Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="409" caption="In the basement of the Smithsonian Institution Building, stacks of packages of publications labeled with the foreign country to receive the shipment have been prepared by the International Exchange Service, Early 1900s, by Unknown photographer, Photographic print, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 95, Box 28,
Description: [edan-image:id=siris_sic_8206,size=350,right]Born around 1815, James Thomas Gant was one of twelve children born to free parents on a plantation a few miles northeast of the Washington DC-line.1 As a free black man who lived through nearly the entire nineteenth century, he would see the Civil War, the destruction of slavery, the rise and fall of an all-too-brief period of