Joseph Jenkins Roberts

Lore & Background

Joseph Jenkins Roberts was born free in Norfolk, Virginia, the eldest of seven children. His father was said to be a planter of Welsh origin; his mother Amelia, described as a 'mulatto' who was quite fair, was the planter's slave mistress or concubine and was freed before Joseph was born. Amelia married James Roberts, a free man of color, who gave the children his surname. Joseph Roberts and his siblings were estimated to be of seven-eighths European ancestry. They had an infant child who was born in Liberia after their arrival. Both Sarah and the child died in the second year of living in the colony. After hearing about the American Colonization Society's efforts in creating the colony of Liberia, Roberts decided to join a group of fellow Virginians preparing to leave for Monrovia.

Reader's Guide

He also expanded Liberia's borders along the coast and attempted to assimilate indigenous peoples into Americo-Liberian culture through education and religious conversion. His legacy includes founding schools and Liberia College, and his tenure saw agriculture, shipbuilding, and trade flourish.

Did You Know?

• Roberts was born free in Norfolk, Virginia, and was estimated to be of seven-eighths European ancestry.
• Both his first wife Sarah and their infant child died within the second year of living in the colony.

Roots in New Jersey and the Road to Photography

His mother passed away while he was still a child, leaving him to navigate a world that offered limited opportunities for a Black young man of his era. It was during his first year at Dartmouth that he discovered daguerreotyping, a skill he developed specifically to earn money and sustain his studies. Undeterred, Washington relocated to Hartford, Connecticut, where he took a position teaching Black students at a local school.

Capturing a New Nation: Photography in Monrovia

The American Colonization Society had been financing such relocations, and Washington saw in Liberia the chance to help shape a nation by and for Black people. Upon arriving in the capital, Monrovia, he immediately opened a daguerrean studio and soon expanded his work to neighboring Sierra Leone, Gambia, and Senegal. His portraits of Liberian political figures—President Stephen Allen Benson, Vice President Beverly Page Yates, Senate chaplain Reverend Philip Coker, and numerous senators and legislative staff—were carefully staged to project dignity, refinement, and institutional legitimacy. Many of these images were commissioned directly by the Colonization Society to present an appealing picture of the colony to prospective emigrants back in the United States. Scholars like Shawn Michelle Smith have noted that these photographs did not capture Liberia's lived reality so much as they projected an aspirational nation still in the making, doubling the vision of what the colony might become.

Disillusionment and a Turn to Politics

Over time, Washington's perspective on Liberian society shifted dramatically. Having long served as a visual chronicler of the colony's elite, he grew increasingly aware of the rigid social stratification that separated the African American settlers from the indigenous populations. He observed that the colonists relied heavily on native Liberians for basic necessities such as food and supplies, yet those same people were treated with marked inferiority by both physicians and political leaders. In his assessment, the settlers had abandoned their stated mission of bringing aid and enlightenment, instead perpetuating a cycle of bigoted colonization that alienated the very people they claimed to uplift. This disillusionment led Washington to abandon his photographic practice entirely. He turned to agriculture, becoming a sugarcane grower along the banks of the Saint Paul River.

Legacy: A Documented Pioneer and the John Brown Image

Augustus Washington occupies a distinctive place in the history of American photography as one of the very few African American daguerreotypists whose professional careers have been thoroughly documented. His body of work in Liberia served a dual purpose: it provided the young nation with a visual record of its own progress while simultaneously crafting an image designed to attract further support and emigration from the United States. The symbolic objects he placed in his political portraits—papers on desks, expensive woodwork, formal attire—were deliberate choices meant to reinforce the legitimacy of Liberia's government in the eyes of both local citizens and Western audiences. Yet beyond his Liberian corpus, Washington is perhaps best remembered for a single daguerreotype: his portrait of the abolitionist John Brown. This image, created during his earlier career in the United States, has endured as one of the most recognizable photographs of Brown and stands as a testament to Washington's skill and to the broader story of Black artistic achievement in the antebellum era. His legacy thus spans two continents and two careers, bridging the worlds of photography and governance.