In 1850s South Carolina, an enslaved woman named Rose packed a sack containing a few precious items for her nine-year-old daughter Ashley. Ashley was then separated from her mother and sold, and it’s likely the two never saw each other again. This heart-wrenching story is embroidered on a tattered cotton sack now held in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. In this episode, Professor Tiya Miles discusses her Cundill prize-shortlisted book on “Ashley’s sack” and what it can reveal about women’s experiences during slavery.
Tiya Miles is the author of All That She Carried: The History of a Black Family Keepsake, Lost & Found (Penguin Random House, 2021)