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In the 18-teens, when the Audubons lived in Henderson, Kentucky, they had nine enslaved people working for them in their household, but by the end of the decade, when faced with financial difficulties, they had sold them. They took a stand for slavery by choosing to own slaves. It was with remarkable understatement that one of Audubon’s earlier biographers wrote that “Lucy and John Audubon took no stand against the institution of slavery.” In 1834, he wrote to his wife, Lucy Bakewell Audubon, that the British government had “acted imprudently and too precipitously” in emancipating enslaved people in its West Indian possessions.
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Instead, he dismissed the abolitionist movement on both sides of the Atlantic. That’s never been a good argument, even about Audubon’s time-and certainly not in this one-because many men and women in the antebellum era took a strong and outspoken stand for the abolition of slavery.Īudubon didn’t. “He was a man of his time,” so the argument goes. Today we see that legacy preserved in the National Audubon Society, but also in the cities, streets, and even birds that bear his name.Īudubon was also a slaveholder, a point that many people don’t know or, if they do, tend to ignore or excuse. A now-legendary painter who traveled North America in the early 19th century, in an epic quest to document all of the continent’s avian life, he is above all known as a champion of birds. John James Audubon was a man of many identities: artist, naturalist, woodsman, adventurer, storyteller, myth maker. New Jersey Audubon is deepening our resolve through this moment to achieve the vision of conservation as a big diverse, inclusive, equitable and just tent. At this pivotal moment, it is imperative that we acknowledge our past while committing to do all that we can to fight racial and other forms of injustice in the conservation movement moving forward. In the past several years we have moved to formalize that ethos as a major cornerstone of our organization through our diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ) efforts. We have held that belief at our core for decades as reflected through our education team’s Nature for All initiative. A slaveholder himself who harbored abhorrent views on race (regardless of his historical time period), John James Audubon’s brilliant contributions to conservation and the study of birds must be viewed alongside his promotion of racist ideas and actions that have contributed to the centuries of institutional racism derived from slavery in America.Īt New Jersey Audubon we believe that conservation is for all. I share the piece “The Myth of John James Audubon” published by National Audubon with you today in recognition of the deeply problematic and complex relationship our organization’s namesake had with race and his own racial identity. What Do We Do About John James Audubon?.