On display in the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture is a simple cotton sack (pictured below) embroidered with a poignant story of an enslaved woman who filled it with items for her daughter, who was sold away at the age of nine. Tiya Miles' All That She Carried, published in the US in 2021 to extraordinary acclaim, is a history of this remarkable object - and of the Black women named on it, who carried the sack from the 1850s to the 1980s.
All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake
by Tiya Miles Profile, 416 pages, £25
This story is from the September 2023 edition of BBC History UK.
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This story is from the September 2023 edition of BBC History UK.
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The Long Road Back - The Election Was Tough for the Conservatives but the Past Holds Clues on How Parties Can Return From the Brink
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