For nearly 150 years, a stained glass window depicting Jesus and three biblical women in black hung on St. Mark, an 1830 Greek Revival church in Warren, Rhode Island. It is said to be the only known representation on stained glass of a black Christ. Installed in 1878, the window also suggests a radical representation of gender parity: Christ speaks to three women placed on the same visual level, who are engaged in domestic work. But what might at first appear as a transgressive statement about equality may actually represent the efforts of a group of white women to come to terms with their own ties to slavery.
The window, representing a black Jesus, was commissioned in 1877 by Mary P. Carr, a wealthy white widow, and donated to the church in honor of two other wealthy white women from the Warren Episcopal Fellowship – Ruth B. DeWolf and Hannah Gibbs. There is little information about DeWolf and Gibbs, but it is known that DeWolf married into a family that derived its wealth from the slave trade. We also know that the two women made donations to the American Colonization Society (ACS), which advocated for the emigration of former slaves to Africa in the first half of the 1800s. The ACS established a colony on the west coast of Africa in 1822, which became what is present-day Liberia in 1847. Proponents’ motivations varied, and the concept was heavily criticized by abolitionists, including Frederick Douglasswho believed that African Americans had a right to independence in the United States.
“Even imperfectly, Hannah Gibbs and Ruth Bourne DeWolf sought to challenge their ancestors’ complicity in human trafficking,” Hadley Arnold and Virginia Raguin wrote in an August 2022. article about the window. “The showcase was designed to both commemorate and perpetuate their work.
St. Mark’s Parish closed in 2010 and the church property was purchased by developers in 2012. It was to be turned into condominiums, but Arnold, who is trained in art history and worked in the fields of visual arts, architecture and design. , quickly purchased the old structure and began renovating it into his family home. In June 2022, Arnold invited Raguin, a teacher at Sainte-Croix and a specialist in stained glass, to investigate the windows.
Raguin said Hyperallergic she went to visit the church with a blank slate, “as every scholar does”, but was delighted when she saw what was before her.
“‘Yeah indeed, somebody didn’t mess up, that’s the real thing,” she added.
The window is one of four in the old church, all attributed by Raguin to the workshop of Henry E. Sharp, a 19th-century American glass artist (a work by Sharp is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art). It is only in the last window, however, that Christ is depicted in Black. It is rendered in white and depicted alone in the other three works.
The rare window could reflect the larger societal environment of post-Civil War America. In 1877, the year Carr commissioned the work on behalf of DeWolf and Gibbs, politicians passed the devastating “Compromise of 1877” to secure the presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes. The agreement put an end to the reconstruction. Federal troops left former Confederate territories, and Southern states were allowed to enact legislation that restricted the rights of former slaves within their borders. These rules prohibited voting and evolved into segregation laws that took nearly a century to be struck down.
Just as the window speaks to women’s ideas about race, Arnold pointed out that the work likely speaks to these women’s ideas about gender. “Christ sits at eye level, with – not above – women, as they do the work of the world,” Arnold said. Hyperallergic. In the top image, sisters Martha and Mary are baking bread and sitting in contemplation. In the bottom image, the Samaritan woman draws water from a well.
“Think of the wealthy women of the 19th century,” Raguin said, “what was expected of them? To entertain was their life. When Raguin first saw the window, she recognized the stories depicted in two versions of the Bible that were popular in the second half of the 19th century.
Raguin said knowing that the commission emphasized gender equality is what makes her confident that the choice to portray the dark-skinned characters was intentional. She does not know of any other stained glass representing a black Jesus. For now, the window is wedged on the ground of Saint-Marc. Raguin and Arnold are looking for a institution to take the rare piece in his collection.
