Paul Robeson, civil rights activist, athlete, and artist, said that “artists are the gatekeepers of truth. We are civilization’s radical voice. The artist must elect to fight for freedom or for slavery.” When I first visited the Stowe House for a tour after getting hired as the Director of Interpretation and Visitor Experience, I was compelled to reinterpret our “Global Impact of Uncle Tom’s Cabin” gallery, to convey the sentiment of Robeson’s quote. The room featured historical artifacts showcasing the commodification of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the characters from the book. There were movie posters, playbills, broadsides, and even a scene from a silent film of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. What was missing from the ‘Global Impact’ gallery was consideration for the impact that these images and artifacts would have on our visitors.  Specifically on people of the global majority, for whom these images conjure up negative and often traumatizing memories of a not-so-distant past. I began to think with my colleagues about the potential for a space to contemplate the hope that freedom seekers had, and the invocation of the spirit of hope they conveyed in their writing. To explore how that spirit impacted and influenced not only Harriet Beecher Stowe but generations of artists and authors that continued that tradition forward to today.

The Stowe Gallery for Hope and Freedom is a space that starts with Stowe’s 1853 Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which she compiled to validate her portrayal of the horrors and realities of slavery and centers the experiences of Black Americans and brings us forward to 21^st century authors such as Stowe Prize Winners Ta-Nehisi Coates, Ruha Benjamin, and Bettina Love. From the mid-19^th century, Uncle Tom’s Cabin has had an impact on the lives of Black Americans. We see today that the legacy of Black writers of the 19^th century and the impact of the truths about Freedom narratives proceeds to this day. The gallery for Hope and Freedom is a space to interrogate the influence of Black authors on Stowe and on generations of Black imaginaries, luminaries, and Afro-futurists, looking back to see a clearer and better future.

My hope is that we continue to look back at the past to inform us about our collective futures and enable us to keep reimagining what literary activism looks like. In this vein, we are expanding the way we think about literary activism. Literary activism is not just the words we write on the page, it goes back to an oral tradition, where the stories were passed down from village to village and generation to generation by griots, who were storytellers, musicians, singers, and oral historians in West African tradition. Literary activism is the story that the quilts told, or the maps and seeds braided into women’s hair as they were sold into slavery or fled plantations seeking freedom, and today it’s the story our murals tell or the words in our poems and songs. This gallery is a space to talk about the hope and freedom of the past, and it is a space for us to continue to imagine and reimagine the world we envision for our future.

Erika Slocumb, Director of Interpretation and Visitor Experience.