Please join us for the art history faculty talk "A Total Abuse of History: The Toxic Racial Lies of Green Lives Matter" with Associate Professor, Adj. Margaret MacNamidhe.
"During this talk (very much a work in progress) I discuss a c.1906-14 photograph from Ireland's northernmost county, a scene of tillage farming. Potatoes are planted by two shawled, female-identified figures in a so-called 'lazy bed' (a variety of crop cultivation dating back thousands of years). This photograph is part of a vast collection of such images amassed by the Congested District Boards established by the British government in 1891 to alleviate rural poverty throughout Scotland and the island of Ireland. But the white supremacist movement, Green Lives Matter, locates the photograph in the southern United States, and, ignoring the crucial difference between indentured servitude and chattel slavery, claims that the photograph shows enslaved people from Ireland. This talk laments the shocking ignorance of history that makes such toxic lies possible. It addresses the multi-decade work of the Congested District Boards before going back in time to the deeply stratified 18th-century world of Monserrat, a Caribbean destination for both expellees from Cromwellian Ireland (1649-50) and enslaved people from west Africa."
This event will provide auto-generated captioning. Persons requesting additional accommodations should visit saic.edu/access.
