Classy Green

In 1963, the famous photographer Richard Avedon took a picture of a man named William Casby. William Casby, born in 1857, was 106 years old at the time. In his hands, he was holding his great-great-granddaughter, Cherri Stamps-McCray. The image amazes me because the elderly gentleman holding his descendant so tenderly, was born into slavery more than a century prior. Casby would eventually live until 1970, dying at the age of 113. His great- and great-grandchildren are alive today, and many of them remember him. It puts into perspective just how relatively recent slavery existed. Because as faraway and distant as it may feel now. Even in modern-day America, there are people who have active memories of talking to former slaves.