A rarely reproduced drawing of Frederick Douglass, by Charles White, was included in If I Survive: Frederick Douglass and Family in the Walter O. Evans Collection, a book by Celeste-Marie Bernier and Andrew Taylor, published by Edinburgh University Press. The reproduction, together with substantial references to White and his work, opened the book’s Preface, which was titled “My Only way of Fighting” – Walter O. Evans and Collecting “400 years of Black History”.

The Douglass drawing (on page xxxvi) was made by a young White in 1940 and was from the ‘Walter O. Evans Collection at the Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art, Savannah, GA.’ All references to White, bar one, were on pages xxxi – xxxix.  From one particular passage:

Clearly, Charles White’s conviction that images are weapons in the arsenal for the “Negro fight for freedom” is shared not only by Frederick Douglass – who wrote himself into existence at the same time that he dedicated his life to image-making in the service of Black equality- but by Walter O. Evans, a world-renowned collector, curator, and conservator of African American history, culture, and memory.

This was a substantial and hugely important publication of archival material, previously unseen speeches, letters, autobiographies, and photographs of Frederick Douglass and his sons, Lewis Henry, Frederick Jr. and Charles Remond Douglass, from the Walter O. Evans collection