100 Objects #12: "Negro Cloth"

Being a historian is sort of like being a detective. You hunt around for little scraps of information, clues you can use to try to piece together a more complete story of the past. You dig through old meeting minutes, receipts, and business transactions.

You read old diaries and leaf through old letters. And when you can, you try to get your hands on actual physical objects from history. This part can prove particularly difficult because the materials of everyday life are usually lost to the sands of time. Seth Rockman is a professor of history at Brown University, and recently he was looking for clothes that were worn by enslaved people in the American South, which was proving impossible because those items just didn't survive.