Work Basket, Jackson, Mississippi, 1850-1899
date: label: Date made
content: 1850-1899
notes: label: Description
content: This coiled basket was collected around 1899 by Landry Robinson from Jackson, Mississippi. As he recounts the memory, he visited an agricultural exposition in Louisiana and bought this basket made by an “old lady named Mrs. Sahie.” This straight-sided work basket is very similar to the coiled grass baskets made on the Lowcountry (coastal) region of the Carolinas and Georgia where West African enslaved people and their descendants grew rice in the 1700s and 1800s. Through the “internal” or “domestic” slave trade, African people were sold to western plantation owners in Mississippi and Louisiana from the 1830s until the early 1860s. This basket might have been made by a woman or her daughter who was sold west away from her eastern family, but who kept up this distinctive cultural and familial tradition of basket-making. The distinctive Lowcountry region of the Carolinas and Georgia and the nearby Atlantic Sea Islands culture are now part of the National Park Service as the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor.
topic: label: Subject
content: Blacks
label: Subject
content: African American
setName: label: See more items in
content: Home and Community Life: Ethnic
label: See more items in
content: Many Voices, One Nation
label: Exhibition
content: Many Voices, One Nation
label: Exhibition Location
content: National Museum of American History
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: CL.076797
label: catalog number
content: 076797
label: accession number
content: 16953
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Basket
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 6 in x 12 1/4 in x 11 1/4 in; 15.24 cm x 31.115 cm x 28.575 cm