Southerners also knew that if slavery could be transferred from the fields to the factories, slaveowners could control the emerging industrial economy in America and the world. “Slave Factory Workers” is the only known image of slaves in an industrial setting. However, Southerners were worried that if slaves proved intelligent enough to operate a machine, it would be difficult to justify keeping them in bondage

GEORGIA

Banks and engravers told a story of slavery that glorified, justified, and ratified an inhumane institution. John W. Jones on the other hand, tells a story of strong and indomitable character, the will to survive and carry on the qualities brought from Africa. Look at how the artist uses light and color to tell this story. Notice how the clothing of these noble people is depicted in the colors of precious gems.

State of Alabama  $50.00

mages on Southern currencies circulating throughout the country were designed to reinforce Southern convictions about the legitimacy of enslaved labor and to convince Northerners of its beneficial nature for Africans. Images were increasingly characterized by smiling workers and well dressed blacks in happy scenes. Note the painful hypocrisy in portraying a happy mother and child within a system that routinely separated families and sold children.

SOUTH CAROLINA

State of South Carolina  $50.00

Though the end of the Civil War abolished slavery, its destructive images of racism and discrimination prevailed, engraved on currencies in the South through a century of Jim Crow laws and segregation. 
As late as 1872, for example, an image of “happy” slaves picking cotton appeared with George Washington on a $50.00 revenue bond scrip issued by the State of South Carolina.

VIRGINIA & WASHINGTON, D.C.

Citizens Bank, Washington DC  $3.00

State of Virginia  $50.00

After independence, support for centralized government in the United States was encouraged among rebellious and disenfranchised white laborers through the creation of a permanently subordinate black slave caste available for economic exploitation.

The demand for images of slavery on Southern currency, which came about as a part of the growing importance of the "slavery question," caught printers off guard. They responded by changing their existing images of white laborers intoblack slaves. 

Notice how the white farmer carrying a basket of corn on the note from The Citizens Bank of Washington, D.C. is transformed into a black slave carrying the same basket of corn on the $50.00 note issued by the Bank of Howardsville in Virginia.

MICHIGAN & SOUTH CAROLINA

State of Michigan  $1.00

State of South Carolina  $5.00

After independence, support for centralized government in the United States was encouraged among rebellious and disenfranchised white laborers through the creation of a permanently subordinate black slave caste available for economic exploitation.

The demand for images of slavery on Southern currency, which came about as a part of the growing importance of the "slavery question," caught printers off guard. They responded by changing their existing images of white laborers intoblack slaves. 

Notice how the solitary rider on the $1.00 note from Michigan, stopped to watch a group of white harvesters becomes an overseer with a whip taking stock of black slaves picking cotton on the $5.00 note from South Carolina.

GEORGIA

Georgia Savings Bank, Georgia, $5.00