JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — With powerfully haunting eyes and an enigmatic expression, “Portrait of Frederick,” an enslaved man painted circa 1840, stares out at visitors of the Mississippi Museum of Art.

A little further into the museum is Delia, a Black woman dressed in red and wearing a headscarf who bears a similarly unknowable expression. The pair of portraits are the only known preemancipation paintings of enslaved people in Mississippi.

Now, for the first time, they hang together for the public to see.

“I was mesmerized by the painting,” museum visitor Staci Williams said. “The colors, the expression. His humanity seemed to jump off of the page.”

The portraits evoke questions about who Frederick and Delia were, why they were painted and what went through their minds as their faces wer

See Full Page