Finding Frank

Abstract

In "Finding Frank," the author considers what to do with a remnant of evidence left behind from her research for a larger project in the history of slavery. The remnant concerns Frank, a black man lost to the domestic slave trade in 1835, and Morgan-Owens argues that the conventions of micronarrative, which tie the worth of a story to its scalability, led to his omission in her manuscript. What does it mean to have a story worth telling, and how much of a story does it take to merit a biographical account? Writing as a white historian, she navigates the archival impulse to write about Frank after the fact and the persistent patterns of white supremacy found in projects of historical retelling.