Visualizing Black History, Through and Beyond the Archive

Join Jonathan Michael Square, Assistant Professor of Black Visual Culture at Parsons School of Design, for an illustrated talk exploring the lives of free and enslaved Black communities in antebellum America. Drawing from visual culture—portraits, fashion, ephemera—and archival documents, Square will share how these materials help us better understand, reconstruct, and imagine the complex realities of Black life in Philadelphia and beyond during the 18th and 19th centuries. Through this lens, participants will consider both the known histories and the silences that remain—and how art and archives together illuminate stories long overlooked. Dr. Square is the guest curator for Almost Unknown: The Afric-American Picture Gallery, currently on view at Winterthur Museum through January 4, 2026.

For K-12 Educators

This talk provides the capstone talk for a two-day hybrid teacher workshop. Educators who are intereted in signing up can learn more here: Philadelphia’s Antebellum Black Metropolis: A Curriculum and Resource Workshop.

Historical Society of Pennsylvania Members

Please register here.

About the Speaker:

Jonathan Michael Square is the Assistant Professor of Black Visual Culture at Parsons School of Design. He is also currently a fellow in the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Fashion Institute of Technology, and, most recently, at Harvard University. His writing has appeared in Fashion Studies Journal, Small Axe, Hyperallergic, British Art Studies, and International Journal of Fashion Studies. A proponent in the power of social media as a platform for radical pedagogy, he founded and runs the digital humanities project Fashioning the Self in Slavery and Freedom, which explores the intersection between histories of enslavement and the fashion system. He is currently working on a book manuscript on the same topic, tentatively titled Negro Cloth: How Slavery Birthed the American Fashion Industry.

This program complements the Historical Society of Pennsylvania’s current exhibit Voices of the Community: Local Black Preservation, which highlights how Philadelphians have worked to preserve, share, and expand the city’s Black history. Together, the exhibit and Square’s talk underscore the vital role that visual culture and community storytelling play in safeguarding Black heritage for future generations.

The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, founded in 1824, is one of the nation’s largest archives of historical documents. We are proud to serve as Philadelphia’s Library of American History, with over 21 million manuscripts, books, and graphic images encompassing centuries of US history. Through educator workshops, research opportunities, public programs, and lectures throughout the year, we strive to make history relevant and exhilarating to all. For more information, visit hsp.org.