Let Freedom Ring

Today I feature a very poignant object.  A somewhat macabre and horrific relic of American slavery, this rather mundane brass bell was recently obtained from a London antiques dealer. It was sold at auction there in the 1980s with an oral attribution of having come from the estate of British abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, it being given to him as a souvenir from  a Charleston, South Carolina plantation.  The bell was alleged to have been dangling from a runaway slave's "Bell Collar", a  grossly inhumane deterrent whose barbaric use continued up until the time of the Civil War in some places.  There was an allusion to this having been sent to Clarkson by the Grimke Sisters, Sarah & Angeline, of Charleston, famed abolitionists born into a privileged slave owning family.  This somewhat mythical provenance cannot be substantiated, though it seems plausible that such a physical representation of Southern slavery would have been given as a token to Clarkson for his efforts in fighting the institution in America.