Panel 20
Spindles, Panel 20, 1956, Jacob Lawrence, from Struggle: From the History of the American People, 1954–56. Painting location, image, and inscription unknown.
Read Closer
While there is no image of this missing panel, the subject of its title references this page in one of Lawrence’s sources. As a title, Spindles frames the maintenance and expansion of Slavery in the South between 1790 and 1860 as the beginning of Southern plantations and the solution to America’s economic problems. This text, however, omits the fact that this rising national economy was at the cost of the people enslaved.
Excerpt from Alan C. Collins, The Story of America in Pictures (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1953)
Look Closer
Spindles are straight wooden spikes used to spin and twist fibers. In this image of a cotton gin, the spindles are the engineered rows of interchangeable points around the wooden cylinder. Spindles separated the cotton’s seeds from its fiber by pulling it through a comb-like grid.
Eli Whitney, Cotton Gin, 1794, Records of the Patent and Trademark Office, National Archives and Records Administration