Background
She was born free in Jersey City, New Jersey.
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Arabella Chapman
Edit ProfileEducation
She first attended Wilberforce School, before going on to Albany Free Academy (now Albany High School).
Career
By 1870, her family had migrated to Albany, New York, where Chapman would be raised in that city"s thriving African-American community. In 1877, she became the first African American to graduate from the Free Academy, and by 1880, she was teaching music Chapman created two photographic albums in the 1870s and 1880s.
These albums survive in the collection of the University of Michigan"s William L. Clements Library.
They are rare items that document Chapman"s personal and political vision. The photographic portraits included those of notable figures such as Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and John Brown.
Most striking are the portraits of Chapman herself, along with her family and friends. Through Chapman"s careful curatorship, the albums convey a sense of how African Americans constructed their social and cultural worlds in the post-Civil War era.
Chapman"s photo albums were exhibited in the 2013-2014 exhibition, Proclaiming Emancipation, at the University of Michigan as examples of how the memory of the Civil War, Emancipation, and citizenship was constructed by ordinary people.
Arabella Chapman"s photo albums have been curated as part of an on-line exhibit, The Arabella Chapman Project at arabellachapman.com.
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Born
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Died
1927 (aged 68) -
Nationality
African-American