Committed to Memory

How an eighteenth-century engraving of a slave ship became a cultural icon of Black resistance, identity, and remembrance.

One of the most iconic images of slavery is a schematic wood engraving depicting the human cargo hold of a slave ship. First published by British abolitionists in 1788, it exposed this widespread commercial practice for what it really was—shocking, immoral, barbaric, unimaginable. Printed as handbills and broadsides, the image Cheryl Finley has termed the "slave ship icon" was easily reproduced, and by the end of the eighteenth century, it was circulating by the tens of thousands around the Atlantic rim. Committed to Memory provides the first in-depth look at how this artifact of the fight against slavery became an enduring symbol of Black resistance, identity, and remembrance.

Finley traces how the slave ship icon became a powerful tool in the hands of British and American abolitionists, and how its radical potential was rediscovered in the twentieth century by Black artists, activists, writers, filmmakers, and curators. Finley offers provocative new insights into the works of Amiri Baraka, Romare Bearden, Betye Saar, and many others. She demonstrates how the icon was transformed into poetry, literature, visual art, sculpture, performance, and film—and became a medium through which diasporic Africans have reasserted their common identity and memorialised their ancestors.

Beautifully illustrated, Committed to Memory features works from around the world, taking readers from the United States and England to West Africa and the Caribbean. It shows how contemporary Black artists and their allies have used this iconic eighteenth-century engraving to reflect on the trauma of slavery and come to terms with its legacy.

Winner of the Historians of British Art Book Prize, 1600-1800

Winner of the Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Book Prize, Bard Graduate Center

Honorable Mention for the William Sanders Scarborough Prize, Modern Language Association

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year

'Published in 1788, the famous engraving of the human cargo of a slave ship was used widely by campaigners for the abolition of slavery. Finley looks at the dissemination of the image in the 18th century and its ongoing political and artistic resonances.' Apollo

Committed to Memory wonderfully shows how the ship travelled from its 18th-century departure port of protest to multiple destinations—prison reform movements, anti-capitalist campaigns, resistance to racial and sexual discrimination, and refugee advocacy.' Catherine Molineux, Times Higher Education

'Beautifully illustrated and brilliantly conceived...this book not only constitutes an innovative, gripping and convincing approach to the narrative of slavery, but it also succeeds in anchoring its heritage in the present moment and casting light on contemporary "passages."' Helene B. Ducros, EuropeNow