the Union camp. Thirty of them had been branded like cattle with a hot iron, four of them on the forehead, and the others on the breast or arm.”
Chinn, and the children who traveled with him from New Orleans, knew their role in coming North was to publicize the evils from which they had escaped. The new medium of photography helped bring about anti-slavery sentiment as well as communicate to other enslaved people they could persue freedom before word of the emancipation proclamation had reached the south.