Exhibitions

The Black Presence in the Era of the Revolution, 1770-1800

July 4, 1973 – December 25, 1973

Adorned with a silhouette of the Reverend Absalom Jones and Masonic emblems, this jug likely commemorates the tenth anniversary of the first African American Masonic order, which Jones co-founded in 1798. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Sidney Kaplan

National Portrait Gallery
8th and G Streets, NW
Washington, DC

1st Floor

See on Map Floor Plan

View portraits, prints, broadsides, petitions, poems, letters and related objects—about 150 in all—assembled from public and private collections around the country that show the participation of black men and women in the Revolutionary War and the early years of the Republic. Part of the Gallery resembles an early black church with a reproduction of a stained glass window and an original pulpit.