Abstract
One of the most evocative objects in the new Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture is an embroidered cloth bag that has come to be known as “Ashley’s Sack”. Stitch-work on the bag, signed “Ruth Middleton”, recounts the bag’s painful history, as a gift presented by an enslaved woman, Rose, to her daughter Ashley, when Ashley was sold at age nine in South Carolina. This paper explores ‘Ashley’s sack’ as an object of history, memory, ritual action, and aesthetic creativity.
Highlights
One of the most evocative objects in the new Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture is an embroidered cloth bag that has come to be known as “Ashley’s Sack”
The embroidered cloth bag came to light at a flea market in Springfield, Tennessee in February 2007
It is exhibited prominently in the new Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC, which opened in September 2016
Summary
One of the most evocative objects in the new Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture is an embroidered cloth bag that has come to be known as “Ashley’s Sack”. From 2008 to 2013 it was displayed at Middleton Place, the well-known slavery era plantation historic house and formal gardens, just up the Ashley River from Charleston, South Carolina.1 It is exhibited prominently in the new Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC, which opened in September 2016.
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