To Appear as We Please
On August 12, 1876, two woodcut images, derived from photographs taken of Frances Thompson in jail, appeared in , a sensationalistic, nationally circulated, illustrated weekly newspaper published in New York. Thompson, a fortune-teller and former slave, had come to national attention a decade earlier when she testified before a congressional committee, along with four other African American women, about being gang-raped by a group of white men during antiblack rioting in Memphis in 1866. Her testimony played a crucial role in winning public support for the post–Civil War policy of “radical” Reconstruction that resulted in the ongoing military occupation of the South by Union troops. Thompson’s testimony required her to forcefully assert a self-image at odds with the stereotypes placed upon her—that as a black and recently enslaved woman she was available, by definition, for white men to do with as they pleased; that she wanted it; that she
