After the Civil War, African Americans were widely represented in paintings, sculpture, photography and other art forms. There are few images depicting their homes or businesses they owned. Kerr Eby, a member of the Cos Cob art colony, made an etching of a warehouse that had been converted into three apartments, two of which were rented to black couples, and the other to Eby--Eby's decision to live under the same roof surprised many of the local villagers. The etching bears the rather disturbing title of "Coon Quarters," which, although undeniably racist, was probably not intended by Eby to be malicious. We now recognize the term "coon" as a racial slur, and its matter-of-fact use by Eby, an individual who shared living space with black families, demonstrates the ways in which African Americans were perceived in the North--often idealized as in Eby's etching, but not that different from how they were perceived in the South.

Image: Kerr Eby, Coon Quarters, 1913, etching. Private Collection, photograph courtesy The Historical Society of the Town of Greenwich.