6.12.25

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome. This is Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye, and today
I will be reading the Smithsonian Magazine dated June twenty
twenty five. As a reminder, Radio Eye is a reading
service intended for people who are blind or have other
disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material. Police
Join me now for the first article titled three formerly

(00:22):
enslaved artists created beautiful pottery one hundred and fifty years ago,
and now their wares are coveted around the world. The
stunning vessels from the H. Wilson Company were forgotten for generations,
only to gain new appreciation for the craftsmanship that went
into them by Jacoba Eurest. In eighteen fifty six, the

(00:45):
Reverend John McCamey Wilson, Junior, a Presbyterian minister and entrepreneur
interested in Clay's science, relocated from North Carolina to Texas.
There in the Capodi Hills, a rural, sparse enclave in Guadala,
Lupe County, twelve miles from the town of Sedgwyn, Wilson
opened a business called Guadalupe Pottery. Wilson mainly sold jugs, churns, crocks,

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and cemetery flower shars. The pots featured crescent handles and
a deep chocolate colored interior of liquefied clay. Before refrigerators
in ice boxes, high fire, non porous pottery was essential
to life the tupperware or ziplock bags of the nineteenth century.
Clay pots preserved everything from grains, beef and butter, to

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whisky and even drinking water. The potters who worked under
Wilson's direction mostly used alkaline glaze, one of the oldest
methods in ceramics, to create a glassy exterior from a
slurry of wood, ash, sand and clay, an arduous process.
In the eighteen fifties, it took days to stoke underground

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wood burning kilns to a high enough temperature for a
successful firing. Three of Wilson's potters were enslaved servants who
traveled to Texas with him, Hiram James and Wallace. For
more than a decade, these men were responsible for nearly
every facet of Guadelupe Pottery's production. From mixing clay and

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expertly throwing the pots on a kick wheel, took glazing
and stacking vessels, and meticulously controlling the temperature and duration
of the kiln's flames. The men kept working for the Reverend.
Even after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January first,
eighteen sixty three, in Texas, slavery didn't end until June nineteenth,

(02:38):
eighteen sixty five, when Major General Gordon Granger arrived in
Galveston and issued General Order Number three informing the people
of Texas that all who had been enslaved were free.
The event commemorated as June teenth. In eighteen sixty nine,
Hiram founded his own stoneware business at a new site

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with Jane Eames and Wallace H. Wilson and Company. Though
not biologically related, all three took their enslaver's surname, the
practice of some black Americans at the time. Some scholars
believed that H. Wilson and Company was the first business
in Texas founded and owned by formerly enslaved people. A

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century and a half later. The pots they made are
celebrated in the ceramics world in silvery grays and greens
with uneven salt drips and textured glazes that resemble the
moon's surface or sometimes an orange peel. Wilson wares are
coveted both as obje dart and for their extraordinary story
of black self determination in the post war South. Wilson

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Pottery now resides in museums across the United States, from
the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History to the Museum
of Fine Arts Houston. An indelible part of the country's
entrepreneurial and creative heritage. The story of Hiram, James and
Wallace Wilson is woven through with threads of folklore, given

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the sparse records kept at that time, particularly for people
born into slavery. But over the last fifty years, researchers
have uncovered more details about the Wilsons. Georgiana Greer, the
San Antonio pediatrician and ceramics collector Officionado, was passionate about
locating abandoned kilns, and she left a trove of Wilson

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information behind, including a nineteen seventy three taped interview with
James Wilson's son, James Wilson Junior. Emancipation offered to Wilsons
an opportunity none had ever expected. Establishing a pottery business
was complex and costly. It meant finding a suitable sight,

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testing clay, constructing a kiln, and hiring proficient workers, and
the men did all this in an intensely dangerous environment,
said Ashley Williams, a recent fellow at the Smithsonian American
Art Museum. In the late eighteen sixties, Black residence of
Guadalupek County filed almost two hundred complaints with the Freedmen's

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Bureau for unpaid wages and violent crimes perpetrated against them.
A Baptist missionary from Maine, the Reverend Leonard Ilsley, helped
Hiram by six hundred acres of land for five hundred
dollars and likely either gave Hiram a personal loan or
served as a guaranteur in the transaction. When Hiram died

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in eighteen eighty four, survived by his wife Senia and
eleven children, Ilsley served as administrator of his estate. One
of Hiram's great great granddaughters, Laverne Lewis Britt, first discovered
her connection to the Potters after her retirement when she
became interested in genealogy. Over the course of five years,

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she researched and wrote a book called In Praise of
Him from Wilson, which describes how her ancestor created a
thriving post slavery community in Capote Hiram set aside ten
of his six hundred acres for a Baptist church and
became its minister. The white steepled chapel remains active to day,

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beside a cemetery with cedar and crape myrtle trees. Many
Wilsons have been laid to rest there, including Hiram, whose
grave is marked by a tall obelisk. Hiram also founded
a one room school house, where Paula King Harper, another
of his descendants, says her grandmother once taught. King Harper,

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is the current president of the Wilson Pottery Foundation. On
the phone, she described how interest in her celebrated ancestors
technique has spread in collector circles since the organization's founding.
In nineteen ninety nine, a pottery collector in San Antonio
was at a garage sale and noticed the green salt
glazed drip from underneath dirt that had dried on a

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gallon jug. They purchased it for less than ten dollars,
went home, cleaned it up, and guessed what it was.
A stamped h Wilson. Finding that stamp is now the
equivalent of finding assigned painting by a renowned artist. King
Harper once sat at an auction that included several pieces
of Wilson pottery from some one's private estate. There was

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a beautiful, pristine five gallon jug I watched sell for
twelve thousand dollars, she said. Traditionally, clay artists who made
quotidian jugs and jars rather than purely esthetic works, have
been considered second teer maker's ranking below sculptors, But over
the last few decades, contemporary and historic seramicists like the

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Wilsons are receiving new scholarly and art world attention. Williams,
the recent Smithsonian Fellow, is researching the Wilsons as part
of her doctorate at Columbia University. She notes that most
enslaved potters wouldn't have been able to inscribe their names
or initials on a pot, but once the Wilson potters

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were free, they added a maker's mark, which made all
the difference. Future generations were able to dive into the
records and find out more about the remarkable potters. Because
we can tie the makers to these objects, which is
so rare, it allows us to see the story about
the resilience of the Wilson potters during slavery and their

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extreme success and survival. Williams said the Wilson's style may
have been influenced by the works coming out of the
Edgefield District in South Carolina, a place then known as
a kind of pottery mecca. It was famous for massive,
bulbous jars and glazes, features that the early Wilson potts share.

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Edgefield has its own significant history of highly skilled black craftsmen,
including David Drake, the earliest known enslaved potter to inscribe
his work. Later, the Wilsons pottery took on more distinctive features.
The men started out using alkaline glaze, but once they
opened their own business, they switched to salt glaze, likely

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for its strength and waterproofing properties. Salt glaze also produces
more consistent colors and textures, such as the bumpy orange
peel finish admired by H. Wilson and Company collectors. At
the time, the method was uncommon in Texas, according to
Michelle Johnson, project manager of the William J. Hill Texas

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Artisans and Artists Archive at the Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens,
part of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and it
was dangerous. She said because salt blaze produces highly toxic
chlorine gas from the wet salt thrown into the kiln
during firing. For this reason, contemporary ceramicists avoid the method altogether.

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The Wilsons may have learned the technique from Isaac Suttle's,
an Ohio born potter known for salt glazing, who was
listed in the United States Census as living in Seguin
at the time. Lid rims are another notable element of h.
Wilson and Company's jars. At the first pottery making sight

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during their enslavement, the men made more tie down rims
jars without lids that require paper or cloth as a cover,
which were easier and faster to make. Later, at their
own shop, they crafted rims fitted for lids. Those lid
rims allowed for more watertight storage, but they also required

(10:50):
more sophisticated expertise. If you think you may have stumbled
on one of these treasures at a garage or a
state sale, look for a horseshoe like handle, the most
significant visual identifier of a Wilson pot It's still unclear
why Hiram, James and Wallace switched to these thicker rolled

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handles from their original edgefield inspired crescents. It may have
been because horseshoe handles are sturdier, offering more surface connection
to the pott's body. It's another puzzling question that Williams
is pursuing and hopes to answer in the future. It
took a long time for the art world to discover

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the Wilson's creations. After Hiram's death in eighteen eighty four,
James and Wallace Wilson went on to work at another
pottery site run by Marian Durham, a potter from South
Carolina who had moved to Texas with John Chandler, who
was most likely his enslaved servant at the time. By

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the time the Wilsons joined them, Durham and Chandler were
in business together. That site closed in nineteen o three.
These pots remained in circulation, but many details of their
story were lost. Decades later, an anthropology graduate student named
Elmer Joe Brackner Junior conducted a magnetometry survey to fine

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buried pottery clay contains iron oxides that can become magnetized.
At the original Guadalupe Pottery site, he found what's known
as a ground hog kiln, a uniquely Southern semi subterranean
kiln used in the nineteenth century for firing alkaline glazed pottery.

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At the second site, home of the independent H. Wilson
and Company, Brackner found ceramic glazed shards and another groundhog kiln.
His research and that of Georgiana Greer, the ceramic historian,
helped piece together the Wilson's unusual story. After many years

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of advocacy by the Wilson Pottery Foundation, art historians and
curators began scouring land deeds, court documents, and hand written
capacity marks numbers that denote the volume of each jug
to present a fuller picture of the Wilsons, sometimes correcting
previous theories about their methodology and timeline. Texas ceramic artist

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Arlene Greene researches the wilsons past while creating her own
pottery to honor their legacy. In twenty eighteen, she interviewed
Wilson descendants and collectors and visited historical societies in Texas
for archival information. Two years later, she curated an exhibition

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on her campus in Fort Worth. The show also displayed
ceramic pieces she created based on the work of the
Wilson potters. The narrative continues to evolve, due in no
small part to proud descendants of Hiram, James and Wallace.
Every three year years, hundreds of people gather in Segwyn,

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Texas for a jubilant three day Wilson Family reunion that
is open to the public. In twenty twenty three, festivities
included the Wilson Pottery Foundation Gala and a tenth anniversary
celebration at the Wilson Pottery Museum. The last reunion fell
on the weekend before June teenth, and the reunion committee

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arranged a kick off concert Sunday evening, followed by June
teenth events in Seguin's Downtown Square. I was fortunate to
grow up in Texas in the nineteen eighties, around the
time when our cousin Laverne Lewis Britt had uncovered the history,
explains to Sean mc clinton Holland, the photographer of this
story and a Wilson descendant through his maternal grandmother, I

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grew up knowing bits of the story and visiting the church.
He describes the process of documenting Hiram Wilson's legacy as
a healing journey to think he was born into slavery
and was able to accomplish so much. Shortly thereafter, he says,
it's inspiring and motivating to think of all the freedoms

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we have now and that we really have to push
a bit harder next. Salmon and the Pacific Northwest are
facing a new threat, booming populations of seals and sea lions.
The mammals return to the region represented a conservation's success story,

(15:30):
but their appetite for endangered fish is upsetting the balance
of a delicate ecosystem. By Sheryl Cats. On a cold
night along the coast of Washington State, two women on
boogie boards paddle furiously across surging waters, clad and survival
suits and headlamps. Jennifer Sevigner and Amanda Summers are heading

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back from a harbor seal gathering in Port Susan Bay
with dry bags full of seal scat. The pair are
biologists employed by this Stiliguamish tribe of Indians, and their
mining the smelly, oily stuff for solutions to a wrenching
conflict between some of the region's most cherished marine creatures.

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The flotillas of seals and sea lions plying Puget Sound
today are a conservation success story. Because of their competition
with fishermen, these animals were the target of state sponsored
bounty hunter programs in Alaska, Washington, and Oregon. By nineteen sixty,
the region's pinniped numbers had been dramatically reduced. With the

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Marine Mammal Protection Act of nineteen seventy two, hunting them
became illegal, and their numbers rebounded, but the salmon populations
on which they prey plummeted. The causes of the salmon
crisis include habitat lost to urban development and migration routes
blocked by dams and roads. As cities have pumped water

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out of rivers, they have also reduced the amount of
water in the streams. The shallow water is warmer, and
salmon need colder temperatures to spawn and rear young. Climate
change is also warming waters and altering weather patterns, disturbing
both the fresh water and ocean stages of the salmon

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life cycle. With the Pacific Northwest's once teeming salmon runs
now just a thin trickle, the growing numbers of hungry
pinnipeds have an outsize impact. Watersheds are out of balance
and Pinniped predation on salmon is a symptom of that,
says Cecilia Gobin, a conservation policy analyst with the Northwest

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Indian Fisheries Commission, a consortium of twenty fishing tribes in
western Washington. As the fish return to spawn in the
rivers and streams where they were hatched, bottlenecks like dams
stir up pinniped feeding frenzies. The outlook is especially dire
for chinook, the largest of the Pacific salmon also known

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as king salmon. Chinook are the centerpiece of the state's
billion dollar fishing industry. Washington allows both commercial and recreational
salmon fishing, with regulations on quantity and size. Salmon are
also a critical food source for many species of wildlife,
including Washington's beloved and critically endangered Southern resident killer whales.

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For Native Americans, who have fished these waters for millennia,
salmon are the backbone of their diet and culture. Salmon
related activities shape the vocabulary of tribal languages and drive
the yearly calendar. The cycle begins with the return of
the first salmon in spring, which Pacific Northwest tribal nations

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honor with the first salmon feast. Goebin, a Tulilip tribal member,
says her people believe that the first fish is a
scout for the rest of the salmon community to see
how well we've been taking care of this place of
the waters. The tribe honors this fish during the ceremonial dinner.

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We eat the first salmon with the community, and then
we return his remains back to the water so that
he can go back to his villages and report what
he saw. If the salmon population collapses, she adds, everything
stands to be lost. You're losing resources that are tied
to the language and language that's tied to the land.

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The salmon's demise also threatens tribe's treaty fishing rights, says
Pegan Frank, executive director of the advocacy group Salmon Defense.
Frank's father in law, Billy Frank Junior, was an Esqually
fisherman and eater of the fish wars that culminated in
the nineteen seventies with Washington tribes gaining the right to

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catch as many as half the salmon in their traditional territories.
Frank recalls when her husband, Willie Frank, the third Also,
a fisherman would come back with many toads full of salmon. Now,
she says they barely even get one. She fears that
salmon will disappear during her lifetime unless the pinniped population

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is controlled. How it gets done, she says that will
be interesting. Efforts to keep pinnipeds away from salmon have
been under way for years with little success. Loud noises,
for instance, from firecrackers to high pitched underwater pulses, damaged
some animal's hearing, and sea lions that were captured and

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released hundreds of miles away usually just swam right back.
We're fighting an uphill battles, says Casey Clark, lead Marine
Mamma researcher for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife,
Because once an animal has figured out that there's a
really good food source somewhere, it's incredible what it takes
to get them to stop. In the Columbia River Basin,

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sea lions have scarfed down so many salmon that habitual
offenders face lethal removal. This exemption to the Marine Mammal
Protection Act targets sea lions that continually hang around and
gorge themselves near the fish ladders designed to help salmon
make their way around dams and other obstacles. A long

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standing limited coal was expanded in twenty twenty to measure
the benefits to salmon. Since then, one hundred ninety nine
sea lions have been killed, sparing as many as sixty
one thousand salmon, according to the Washington Department of Fish
and Wildlife. So far, the program has had promising results,

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with fewer sea lions lurking near the fish ladders and
the outlook for chinook improving. The permit, which expires this August,
will likely be extended. The concept of killing pinnipeds to
save fish draws fire from animal rights advocates and raises
concerns about the broader environmental impacts. You're going to wind

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up with issues, says Casey Maclin, executive director of sr III,
which operates a nonprofit marine animal hospital in the Seattle area.
The ecosystem is a web, and if you pull on
one string, we're not going to know what that's going
to cause. That's why Sevigner and Summers are out on

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their boogie boards scooping up seal poop, managing an endangered
species that is preyed on by another endangered species is
a complex thing, Sevigner says. The biologists are working with
State Fish and Wildlife scientists, one of several collaborations between
Puget Sound tribes and other agencies studying ways to bolster

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salmon while keeping both populations healthy. While feasting sea lions
can have a visible toll on salmon, Less is known
about the dining habits of seals. Fishbones in the scat
will reveal how much and what types of salmon seals
in the area are eating, along with genetic materials showing

(23:27):
the salmon consumed by individual seals. Preliminary results for the
Port Susan Bay area suggest that seals aren't having a
major impact. According to Sevigne, while other river systems may
have different scenarios, it seems like salmon are not a
really big part of our seal diet, she explains. The

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still Aguamish are working on habitat restoration, rewilding former farm
lands into cool, shady pools where young salmon can grow
and strengthen before their arduous journey to the sea. Scientists
from the Port Gamble Scalumn tribe are also working with
the nonprofit Conservation Resarch Organization, Ocean's Initiative and the Advocacy

(24:14):
group Long Live the King's as well as state agencies
to test a promising new deterrent. The device startles seals
hanging around salmon run obstacles and drives them away from
the buffet. The underwater system, which emits short, random bursts
that sound like nails on a chalkboard, is much quieter

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than old school noise makers and doesn't harm animals hearing,
but it distracts seals buying fish just enough time to
get through the latter, says Rob Williams, a scientist with
Ocean's Initiative. In trials so far, Williams says the device
cuts salmon predation by up to eighty percent for the

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salmon people. As the Pacific Northwest nations call themselves the
need to give fish a fighting chance as urgent. We
only have a short window of time to recover salmon,
frank says. If we missed that chance, then we will
be the generation that let the salmon go Next. Ask Smithsonian,

(25:23):
you've got questions, We've got experts from Francis Gellis Denver.
Whatever happened to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's tradition of fireside chats.
The answer is from Claire Jerry, Curator of Political History,
National Museum of American History. The spread of radio gave

(25:43):
Roosevelt the means to have his speeches broadcast into listeners
homes in real time through relatively informal messages he called
fireside chats. But while Roosevelt was the first to be
able to employ this approach on a large scale, he
was not the last. Every president since then has found
ways to use the media of their day to deliver personal,

(26:06):
conversational messages directly to the public. Jimmy Carter once gave
a televised fireside chat while sitting by an actual White
House fireplace. Ronald Reagan didn't use the fireside title or motif,
but he did deliver radio addresses to the public each Saturday.
Barack Obama was the first president to communicate with the

(26:29):
public through social media, a practice carried on by his
successors Donald Trump and Joe Biden. The title and medium
may have changed, but the spirit of the presidential fireside
chat lives on. Finally, question from Joshua may Sel, Collegeville, Pennsylvania.

(26:51):
Is there any pre European native American sites or structures
still in use today. The answer is from Dennis Sotai,
cultural Specialist, National Museum of the American Indian. The village
of Sky City in New Mexico has been in use
since the year eleven, fifty before European contact. It is

(27:13):
said to be the oldest continually inhabited community in North America.
The native people belonging to the Acoma Pueblo tribe who
live there to day are believed to have descended from
early Pebloans, Macallan, and other ancient peoples. Sky City is
situated on a three hundred and sixty five foot high

(27:33):
mesa about sixty miles west of Albuquerque. The village does
not have electricity, sewers, or running water. To compensate for
the lack of these conveniences, the village depends on ancient
techniques that were in place before the first Europeans arrived.
For instance, the villagers still collect rain water in a

(27:54):
natural hole in the middle of the village, just as
their ancient ancestors did. This concludes readings from the Smithsonian
Magazine for today. Your reader has been Rebecca Shore. Thank
you for listening, and have a great day.