Samuel Jennings’ Liberty Displaying the Arts and Sciences (1792) shows a female personification of Liberty presenting books and symbols of enlightenment to a group of newly freed African Americans. In the background, symbols of slavery — chains, a whipping post — lie discarded.
This painting is a striking legal allegory. It celebrates freedom through learning, tying emancipation to access to law, science, and civic life. At a time when slavery was still entrenched in much of the United States, Jennings imagines a legal and cultural future where the formerly enslaved are not just free, but empowered.
The work speaks to legal personhood — the idea that one must be seen as a full legal subject to access justice, education, and participation. It links abolition to enlightenment values, portraying law as both liberating and aspirational.
Yet the image is idealized. True emancipation would take more than symbolic art — it would require decades of legal struggle, civil war, and constitutional change. Still, the painting remains a visual manifesto for inclusive legal identity, asserting that the law must expand to recognize those it once excluded.