Go back

Portrait of an Unidentified Man George W. Latimer

Tintype photograph (Ferrotype process) on a thin sheet of metal.

1:1

George W. Latimer, Lewis Latimer’s father, was a fugitive from slavery who escaped from Virginia to Massachusetts with his wife Rebecca, Lewis’s mother, in 1842. An attempt by his enslaver to return him to slavery sparked a successful campaign by Frederick Douglass and other abolitionists to protect him as a free man in Massachusetts.

Latimer Family Papers (1870-1996 ) [QPL Full Collection]

On display

Lewis Latimer House

FlushingQueens

New York, USA

North America

United States