Luckie Family Portraits

Nancy Cunningham Luckie and her husband, Solomon, were two of the less than 40 free Black people who lived in Atlanta (population 9,554) at the start of the American Civil War. Solomon was a barber. He worked at a shop in the Atlanta Hotel. Nancy and Solomon were free, but they lived under harsh local laws meant to control the free Black community. Laws restricted the movement of free Black people around the city, especially at night. They were also barred from the facilities and businesses that white people used. In order to live in the city, they also had to have a white person sponsor them and may have been required to pay a $1,000 fee.

Nancy and Solomon had three children. Despite the oppressive laws they lived under, they enjoyed a successful and financially stable life until the Siege of Atlanta in 1864. On August 9, Solomon was speaking with a friend on the corner of Whitehall and Alabama Streets when shrapnel from a Union Army shell hit him. Solomon was rushed to Atlanta Medical College, where doctors amputated his leg, but he died a few hours later. Nancy was left a widow with three young children.

This collection of images shows members of the Luckie family. The existence of these photos indicate that the family was wealthy enough to have professional portraits taken. The images stand as a unique visual record of the small free Black community in Civil War-era Atlanta.

• Confederate: Relating to the group of states that seceded from the United States before the Civil War in order to preserve slavery.
• shell: A bomb shot through the air.
• shrapnel: Pieces of metal that fly off a bomb when it explodes.
• Siege of Atlanta: Union General William Tecumseh Sherman and his troops surrounded and attacked the city of Atlanta in May 1864. The siege ended when the Confederate Army retreated from the city on September 1, 1864.
• sponsor: A person who assumes responsibility for another person.
• Union: The name for the states that remained a part of the United State during the Civil War.

• Use this portrait collection in any lesson about nineteenth-century families and communities.
• Use this portrait collection in any lesson about the lives of free Black people in the Antebellum and Civil War periods.
• To learn more about life during the siege of Atlanta, see Surviving the Siege of Atlanta.
• Examine Freedom Bonds to learn more about the restrictions placed on free Black people in the antebellum era.
• The Luckie family’s decision to live in the slave state of Georgia might seem unusual, but according to the 1860 census, more free Black people lived in slave states than free states. To help students understand this surprising fact, read and discuss Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s “Free Blacks Lived in the North, Right?”
• For a larger lesson about the lives of free Black people in the antebellum era, couple these photographs with any of the following: Salem Female Anti-Slavery Society, Freedom Bonds, Fighting Segregation, Life Story: Letitia Carson, and Life Story: Sojourner Truth.
• In addition to emotional and financial challenges, widowhood came with social expectations as well. To learn more, read Mourning Clothing.
• To learn more about the challenges and opportunities Nancy Cunningham Luckie faced as a widowed Black woman and mother at the end of the war, explore any of the following: “All Bound Up Together”, Information Wanted, Backlash Against Black Workers, Calling Out Sexual Violence, Claiming Political Power, Laundry Workers’ Strike, Life Story: Matilda Hughes, and Life Story: Susie Baker King Taylor.

DOMESTICITY AND FAMILY; AMERICAN IDENTITY AND CITIZENSHIP

• For more on the lives of Black Americans in the Reconstruction era, see Black Citizenship in the Age of Jim Crow.