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c. 1850s–1860s · Yale University / Library of Congress collections

Omar ibn Said, photographed

A 19th-century photographic portrait of Omar ibn Said, an elderly man in formal dress with a head covering.
Public domain image via Wikimedia Commons. Held by Yale University / Library of Congress collections.

The Fula scholar from Futa Toro, enslaved in the Carolinas, who in 1831 wrote the only known Arabic autobiography by an enslaved person in the United States. His portrait survives, and so do all fifteen manuscript pages of his autobiography, digitized by the Library of Congress.

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