Thomas Day was a free man of color living in the early 1800s, one of the most prominent African Amer- ican business owners in the United States within his own lifetime. A cabinet-maker and wood-worker living in North Carolina, Day was a prominent and beloved craftsman who served both white and black clientele. His work was renowned throughout the South, and his cabinet-making business was the largest wood-working shop in the entire state.

Day was a complicated man, seemingly a contradiction of being both an abolitionist and a slave-owner. Day attended conventions and forums about the improvement of the lives of people of color, and he was closely allied with some of the most powerful African Americans in the country. Nonetheless he did own slaves, which historians suggest may have been a cover for a more progressive agenda. By “supporting,” slavery through these purchases, he made himself more trustworthy to Southern whites who otherwise might not trust him- at the same time, he was liberating slaves from their harsh living conditions under cruel white masters, and training them in useful carpentry skills.

Day died on the cusp of the Civil War, so he was not able to see the abolition that he supported throughout so much of his life. Still, his craft and his legacy lived on long past him. In the collection are two chairs Day had made, a matching pair deemed to be “His & Hers”. I’m told by Mr. Beard that the chairs hail from the 1840s, during the peek of Day’s popularity and power. Constructed with simple forms for the sake of strength and longevity, the chairs remain remarkably solid given their age.