Slave Picking Corn

For the next 30 years, there were no records of slaves engraved on paper. But by the 1850s, the country was divided over the slavery issue. The southern states started putting positive images of slavery on their currency as a way to rebut the movement to abolish slavery.

Caught off guard by the demand for images of slavery on southern currency, printers responded by converting their existing engravings of white people into black slaves. In “Slave picking corn”, the engraving of a white farmer carrying a basket of corn on a $3 note issued by the Citizens Bank of Washington, DC. becomes an enslaved black man on a $50 bill issued by the Bank of Howardsville, Virginia.