08/03/2026
On Emancipation Day, we pause to honour the resilience, strength, and enduring legacy of those who survived slavery and shaped The Bahamas.
This postcard from the NAGB's National Collection, featured in the recent Project Space exhibition Space for Message, bears the caption 'The Last African Slave, Nassau'. More than a historical image, it reveals how photography and postcards were used to sensationalise Black Bahamian lives for tourism while obscuring historical truth.
The man depicted is believed to possibly be Martin Sawyer, a formerly enslaved man who lived to the age of 105. Though slavery in The Bahamas ended in 1838, the postcard presents him as a "slave" in the present tense, reducing a man who had lived the majority of his life in freedom to a spectacle for visitors. It also ignores the fact that he was not the last surviving formerly enslaved Bahamian, erasing the lives and stories of others, including Sarah Taylor and Harriet Thatch.
As we commemorate Emancipation Day, this work reminds us of the importance of questioning historical narratives and preserving the stories that colonial imagery sought to simplify or erase.
To learn more about Space for Message, researched and curated by Emily Voges, visit the NAGB website.
