Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Painting of an Early Emancipation Proclamation Reading

Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory is the first painting in the collection of Reconstruction Era National Historical Park. The park asked Beaufort-born artist Sonja Griffin Evans to create it for the first anniversary of the park, which was designated by President Barack Obama. In a video on the park's website, she describes what inspired it.

The scene

The painting shows January 1, 1863, when General Rufus Saxton gathered a large crowd at Smith Plantation for one of the earliest readings of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Sonja Griffin Evans goes into detail about the inspiration behind her painting for the first anniversary of Reconstruction Era National Historical Park. NPS.

Woven into it are sites that are part of the national historical park:

• Darrah Hall and Brick Baptist Church, both on St. Helena Island within the Penn Center National Historic Landmark District; and
• Camp Saxton, in Port Royal.

What it expresses

The park describes the work as an expression of one of the first moments of freedom for a people who kept their strength, faith and determination through lives of bondage, violence, despair and oppression. It tells, in pictures, a story about how denying people their human rights challenges their very humanity.

It also asks viewers to think about what freedom means — to define it clearly enough to know what we are looking for and hoping to reach. The artist hopes the painting encourages people to find peace with God and with one another, and a nation that is free and united, with liberty and justice for all.

The artist

Sonja Griffin Evans is a Gullah artist and speaker, internationally recognized, who was born and raised in Beaufort, South Carolina. The Lowcountry, a region proud of preserving its culture and heritage, shapes her work, which captures the beauty and spirituality of Gullah Sea Island and African American culture.

Sources

• National Park Service, "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory" (Reconstruction Era National Historical Park): https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/mine-eyes-have-seen-the-glory.htm
• The painting is the artist's own work and is not reproduced here; the park's video about it did not come across with the page.
• The film and any audio are the National Park Service's own files, from the source page.